Purchasing & Accounts Payable Management Software for Education
- Company Overview
Prior to adopting PLANERGY, the Trust used Civica Financials, a financially prohibitive user structure that limited BHET to what they could achieve, and lacked the flexibility and automation that BPET needed to coincide with the Trust’s growth plans.
LicencesIn 2023, BPET decided to implement PLANERGY, a Spend Management platform that has seamless bi-directional integration with Xero, BPET’s new financial software, to streamline Purchasing, Invoice Processing, and Budget Management.
This case study explores how PLANERGY transformed BPET’s financial operations, providing key benefits such as enhanced efficiency, cost savings, and improved transparency.
- Why PLANERGY
After evaluating multiple options, BPET chose PLANERGY for several reasons:
- Unlimited User Licenses – PLANERGY allows BPET to give access to unlimited relevant stakeholders across the Trust, including Teachers, Budget Holders, Head Teachers, and finance team members, without worrying about
license limits. - Seamless bi-directional Integration with Xero – PLANERGY integrated easily with Xero, allowing BPET to maintain their existing finance team structure while extending purchase and approval capabilities to other staff.
- Automated Invoice Scanning – The system automatically scan matches and processes invoices, eliminating manual allocation and reducing the need for additional staff.
- Unrivalled Reporting Analysis and Visibility – PLANERGY provides centralized, school level, cost centre/departmental level dashboards that gives users the ability to track purchase orders and understand what budget is available committed and remaining in real-time.
Key Challenges
- Limited User Access - Civica had a strict licensing structure, allowing only a fixed number of users. This forced BPET to manage users manually, adding or removing them depending on needs. Budget Tracking Difficulties The Trust Key stakeholders across the Trust struggled to identify and track their budgets and purchase orders (POs), resulting in overspend, bottlenecks and confusion.
- Lack of Automation - Invoice processing in Civica required manual intervention, with no automatic invoice scanning which led to inefficiencies and increased administrative burdens.
- Budget Tracking Difficulties - The Trust Key stakeholders across the Trust struggled to identify and track their budgets and purchase orders (POs), resulting in overspend, bottlenecks and confusion.
- Expensive Per-Transaction Fees - Civica’s pricing structure included fees for each transaction processed, which added substantial costs, especially when dealing with small, frequent invoices (e.g., from Amazon).
Key Benefits
- Increased Efficiency - BPET saw a dramatic improvement in efficiency. Before PLANERGY, the Trust processed about 100 invoices per week. With PLANERGY they can now handle 600 invoices per week with the same staff, a significant increase in productivity. The automation features—such as automatic invoice matching and easy requisition approvals—were key to this improvement.
- Cost Savings - The move to PLANERGY resulted in notable cost reductions. Civica’s per-transaction fees, which applied even to small invoices, were eliminated. Additionally, PLANERGY’s implementation cost was lower than Civica’s, especially when BPET onboarded new schools. Instead of creating new setups from scratch, With PLANERGY you can set up a new school in a few minute, this would previously have taken 1-2 weeks.
- Scalability - As BPET grew from 7 to 12 schools, PLANERGY’s scalability became crucial. The platform allowed BPET to onboard new schools quickly without requiring external help, saving time and resources. The system’s unlimited user capability also meant that any number of stakeholders could access the platform as needed.
- Enhanced Control and Compliance - BPET’s finance team gained more control over spending and compliance with PLANERGY’s real-time budget tracking and PO approval workflows. Teachers & budget holders benefited from being able to see very clearly how much budget remained and what had already been committed, improving financial discipline across the Trust.
- Improved User Experience and Adoption - One of BPET’s primary goals was to find a system that staff could adopt quickly without extensive training. PLANERGY met this goal by providing an intuitive interface that staff members could navigate easily. BPET’s Finance team, Budget Holders, and Head Teachers were able to start using the system with minimal instruction, which significantly reduced the friction often associated with implementing new software.
- Customizable and Responsive Support - The BPET finance team appreciated the regular meetings with PLANERGY’s support team, who provided ongoing updates and customised solutions to address the Trust’s specific needs. Whether it was improving PO tracking or integrating new features, the partnership with PLANERGY was instrumental in continuously refining the system’s use at BPET.
The Story
Customer
Independent school group, in multiple locations
Key client
Finance Manager
Industry
Education
Company Size
200 employees
Before PLANERGY
Documentation of spending was a main problem for this school group. No one seemed to know how much money was being spent throughout the organization, or what exactly was being purchased. Any existing records were kept by individual departments in various manual systems, such as Excel, or even just plain old paper files. They needed a better school budgeting system
In many cases, teachers and secretaries were authorized to make purchases, but because there was no education spending software in place, there was little oversight into what they were buying or how much the supplies cost, especially at the upper administrative levels. Additionally, nearly every person at the organization saw purchasing as a burden. Tracking down documentation for a purchase once the bill showed up was a headache, as was getting pen-and-paper sign off from the right authority when a larger purchase needed to be made.
Often, employees relied on vendors’ records to track orders and invoices. And, since there was no consistent purchasing data — not to mention no centralized spending management system—budgeting usually happened after the fact when an invoice showed up in the accounting department’s inbox. The lack of a paper trail often led people in the accounting department to resort to cutting corners when it came to bookkeeping.
School leaders had two goals in mind: first, they wanted an education spending software that gave them the ability to see current information about who was spending what. Even in circumstances where no budget restriction existed, they simply wanted accurate and up-to-date details about purchases across the organization. Second, they wanted a faster way to approve purchases when necessary.
After PLANERGY
Today, certain administrators have full visibility into what front-line employees buy without having to wrest control of the process. Within seconds of pulling up a simple report, they see school purchasing histories across the board, at the department level, or even at the individual level. They can then compare these details to set budgets and make changes as needed.
Individual department leaders have access to view their own department budget and spending data, but not that of others. Armed with this information, they make smart decisions about what books, school supplies, or classroom furniture they should buy.
When someone is making a large purchase that requires sign-off from someone higher up the ladder, PLANERGY’s approvals feature saves time for everyone involved. With the simple click of a mouse, a request is sent via email to the appropriate person, who, in turn, approves or rejects the request just as easily. Additionally, PLANERGY centralizes education purchasing information for the four physically-separated schools, so there are no inconveniences when a person needs permission from someone at a different location.
The accounting department’s workflows have improved dramatically. With access to view what orders have been placed, as well as the status of those orders, the accounts payable team no longer must guess if something has yet been paid or which GL code to assign a purchase. Three-way matching is accurate and effective, as every invoice is compared with the original order and delivery to ensure precision in payment. In addition, PLANERGY integrates with the organization’s SAGE 200 software, so accounting data is always exact, and no one wastes time manually entering information into two education management systems.
When PLANERGY was implemented, employees were happy to have the new tool available to them as it made their day-to-day work easier and faster. The schools started with 50 PLANERGY licenses, and later expanded to 100 because of how well it worked as an education purchasing management system for their people.
Testimonials
It’s made our approval process quicker and less cumbersome, and it’s taken away people’s excuses for not following policies and procedures.
Brian Hall
Business Manager
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