Exchequer Testimonial - Canterbury Cathedral
Dating back to 597AD, Canterbury Cathedral is the Mother Church of the Anglican Communion and seat of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Run as a charity, the Cathedral consists of various enterprises including a shop, stained glass department, property business, hotel and conference centre, as well as numerous departments that deal with visitors, events and education.
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It is therefore imperative for Canterbury Cathedral to have an effective financial management system to handle its diverse activities. Previously the Dean & Chapter of Canterbury used Sage CS3, which was more than a decade old and no longer being developed by Sage, with a high annual maintenance fee. However, when looking to update the system, Finance Manager Richard Phillips was looking for a solution that could report against budget/forecast across the range of businesses they manage.
"After looking at Exchequer and speaking to various reference sites plus another Diocese and Cathedral, we were satisfied IRIS could offer what we needed" comments Richard. ?Having reviewed a number of products, including the appropriate offerings from Sage, we purchased Exchequer because it seemed the best fit with our needs, the price was competitive and the reseller 5 Star was very approachable."
As a charity, Canterbury Cathedral has partial exempt status from VAT and needed a system that could handle multiple VAT rates. Furthermore the shop, Works and Stained Glass Departments require job costing, which can be handled by the Sales and Purchase Ledgers. A standard feature in Exchequer, the Sales and Purchase Ledgers are designed to give Richard and his team immediate access to any account information. It includes the ability to raise quotations, invoices, credit notes, payments and refunds for both customers and suppliers.
Richard continues, "We have an element of distributed processing, which Exchequer handles very well. The Cathedral Lodge and Works Department, who have heavy invoice flows, can now process their own purchase invoices. As each department is responsible for their own performance against budget, Exchequer empowers them to have all the information they need available at the touch of a button."
The simple availability of accounting information has made a great difference to the Dean & Chapter since going live. The ability of Exchequer to output data into Microsoft Excel enables management reports to be available in that format. "Business information is now accessible to managers in a way that did not exist with our previous system, making it so much easier to produce our monthly accounts" concludes Richard
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