Established in 1872, Echoes of Service is committed to serving Christian missionaries around the world.  The Charity is based in Bath and supports missionaries through financial support and information services.

 

In January 2005, Echoes rolled out a 6-user version of Exchequer from IRIS Enterprise Software.  The new software replaced a bespoke financial management system installed in 1984 that was written specifically for the charity. 

 

Ian Burness of Echoes comments, "Despite our original system being highly effective, we began to experience some issues with it when swapping from DOS to Windows around the millennium.  To rectify these issues would have resulted in serious cost implications and we were not convinced by the long term viability of the company developing the product."

 

Echoes chose to use a third party Project Manager to assess the financial management packages available on the market.  The company short-listed Sage, Exchequer and Access Accounts, with Echoes subsequently selecting Exchequer.  Burness continues, "We felt that Access was a larger and more expensive system than we required.  We were not overly impressed with Sage and questioned whether it could be tailored to suit our needs.  IRIS Enterprise Software was the right product for us, as it had experience of working within the charity sector and a strong market reputation.  We felt that Exchequer was a cost effective product that we could adapt to suit our specific accounting requirements."

 

Exchequer is used on a daily basis at Echoes to manage the regular donations that come in via cheque or bank transfer.  Beneficiaries are given money each month based on individual donations and an internal allocation, which is applied using a formula.  This allocation is calculated in Excel, which means that Echoes make extensive use of the OLE functionality of Exchequer.  This technology is primarily used to link Microsoft Excel dynamically to the rich financial management data held within Exchequer.

 

As a charity, Echoes has to produce detailed monthly reports both for in-house purposes and the auditors.  "The Report Writer functionality of Exchequer is particularly useful to us, especially as you can change and design your own forms," reflects Burness.  "All the information we need for our financial reporting is available at the touch of a button and we can utilise it in any number of documents."

 

The Report Writer provides an easy-to-use, fast and flexible tool for creating analysis reports.  The module allows any number of reports to be designed, which can be grouped by department, type of report or individual.  The engine behind the report writer is accessing the database directly, which results in an unrivalled speed of report extraction.

 

Due to the nature of its business, Exchequer has required tailoring to deliver the exact requirements specified by Echoes.  However, Burness feels that the additional training and support received has meant that they have the right product for their needs that is flexible enough to suit the complex needs of an organisation in the charity sector.

 

Ian concludes, "It was very important for us to end up with a system that streamlined our accounting processes as much as possible.  I definitely feel we picked the right solution and have every confidence that it will deliver what we need moving forward."