Riverside Housing is a not-for-profit association, providing subsidised accommodation to those who can’t afford to pay the market rate. Over the 110 years it’s been in existence it has merged with other associations and today owns and manages 57,000 homes across the UK. Outside its core business, the association provides support for the homeless, victims of domestic abuse, ex-armed forces and many more.

The challenge:

The 70-person Finance department of motivated and efficient professionals were spending far too much time on manual processes. The new Interim CFO, Rosemary Farrar, realised that her team were having to pull data out of the system, manipulate it in spreadsheets and re-upload. The team were using the latest version of Sun Financials, and therefore the issue wasn’t the system itself but the way it was being used.

The solution:

They needed an interim Systems Accountant for a complete audit and mapping of the system usage to understand why the Finance department wasn’t getting the best use out of it.

Riverside initially approached recruiters locally, but the skillset of the candidates didn’t meet their requirements. The Interim CFO then approached SA, having worked with them in a previous role. SystemsAccountants listened to the requirements and produced a list of candidates, all of whom had the background in accounting and Sun Financials they were after as well as the cultural fit for the organisation.

The outcome:

• A credible Systems Accountant working as part of the permanent team in a sensitive and timely manner
• Complete review of the data structure including the Chart of Accounts
• Corrected £1million in the accrual number

Next Steps

• Reduce processing time of Purchase Orders
• Remove manual processes
• Simplify reporting
• Expand the use of their Business Intelligence
• Interface other business systems with Sun in a more automated way