The Priestley Academy Trust
With over 25 years’ experience as a school business manager and academy finance director, Michael Horrocks has helped numerous schools improve their financial management processes. Here, Michael explores how the Access Education Finance and Budgeting software has helped Priestley Academy Trust work more efficiently.
- Access Education Budgets
- Access Education Finance
Moving to an integrated solution
Priestley Academy Trust is a group of five schools and since I started in 2017, we’ve always used the Access Budgeting software. Up until the summer of 2020, we were using PSF software for accounting, however we struggled to access support when required so began to explore alternatives.
After some research, the benefits of implementing the Access Finance software became clear. Not only was the Access software far more cost effective, but the ability to integrate with our existing budgeting software would save hours of staff time in the long run.
The prospect of having two fully integrated systems was exciting to staff, as it would reduce the administrative burden - especially during busier periods, and free them up to focus more on financial management and improving outcomes.
There are currently twelve active users of the Access software and out of this number, only one prefers the old system - which is a real testament to the team at Access.
Outstanding support to facilitate success
The level of support we received throughout the implementation really was second to none and the team knows that if they have any problems, they can easily contact the Access help desk and will receive a quick and thorough response.
Since implementing the Access Finance software, we’ve noticed the number of queries coming into the central team from individual schools has reduced significantly, as the new system is far more intuitive and much easier to navigate.
Increased visibility and time savings
Setting the budgets and monitoring expenditure over the course of the year is another huge benefit, as teams can view all the key information and keep a close eye on any concerning trends, before they cause problems. It’s much easier to interrogate the data and our management reports are also a lot clearer.
The ability to upload POs and invoices digitally has saved countless hours across the trust and will make the annual audit a much less stressful process. Now, auditors don’t have to see physical copies of every invoice, they can simply log in to the system and access them digitally.
