Learning Partners Academy Trust
Patrick Overy, chief financial officer at Learning Partners Academy Trust, a collaborative Multi-Academy Trust (MAT) comprising 12 schools, believes in taking a clear and simple approach to financial management. Here, Patrick explores how Access Education's finance software for MATs and budgeting software for MATs have helped him achieve his aims.
- Access Education Budgets
- Access Education Finance
Choosing seamlessly integrated Finance & Budgeting software
Access Education's school finance software was implemented across the trust back in September 2018, allowing our finance teams to work coherently and giving us the ability to report clearly and consistently. Following this successful implementation, we chose to add Access Budgeting in 2019, realising that the two integrated systems would increase efficiency across the trust.
Read more about how Access Education can help your school with our school management software.
Since implementing the software, we have received feedback from SBMs that the Access system is far more user friendly and much easier for staff to get to grips with.
Maintaining consistency whilst merging your Trust
We agreed to merge with another local trust in 2021 and recognised the benefits of bringing all the schools onto the same finance system from day one.
We considered the systems used by each Trust, and while both Trusts were happy with their current systems, we identified that our previous provider encouraged an unnecessarily complicated approach to certain tasks, so we made the decision to go with the Access Education software. My aim during this process was to ensure we reduced our back-office burdens, and since implementing the software, we have received feedback from SBMs that the Access system is far more user friendly and much easier for staff to get to grips with.
Now, if we have a new starter, it takes a matter of hours to get them set-up and trained to use the system and they can pick-up the navigation really quickly. Currently, it’s only the finance teams that are using the system, but over time I’m keen to get all budget holders involved, as I believe this will save a significant amount of processing time across our schools.
Read more about Access Education Finance and Budgeting for Multi-Academy Trusts
How the Access Education software has helped
The Access software has enabled us to progress as a merged organisation and through effective financial management, we can better support learning. With a clear understanding of where money is being spent, resource allocation becomes easier and metrics become more accurate.
Schools often feel they need to make financial savings during the year due to budget constraints then end up finding a surplus at the end of the financial year that could have been spent on educational provision. This has previously been a big challenge for us, but by now having a finance system in place, which is easy to understand with robust reporting processes, we can prevent this from happening and ensure schools are aware of the resources available to them
