Welcome to the second product blog for Bromcom’s Finance module and welcome to 2019. I hope you enjoyed your time-off with family and friends and wish you a successful year. 2019 is a milestone in the development of Bromcom Finance as it goes live and starts to really show its stuff! With the year just started, we are already set to have a 380% increase in the predicted number of schools going live with Finance in the first wave, and this number may well increase further. The early adopters are all LA maintained schools but during the year, we intend to extend Finance to meet the additional needs of academies and MATs.
What has happened?
So, what has happened since my previous blog? Many specifications have been written, new developments completed and testing carried out. This continues unabated and in fact, the resources working on Finance is increasing to deal with the demands of more schools coming on board and many more showing keen interest. On a daily basis, the development servers are seeing enhancements, which are then checked and perfected before being deployed to Bromcom’s Cloud services.
Want a preview and to discuss the developments?
Please come along to see the latest developments at the BETT Show 2019, running 23-26 January at the London Excel, Stand B320. I am attending on the 23rd and 25th, but staff will be available every day to demonstrate the solution.
Tasters
Many new reports are now online and the on screen enquires extended to provide even greater drill down. Want to know why that ledger has that balance; just take a look and click away to drill down to the detail.
Feedback on the drill down commended the ability to drill down to commitments as well as actuals. All part of the design. Many financial reports that you may be familiar with can be found in Bromcom Finance, each given the Bromcom touch. A selection of reports are shown below.
In each blog I intend to mention at least one feature of Bromcom Finance and for this blog, the winner is Bank Reconciliation. Maybe not the most existing, but an important tool that we have designed to be quick and simple to use. Just selecting your bank, enter the statement’s opening and closing balances, and the system will then monitor your reconciled transactions against the expected activity. A quick link provided to enter any missing journals, which opens another tab to not disturb what you’re doing. Later in 2019, we plan to add the ability to import electronic statements and provide automatic reconciliation to get the process started.
Get On Board
I have started to discuss in outline the financial management requirements with individual MATs and intend to arrange a webinar style meeting to start the process of agreeing the details and the priorities. If interested, please contact simon.lewin@bromcom.com. Talking of academies and MATs, we are also working with the DfE in support of their “Better Financial Reporting Comms” project, a project that intends to streamline Finance Management reporting from such establishments using a new API and a standardised chart of accounts. It is going into is Beta phase next month!
Please send me any feedback that you may have on the Financial Management in schools and the content of this blog. I look forward to hearing from you!
