British Institute of Innkeeping Case Study | Gravity Software

The challenge: The difficulty of consolidated accounting

The challenge: The difficulty of consolidated accounting

More than 10,000 business owners in the United Kingdom trust The British Institute of Innkeeping (BII) for everything from licensing and legal advice to marketing tips and guidelines for re-evaluating their rates.

After using the same ERP system over 25 years and preparing consolidated group accounts in Excel with close to 50 tabs, the BII Head of Finance decided to look for a new solution. It was critical for them to choose a cloud-based solution and one that would output consolidated accounts directly from the system and work more efficiently.

The BII finance team also needed to log in and out of their previous accounting software, Sage 50cloud, whenever there was a need to process in a different entity or to view something in a different entity.

As organized as her team was, the process was time-consuming and not as secure as she would like it to be, BII Head of Finance Shila Singh said.

The organization needed to add efficiency through the new system and needed a better way to manage approvals for purchase orders.

The search for a true cloud-based accounting solution

The search for a true cloud-based accounting solution

The BII was already using cloud-based software for most other applications, and it was important to have something that was more modern, agile, and accessible anywhere. Security was also a key consideration.

When the BII initially purchased Sage 50cloud, it was installed on their server, so employees had to be in the office or using a virtual private network (VPN) to access it remotely, which wasn’t always reliable.

After researching ERPs for small to mid-sized companies, she found two top contenders: Xero and Gravity Software.

She ultimately chose Gravity because it gave her the flexibility to use different accounting and reporting dimensions and the ability for other users to approve purchase orders by email, without being logged into the system.

“You can slice and dice your accounting slightly differently, whereas there was not quite as much flexibility that we saw in Xero,” she said. “And for purchase orders, you couldn’t receipt the purchase order as delivered remotely. That would have defeated the objective for us, because individuals would have to log in to the system to receipt, and I wanted it to be remote and mobile friendly.

The BII began working with an implementation partner to make the switch to Gravity in January, and simultaneously worked with Gravity to build personalized workflows that would automate purchase orders through Microsoft Power Automate. The team went live with the software six months later.

The result: Faster financial reporting and a more efficient team

The result: Faster financial reporting and a more efficient team

Singh said she and her small team felt the impact of using Gravity immediately after implementation.

“It’s changed our reporting timetable massively,” she said. “We can spin out (consolidated reports) very quickly. You also removed working time from not having to log in and out of entities. With Gravity, you just select the entity you want to look at and carry on working. If you’re doing customer invoicing, it’s seamless.”

Managing approvals for purchase orders used to be a largely manual process that involved keeping track of a long chain of emails between department leaders, executive team members, board members and trustees. Now the BII uses automated workflows that send expenses over a certain amount to the appropriate people for approval. Those users can simply approve or reject an expense via email, and their response is recorded as a full audit trail within the software.

“The purchase order system allowed for a reduction in manual input time, and accrued cost in the correct month regardless of whether an invoice was received or not,” Singh said. “We were able to reduce our month-end cycle and can easily produce accounts by Day 5 or earlier, and we have confidence in the numbers.”

About the British Institute of Innkeeping

About the British Institute of Innkeeping

The mission of The British Institute of Innkeeping is to support, inspire, celebrate and promote the diversity of talented individuals working in the licensed trade. The nonprofit maintains a national network of more than 10,000 members, who are tenants, lessees, and free-traders running their own businesses.

Industry: Nonprofit

Number of Gravity Users: 7

Number of Entities: 4

Previous Accounting Solution: Sage 50cloud

Key results:

1

Significant time savings

The BII now benefits from faster month-end closes with greater confidence in the numbers.

2

Automated purchase orders

Gravity's personalized workflows automated purchase orders through Microsoft Power Automate, making the process seamless.

3

Achieved greater flexibility

By implementing a true cloud accounting solution, the BII no longer has to worry about manual financial consolidations and can prioritize growing the business.

4

Improved financial controls

Automated approval workflows provide greater accountability, maintain a complete audit trail and strengthen financial controls across the organization.

The Head of Finance's perspective: Reporting is a breeze thanks to Gravity

The Head of Finance's perspective: Reporting is a breeze thanks to Gravity

Shila Singh, Head of Finance, British Institute of Innkeeping

As Head of Finance for a growing nonprofit, Shila Singh needed more than Sage 50cloud could offer without upgrading to an expensive, complex enterprise application. Gravity Software's multi-entity accounting solution was the perfect fit, and now tedious financial reporting is a thing of the past.

“It’s changed our reporting timetable massively. We can spin out (consolidated reports) very quickly without having to log out and log back into a different entity every time.”

Shila Singh, Head of Finance, British Institute of Innkeeping

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More resources for nonprofit accounting and multi-entity financial management

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