Place2Be Modernises with Sage Intacct and Percipient
Children and young people’s mental health charity optimises performance and instils scale with new cloud deployment.
About Place2Be
Place2Be is a children and young people’s mental health charity with almost 30 years of experience working with UK school pupils, families, and staff. Providing mental health support in schools through one-to-one and group counselling, using tried and tested methods backed by research, it offers expert training and professional qualifications.
Place2Be has two primary income streams: its counselling service to schools, and the second is training of community and school leaders on mental health. While the first runs reasonably consistently all year round, the second is more ad hoc.
A Modern Approach
Against a backdrop of high growth, Place2Be had outgrown its previous legacy finance system, which relied upon significant manual processes and spreadsheets. New funding represented an opportunity to invest in modern capabilities in the form of a cloud-based financial management system, and following a detailed invitation to tender, the charity shortlisted two providers.
Place2Be needed a system which would recognise and track income streams from both areas of its operations, consultancy and training. Ensuring both streams could be monitored via contract costing or ad hoc invoices in real-time, and for month-end, was paramount in being able to better understand the charity’s current position at any given time. Crucially the charity needed to be able to submit auto-renewals, look at pricing strategies, and report to senior management in a forward-looking manner, rather than relying on retrospective data.
Our deployment was incredibly smooth, helped massively by the fact that the Percipient team was outstanding. Communications were excellent, with tight controls, deadlines and collaboration at every point.
Making the Right Choice: Sage Intacct
Place2Be selected Sage Intacct from Percipient based on a close fit with all of the requirements set out, and the fact that it hit all of the critical points highlighted in the tender document. The most pivotal aspects included a need to streamline the PO/sales invoice journey, the ability to leverage OCR to expedite account payable (AP) processes, and greater cost control, security, and visibility. The professionalism and experience of the Percipient team throughout the tender process confirmed that it was the right option.
“It’s fair to say that we had a lot of requirements when going into this process, as we wanted to ensure that the system we selected not only met our needs currently but as a charity with variable levels of funding, we wanted to ensure it could scale to support us in the future,” comments Louise Hollins, Project Accountant, Place2Be. “Sage Intacct was able to meet all of our requirements. In parallel, Percipient’s presentation was incredibly professional and within just 10 minutes we knew they were the right choice for us.”
A Smooth Transition
“Our deployment was incredibly smooth, helped massively by the fact that the Percipient team was outstanding. Communications were excellent, with tight controls, deadlines and collaboration at every point. Any issues were quickly dealt with, as the team was so responsive and keen to go above and beyond to ensure that the project was a success and that we were all in the best position to get the most from the system from the outset.”
In our sector, transparency is everything, and with Sage Intacct, costs can easily be assigned to different services, and we can manage P&L, budgets and headcount with all of the figures literally at our fingertips.
Insights at a Click
Having gone live in 2022, Place2Be is already starting to see huge benefits, as Louise explains: “We are now benefitting from a more streamlined, intuitive way of working. Reporting functionality means that senior management can look at a dashboard, track KPIs and headline figures, and drill down into more detail as needed. Any anomalies can be investigated with a few clicks to understand the why behind the what.
“In our sector, transparency is everything, and with Sage Intacct, costs can easily be assigned to different services, and we can manage P&L, budgets and headcount with all of the figures literally at our fingertips. Any costs can be tracked in a click, and reports can be created very quickly, which allows us to report and respond not only to our senior leadership team but to our funding groups and regulatory authorities. Similarly, cyber security is a massive issue right now, and via its cloud-native deployment model, we have absolute reassurance that Sage Intacct has this area covered.
“Having been using the system for a year or so now, we’re really seeing the value. Feedback from our users has been fantastic. The system is set up so that everyone has a single sign-on via a Microsoft365 account, and it flags KPIs and insights which might be useful for them to see.
Financial management can be daunting, but Sage Intacct really is a game changer: it makes numbers friendlier! It’s a great tool that helps us understand the story behind the data as we can slice and dice it in different ways.
Making Numbers Friendlier
“Financial management can be daunting, but Sage Intacct really is a game changer: it makes numbers friendlier! It’s a great tool that helps us understand the story behind the data as we can slice and dice it in different ways,” Louise concludes.
“Being able to access the Sage community, and not-for-profit user groups via Percipient’s network of customers is a massive value add, and the strong relationships we have formed throughout this process have given us a great foundation from which to get the most out of the system.
“In conjunction with Percipient’s professionalism, experience and expertise in the not-for-profit sector, we are confident that we’re in a great position from which to continue delivering the best services to our market, secure funding and scale our operations as needed in the coming years.”
Sage Intacct Partner for Non-Profits
If you’d like to learn more about Sage Intacct, our work with Place2Be, or how we can help your non-profit business, please get in touch or call us on 01606 871332.