An ERP Success Story

Overview

Canuck Place Children's Hospice is renowned for its leading-edge health care. They take health care very seriously and believe they should do everything in their power to maintain their edge. That extends to their information technologies and financial reporting systems in addition to their best medical practices. With the latest version of Sage 300, they are able to maintain their system to ensure the highest levels of financial responsibility, transparency, and accountability. 

Key Outcomes

• Upgrade of Sage 300 ERP
• More detailed and improved accountability
• Streamlined and more efficient business functions 
• Sage's Flexibility Reporting Tool and Crystal Reports

Challenge

As a nonprofit society, funding for services comes from personal and corporate donations and other charitable organizations and government. As a result, financial reporting plays a significant role in governance and financial accountability.

"The great thing about Sage is that it was completely flexible and could accommodate our framework which allows us to report performance against strategy. As anyone in finance knows, it is not easy to match spending with strategic and operational goals using a standard accounting approach." - Russell Cullingworth, Director of Finance

Solution

Canuck Place has worked with Sage Software Business Partner, BAASS Business Solutions for over 10 years. When the new upgrade was released for Sage 300, BAASS recommended that Canuck Place take advantage of its new features. BAASS consultants performed the upgrade - including a test upgrade, live conversion, and installation in just two days. 

Outcome

The new features in Sage 300 have improved the speed and efficiency of some functions and the ability to provide financial information for internal guidance. "The Audit Committee and Board are highly committed to making sure that money raised is spent wisely, and our financial reporting system helps us to present them with appropriate and relevant information regarding the financial performance of the organization every month," said Cullingworth. 

"This system provides accuracy and transparency and an ability to monitor and report budget variances at any level of the organization." - Russell Cullingworth, Director of Finance

On the efficiency side, the ability for multiple users to enter accounts payable information simultaneously improves Canuck Place's ability to meet payment schedules: "it used to be that only one person could work at a time. Now we put as many people on as we need and are longer restricted".  The other feature that has helped them facilitate payables management is the separation of document date from posting date, which allows them to post in a month different from the document date. With this, they can pay vendors based on the due date and maintain the accuracy of ageing Accounts Payables. 

"BAASS did a great job showing us new features in Sage, and even some older features that we weren't using. The partnership we have with them helps us to maximize the effectiveness of Sage 300 - a powerful, sophisticated tool, both financially and managerially. I really look forward to exploring omre of the new features in Sage 300 together with them." - Russell Cullingworth, Director of Finance

When dealing with public money, any deviation from the norm is worthy of investigation, and the flexible reporting tool in Sage allows Canuck place to identify variances. While upgrading, BAASS added Crystal Reports into the Sage 300 interface, allowing staff to pull up reports directly in Sage using an intuitive query builder.