The Background
Welbourne Primary is a community school in Tottenham, north London. It’s a 3 form entry school, with just over 600 pupils. The school serves a diverse and transient local population, approximately 40% of the school’s pupils are eligible for free school meals.
RM Finance was chosen as the school’s finance system more than 10 years ago, and is now used to manage the £4m annual budget. Every month the school processes £275,000 of transactions, the majority of which is staff wages. RM Finance is also used to manage income, for example cash and online payments from parents, and other payments for example from the local borough council and childcare vouchers. All invoices are processed through RM Finance and the petty cash is also managed using the system.
The Solution
The school have migrated through a number of iterations of the RM Finance system, and now work with the latest cloud-based online version. The initial migration to RM Finance, and subsequent migrations through different system versions, have always run smoothly and caused no problems.
The school finances are reviewed monthly by Anita Keogh, School Business Manager, and the Head Teacher. They review spend against budget, identifying any overspend. The school governors also review the school finances monthly.
"RM Finance gives me flexibility in how we view the analysis of our spending. The system is user friendly, and I can usually work out how to do everything I need pretty easily."
Anita Keogh, School Business Manager
As budgets become increasingly tight RM Finance offers the school different ways of managing their money, for example express ordering and pre-ordering so anticipated (but not yet committed) spend can be reflected in budget analysis and forecasting.
The Benefits
Despite having been through different iterations of the system, only minimal training has been required.
"RM Finance does what it says on the tin – I really like its simplicity, and it’s user friendly. It doesn’t make life overly complicated and is a really cost effective system offering good value for money."
Anita Keogh, School Business Manager
Anita has not had much need to call the support desk but when required she has found the experience a good one. The RM Education product manager has also been actively involved in supporting the school and is able to help resolve any problems quickly and easily.
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