Keystone Development Trust Places Order For Exchequer from IRIS Enterprise Software

Business and accounting software will help charity organisation to meet SORP standards and improve all areas of financial management

Keystone Development Trust, a registered charity established to aid the regeneration of Thetford and surrounding areas in Norfolk and Suffolk, has placed an order with IRIS Enterprise Software for its business and accounting software, Exchequer. The new system will significantly improve the speed and quality of management reporting information within the organisation, helping to ensure that it is compliant with the latest SORP reporting standards (Statement of Recommended Practice for Accounting by Charities).

Based in Thetford, Norfolk, Keystone is the largest development trust in the Eastern region and one of the biggest development trusts in England. Supported by European and SRB funding, the charity aims to improve the quality of life and opportunities for people who live, study and work in the Keystone area through sustainable, community led regeneration.

One of the major benefits of Exchequer is the software's ability to provide transparency of information to stakeholders and key partners, in order to provide them with complete visibility of how and where money is being spent by Keystone.

Kay Wilkinson, Business Manager - Finance at Keystone Development Trust, says, "It is important that we can provide accountability to stakeholders and partners to clearly demonstrate how funds are being allocated against specific projects. The reporting functionality within Exchequer makes this a straight-forward process and ensures that we can easily keep them informed of project spend at all times."

Having used Exchequer in a previous company, Wilkinson opted to implement the system within the Trust's finance department, in order to provide a more flexible, future-proof financial infrastructure to support the ongoing activities of the charity. Exchequer replaces Access Accounts which proved too narrow in scope to satisfy the Trust's requirements.

She comments, "Our previous accounting system was too restrictive and was unable to cope with our financial management requirements. The Trust has a number of departmental managers who all need financial information presented and analysed in different ways. The flexibility and design of Exchequer ensures that the software can handle this diversity easily, providing managers with 'real-time' reporting information as they need it."

She continues, 'The most significant improvement over the old system has been the ability to amend and check transactions prior to posting. However, other clear benefits have been the ability to establish and manage cost codes independently of one another and the ability to drill-down behind figures to provide greater insight into the way the Trust's money is being spent."