Butterfly Conservation

Butterfly Conservation is far less delicate and ornamental than its name implies. A thriving wildlife charity with over 11,500 members, its aim is to protect the UK's butterflies and moths and their habitats using active conservation techniques.

A swelling membership base and an ambitious regional development programme have contributed to the recent growth in operations of the charity. This has been driven using the successful implementation of new systems, spearheaded by an accounting solution from IRIS Enterprise Software. Established in 1968, Butterfly Conservation is privately funded by membership subscriptions and donations, including several corporate sponsors, grants and Trusts.  It has a turnover of £1.25 million per year.  Its growth programme has been steady, but a turning point was reached in 2000.

The charity decided to consolidate its assets and relocate staff and resources from the Essex head office to the conservation officers' base in Lulworth, Dorset. It was immediately clear that IT systems would have to be upgraded to cope with the growth in activity in Dorset, whilst not compromising any of the charity's objectives or membership demands.

 

The new head office in Lulworth had to be able to work in tandem, and communicate with the network of regional offices, which rely on the main team for direction and support. The need for an accounting system overhaul was increased by the regional offices in Belfast, Stirling, Swansea, Newmarket and Durham, which need to have a view of budgets, invoicing and input into management reports.

At the time of the office consolidation, Butterfly Conservation was using an outdated Sage accounting system. Georgie Laing, accounts officer for the charity, explains the problems: "The Sage system we inherited at the Dorset headquarters was cumbersome, slow, and simply not up to the job of helping Butterfly Conservation evolve through these changes. It couldn't produce the management reports we required, raise invoices, or print cheques.  We needed something simpler and more robust to cope with our changing requirements."

After narrowing the choice down to Exchequer from IRIS Enterprise Software and Access, the team went through a rigorous decision-making process.   After seeing a demo of both products, visiting current users for a site inspection of the solution working in-house, and requesting further customer references, they chose to deploy Exchequer's accounting solution.

"Exchequer was able to offer us the strength and flexibility we really needed to move our accounting procedures into the twenty-first century," continued Georgie Laing. "We chose it over Access for several main reasons. It had the capability to link with Excel, which was crucial for our team. It also had the capacity to drill-down into the accounts processes, which was vital."

Report Writer OLE

"Our budget was £10K, which IRIS Enterprise Software was able to accommodate. Once we had chosen the software, we went straight to implementation and integration, which took around two months. Our biggest challenge was the learning curve the new system required. Understanding and training were key to being able to use the software successfully, as we had been using a far less capable system before.

"As a result of deploying Exchequer, the Butterfly Conservation finance team is able to support its growth programme, as well as owning basic accounting functions such as cheque-printing and invoicing. One of the best improvements has been in our management reports. They are so much simpler to produce and can actually be done in real time. With our previous Sage system, you could only print a trial balance and copy it manually, which took a day," Georgie Laing continued. "Using Exchequer, we have seen a return on our investment in time saved alone. The finance team is an integral part of Butterfly Conservation, and we feel like we've built solid foundations for the charity by implementing a robust accounting system."

Butterfly Conservation continues to go from strength to strength, backed by Exchequer. It plans to open its first nature reserve in Scotland in the next twelve months, and is working on acquiring a major landscape nature reserve shortly. It also continues to work on its programme of National moth recording, using staff and volunteers. The charity's progress is a great testament to the idea that streamlined, flexible IT solutions are behind successful accounting practices.