If there was ever an organisation that embodied the saying, 'Alone we can do so little, together we do so much,' it is Beaucare.
Established in the late 1980s, the community-based, not-for-profit organisation offers a vast range of services that helps strengthen communities and provides opportunities for people to maximise their quality of life.
Over time, Beaucare has expanded in almost every way possible: growing rural communities means more people who need support, alongside ever-evolving demands and changing funding models. With MYOB Advanced Business and Advanced Payroll, the organisation can help more people than ever before.
Huge growth over the past decade
When Beaucare first started, its focus was mainly on community support and aged care services. Today, the organisation’s list of support services is extensive: disability, in-home and family day-care and childcare, counselling, youth development, family and domestic violence, homelessness, as well as aged care and community support.
Finance officer Rebecca Seager has been with the organisation for 13 years, and in that relatively short time, she can’t believe its level of growth.
“When I first started, we provided a wide range of services. We have now expanded to include additional services, as well as accommodating the size and the volume now coming through the door.”
Workflow inefficiencies costing time and effort
Coupled with growing populations and ever-increasing demand, Beaucare has multiple funding streams – government contracts, one-off grants, client income fee for service – which means they’re working with high volumes of data and transactions.
For many years, Beaucare had been using MYOB AccountRight Premier, and the system had worked well for the organisation. But as time moved on, it required a lot of manual workarounds.
A good example is management reporting. The finance team had to separate and extrapolate data files, then using an add-on program, pull that data across into their P&Ls. This process took hours, meaning they couldn’t report in real-time.
“If it was urgent, we would have pretty much all hands on deck to get it,” Rebecca explains.
The organisation not only needed a system that would allow it to consolidate reports in minutes but also quickly flick between granular and high-level reporting.
MYOB Advanced platform functionality “definitely beat the others”
When considering their options, Rebecca says the most important thing was finding a solution that could do everything they needed.
“It was about being able to capture information, provide reporting, and also track and manage workflows to create efficiencies.”
"Somebody once said to me, ‘When you’re implementing a new system, it’ll do 80% of what you want, and you’ll have to adapt the other 20%.’ We got a lot more than that 80% with MYOB Advanced Business – it just ticked so many boxes."
- Rebecca Seager Finance Officer, Beaucare
Quicker financial processing, better client service
Almost immediately, the Beaucare team saw increased efficiencies, particularly with base-level financial processing.
Previously, the accounts team would have to split client invoices across different programs, which required lots of double-handling and multiple data files. On the client’s side, they’d receive separate invoices for different service types.
“Straight away, MYOB Advanced Business improved things for our clients – now they only get one invoice. There are time-saving efficiencies there for staff, but more importantly, it’s a much more streamlined and clean experience for clients,” Rebecca says.
The flow-on effect of those efficiencies means Beaucare can grow without putting any additional and unnecessary pressure on its team.
“For the finance team, we now have visibility of the true workload. The operational services team, which is always busy, now have the capacity to do more.”
Monthly reconciliation and reporting reduced by 60%
Rebecca says that the most significant time-saver for her role has been monthly reconciliation and reporting. What used to take a day and a half (including a full eight hours of pulling data) now takes four hours.
"There's none of that manual adding-on, extrapolating into Excel and running formulas. The data comes straight from the system."
The quality of the data has also improved. "Provided what's put in is accurate, what comes out is accurate – there's less room for human error."
For Rebecca, this means she can spend more time on strategic analysis, something that the organisation has reflected in her job description.
"MYOB Advanced Business made it easier for me to do those deeper dives into the data because it's there at my fingertips. Because of that, my role is now much more strategic, and for an ever-changing organisation like Beaucare, there’s absolutely a need for that which I can now fill."
Streamlined payroll for staff and business
Beaucare was keen to consolidate its payroll, so it also implemented MYOB Advanced Payroll.
Overall, it’s made processing payroll more efficient by eliminating manual processes and is “much more professional and cleaner from our staff’s point of view,” Rebecca says.
Now, when workers get their payslips, rather than hours broken down by program, they get total hours worked and pay received – “That’s what staff members really want to know.”
System set to scale
Admittedly, the organisation isn’t using the system to its full capacity, but that’s intentional, Rebecca says. Any system implemented needs to last, rather than be a band-aid solution.
“We wanted a solution that would grow with our business, that had more capacity we didn’t necessarily need yet, but is there when we do.”
On reflection, Rebecca believes the organisation would not have been able to achieve the same level of efficiency had they not rolled out MYOB Advanced Business and MYOB Advanced Payroll.
"I recommend the MYOB Advanced platform to any organisation that is growing, changing and has diversity within it. In many instances, we’ve been able to make up time anywhere from 25-75%."
Improvements: upgrading to MYOB Advanced Business
Consolidation allows organisation to grow without putting additional pressure on busy teams.
Custom reporting provides high-level, detailed real-time insights at the click of a button.
Automated processes reduce admin workload by up to 75%, greatly increasing efficiency of finance and operational teams.
End-of-month reconciliation and reporting take 60% less time.
Quick financial processing eliminates double-handling and provides a better client experience.
Streamlined payroll provides additional efficiencies.
Flexibility: room to grow and add more modules as needed.
