Adelaide-based education.au limited is a non-profit organisation owned by the Australian government which builds and manages national education and training networks for schools, vocational education, and universities.

As part of an operational review, the agency needed software to support and update its financial management and contractual practices. The organisation had previously been using CBA financials and a number of disparate database systems for tracking the various organisations that it works with.

Jason Haseldine, general manager at education.au, says the move from CBA to Greentree (who were recently recognised as one of 25 global rising stars by MIS magazine) would have a beneficial impact on the company and the team.

"It was a natural step to replace CBA with Greentree and also a very positive move in terms of enhanced technology, using a Windows-based system, and benefiting from continued support from the Greentree Business Partner."

In choosing to move to Greentree the agency was able to bring its complex organisational data into one fully integrated business solution. Implemented and supported by the Greentree Business Partner, the team of eight users at education.au are using the core financials and Greentree CRM – Contacts and Relationships module.

"CBA worked well for us, but we were keen to reduce the use of multiple systems, reduce the month end work rate and improve our overall productivity with the Windows familiarity," says Haseldine. "Greentree addressed our business requirements."

Greentree has a powerful financial reporting facility designed to harness the power of Microsoft Excel, which gives education.au users complete control over how reports are formatted and presented. Excel integration has been of great value to the agency, giving more visibility of its business and Haseldine says he has been able to show ‘real-time’ financial position of education.au limited to senior management.

"Reporting in Greentree is so easy and fast, and far less time consuming than CBA," he says. "I often open Excel and produce ‘live’ reports on the fly to the senior management team in boardroom meetings, it’s that easy."

The Microsoft Excel add-in allows users to securely connect directly to the General Ledger and extract financial information for any period or year.

"We want to do more with the reporting facility, such as invoicing. The functions are simple to use and offer so many new possibilities."

The agency has also benefited from smoother and quicker month-end and year-end processing. All transactions entered into Greentree are date stamped with the relevant period and year, so there is no need to perform a formal period-end aging. When users need to move into the next accounting period, they simply change the current period – a process that takes just seconds.

"We are spoilt with Greentree for month end reports," says Haseldine. "There is no need to back up data or cross fingers, we simply right click and the reports are there. Greentree has saved us time processing the month end. I’d say about half a day a month can now be productively spent on other tasks."

Comparing the advantages of Greentree over CBA, Haseldine highlights data entry and batch entry as key areas of improvement. Moving to Greentree has meant new functions to learn, including advanced functionality on existing processes.

"Choosing not to use the batch system has enabled us to suit Greentree to our practices, reduce keystrokes and so save time. Also, Greentree has allowed custom screens for data entry, which is easier and simpler for the team. Being able to open multiple windows is also invaluable."

The CRM Contacts and Relationships module provides a central hub for education.au to store all contact and contractual information, removing the need for its myriad of Access databases. The CRM system has made it easy to ensure there is one single corporate version of contact details and the agency is benefiting from the ease with which lists can be created for various purposes such as committees, stakeholders and invitations through to Christmas card lists.

"We have consolidated all our systems," says Haseldine. "We scan and attach all our contracts, including correspondence, to this module, using ‘trees’ to categorise them. CRM is an easy, comprehensive module and offers us potential to do so much more."

For more information

www.greentree.com/customers/profiles/education.cfm