Using its strong balance sheet and financial performance to build affordable homes and local communities, HousingFirst plans to add another 769 properties in the next few years. However, HousingFirst recognised during 2019 that its existing accounting software, Reckon, was unable to deliver the level of performance or reporting that the organisation needed to manage its diverse and growing property portfolio. HousingFirst Ltd Finance Manager, Liat Lahav, said the organisation was on a big growth trajectory. “We have a lot of plans in the pipeline for buildings that we’re developing with other developers,” she said.

“With such a large property portfolio and so much going on, Reckon was a bit rudimentary for what we required now and in future, especially as we will increase our properties by more than 50 per cent in the next two to three years.

“There was too much flexibility in the old system, because individual users could access the whole system rather than just their own area of responsibility.

“Basically, it was small business software that was not suitable for an organisation our size that has such broad responsibilities, especially as we used that software for our payroll as well.”

After surveying the market for alternative accounting solutions, HousingFirst identified Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, offered by Melbourne-based business solutions specialist Evolution Business Systems (EBS) as the system best suited to its current and future needs.

Ms Lahav said that despite its intense implementation schedule, HousingFirst’s  five-person finance team was pleased with the result. “I think they’re definitely happier with the new software,” she said.

“For example, with the flexibility of Jet Reporting provides a much more streamlined process which means considerably less pressure during the end-of-month reporting process. 

“Previously it would take an entire day just to do the reconciliation of our income. We’ve now got what we wanted: It’s a system that’s smarter so we don’t have to work harder and can focus our energy on things that make a difference.”

Ms Lahav said HousingFirst’s payroll officer had found the fortnightly payroll process was a much smoother experience with Payroll Easy compared to the former system. “It’s nowhere near as labour-intensive as it was when working with manual timesheets and Reckon,” she said.

“We’re still going through the process of working on how to reduce the manual demands: Our desire is to have as little human intervention in the compiling of the data as possible. Up till now, with the preparation of month end reports and the KPIs, there have been so many manual steps required and formulas that needed to be constantly checked.

“What I’m working on now is to use Jet Reports to extract the data and then build formulas off that data extraction so that it updates automatically as the profit and loss reports update. I think that will continue to improve the presentation quality of the results as well as the integrity of the data without us having to check formulas etc.

“But, already, the time it takes us to do things now is obviously greatly reduced – and it will keep getting better as we learn more about how to best use Business Central.”