Customer Story: Withington Girls' School

Withington Girls’ School employs approximately 165 staff, including Vicky Bickerton, Assistant Bursar, who has worked in the finance team for the past eight years. She is one of four members in the department, covering billing, payroll, and purchasing, under the oversight of the Bursar.

With fees paid in ten monthly instalments, cash flow has to be managed carefully to account for reduced income over the summer months. The team needed stronger control over purchasing and approvals, quicker supplier payments, and better visibility of spending across departments.

With decades of experience between them, it was important for the team to operate more efficiently to provide support to each department across this high-performing school, which was named Northwest Independent School of the Decade by The Sunday Times in 2020.

For a long time, the finance team managed supplier invoices manually, relying on printed paperwork and physical sign-offs.

“When I first started, it was all paper copies. Invoices would arrive via the post or by email, in which case they would be printed off. The team would add the coding by hand on each invoice, which would then be put in the pigeonholes of heads of departments for sign off before being returned to the finance department for payment. This could easily take up to two weeks to come back to us.”

Even after moving to a platform that offered some automation, approvals were still slow and difficult to monitor.

“Approvals were still taking too long, we could not see where invoices were being held up and sometimes we didn't realise invoices were missing until we were contacted by the supplier asking for the payment.”

This manual approach made it hard to track documents and introduced unnecessary delays at each stage of the process.

When the school moved to Access Financials for its nominal ledger and accounting, it also adopted Lightyear to digitise invoice processing and approvals.

“We moved to Access Financials for our Nominals and Accounting,” says Vicky, “and that's when we moved to Lightyear, which is a much more advanced solution.”

Lightyear automates invoice capture, coding, and approval workflows while providing clear visibility of every document in the system.

“I think the whole system has been really good. The visibility of invoices has helped enormously. Seeing the documents coming in, they're logged on the system, and we can see where they are. It makes processing much easier. It's a very intuitive system.”

“I love that you can see who the invoice has been assigned to and how much it is for. It flags if there are discrepancies in the bank details or agreed pricing. The processing of invoices through the system is really straightforward. I like that approvers can still see their invoices even after they are signed off.”

The integration between Access Financials and Lightyear also enables automatic duplicate detection, helping the team avoid double payments to suppliers.

Since implementing Lightyear, approval times have dropped dramatically — from around two weeks to approximately one day — while visibility and accuracy have improved.

“The Lightyear system itself I really like! It makes our Purchase Ledger Admin's job considerably easier and saves time. If a colleague needs to be reminded to approve an invoice, for example, an email can be sent with just a click of a button.”

Support during implementation also stood out.

“The support was also fantastic. Our implementation consultant, Phil, was amazing. He was so patient with us. He knew when we would be doing a payment run and dedicated an hour to us in case we needed additional support during that time.”

The move to Lightyear and Access Financials has helped the finance team reduce workload, improve supplier relationships, and gain clearer oversight of all payables.

Advice for other schools

When asked what advice she would give to others considering Lightyear for accounts payable automation, Vicky said:

“I would definitely recommend it in terms of a system for automating your invoice processing and providing visibility of spending. It's so user-friendly and robust in comparison to other systems. I am able to reset passwords if needed, but it requires very little training.”

Find out more

Withington Girls’ School’s move to Lightyear and Access Financials shows how digital invoice processing can save time, improve accuracy, and give finance teams clearer oversight of spending.

If you’d like to see how your school could benefit from automated accounts payable, download our brochure to learn more about Lightyear for education.

If you’re part of a state maintained school, take a look at Access Education Purchasing — our dedicated accounts payable solution designed to help you simplify purchasing, speed up approvals, and stay on top of your budgets.