S crutton Bland have a unique cloud solution, SBLive which provides accounting software combined with professional business advisory services Adviser spoke to Andy Yorke , General Manager at Ipswich Sports Club who has been using SBLive for over a year about their experience with the cloud-accounting software package. You recently moved onto the Cloud, how have you found the experience? “Firstly working with Scrutton Bland has been the key, due to their support and backup for this critical area of our business. Scrutton Bland provides both a professional service and the training a professional service and the training on how to post entries and reports and very importantly how to log VAT transactions. SBLive is powered by a range of accounting software and you chose Xero. Can you tell us how it has improved your business? It is important that Xero is set up in the best way to run your business. The SBLive people at Scrutton Bland have a great deal of knowledge about Xero which is used to run SBLive, but you have to maintain your own admin routines to get the best out of it. It’s really important for you to keep regular checks and ensure your month end is completed – but you can see all revenue and costs at a glance, so it actually is pretty straightforward. If you could list the ways in which introducing a cloud based system has helped Ipswich Sports Club, what would be your highlights? • Sage (one of the alternative accounting product) requires more specialised accounts people – Xero is much easier to use and less reliant on expensive book keepers to manage day-to-day inputting (and Sage reporting isn’t great either); • The package / software is modern and easy to use for businesses owners/ managers who are non-accountants; • I can get access to Xero from anywhere and at any time as long as I have access to the internet; • It is essential to me in my managerial role as we now have end of month reports available within days of the end of period;
• I learnt Xero in a few weeks including VAT coding etc. I still can’t get a real grip of Sage even after ten years at the club, it really isn’t very user friendly unless you have been using a long time and I was very reliant on a book keeper, which isn’t ideal if you’re like me and like having your finger on the pulse!; • Xero is more customisable and I can make corrections which are logged in my user profile. This allows me to adjust errors if I need to, or highlight these to my finance person so they can see what I expect; • When we started with Xero my finance person was inexperienced and making numerous posting errors, however after less than six months we are now seeing almost 100% accuracy on data input, albeit after a few long nights of going through every transaction! Neither of us are formally trained, but I can now input information with ease, and Xero provides very powerful reporting data. • If we still had Sage I would be waiting for a couple of months at least to get numbers and in fact used to use my EPOS (Electronic Point of Sale) system to predict numbers. Now I use EPOS to cross reference Xero; • Depreciation and irrecoverable VAT is forward planned, so each monthly report provides a fully accurate picture of the business. In other words, we don’t have to wait to the end of the financial quarter to see VAT and depreciation impact on the bottom line; • I can see all the figures for Ipswich Sports Club and the performance of all our sections at any time, and most importantly at month end and year-on- year comparisons. Which means I have an accurate combined trading position; • The budget process is massively improved after year one, as we now have all the data to work from. I can now sit down with all section heads for budgeting and can also make quick decisions on investment as we can see what we can afford.
Would you recommend moving to a cloud based solution? Over the past year we have seen significant improvements in our revenue from sports bookings, catering and club membership. I believe this has been achieved because, thanks to SBLive, we now have accountability to the £1. As I now have the most current numbers I can manage the club more efficiently and deal with poor performing areas, but also, most importantly, I can now see where our success comes from and drive that too. Using SBLive has also meant we have stopped using guess work and generalised opinions on how the club is doing. If you are dealing with the facts and the numbers then there’s no room for error. So, for example, if one month our membership has gone down, we can look into what has happened and respond quickly. Finally I’d say that if your business is similar to ours (with lots of different revenue streams) then I dare say you will have quite a volume of codes to input, especially at the set up – but if you do invest with SBLive then stick with it because it really will pay off.” Andy Yorke is the general manager at Ipswich Sports Club www.ipswichsportsclub.co.uk If you are considering moving to the Cloud and want to improve your management information you can contact one of the team at at info@ sblive.co.uk tel 0333 234 7411 or see www.sblive.co.uk
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