The Wellington City Mission helps hundreds of struggling Wellingtonians every day, providing everything from food parcels and hot meals to social work, education and rest home care.
After successfully using MYOB Greentree to manage their finances for years, the Mission needed a new software solution. Although MYOB Greentree had worked well, it was server-based in the organisation’s premises and the Mission needed the flexibility of a cloud-based solution.
“Our strategy led us to believe that we should go to an online subscription model for our key software requirements. That was the client management system, finance and fundraising.”
- Chris Gray, Corporate Services Manager, Wellington City Mission.
Remote working, preparing for disaster
The onsite server-based system had been working well for the mission, but it meant staff couldn’t access information remotely if access to the building was compromised. This made things difficult in times of crisis.
For example, during the Wellington earthquake, the Mission had no access to the office and servers for a couple of weeks. A cloud-based system would offer flexible working conditions and allow staff to work from any location, from any device.
The system also needed to handle reporting for different business areas, record profits and losses for the entire organisation and offer remote data storage.
Affordably cloud-based flexibility
Of the various solutions they looked at, MYOB Advanced Business delivered the reporting and flexibility they needed.
Chris says, “It does run proper cost-centre reporting, that can be easily coded through to different parts of the business. Users can then log in and see that themselves, which is very beneficial.”
He explains that having all the financial information in one place that’s accessible to all managers offers “fantastic flexibility.”
The Wellington City Mission management team worked with an MYOB business partner to implement MYOB Advanced Business for financial management and reporting, and may add modules in other areas such as fundraising and client management.
Great oversight at a great price
MYOB Advanced Business helped simplify tracking and financial reporting in a complex, multi-faceted organisation.
Management now has a good overall view of the different businesses, including the Mission-run rest home, where managers can track their own progress and check monthly financial reports.
Staff can access MYOB Advanced Business anywhere, at any time. In a business with multiple offices and facilities all over the city, this is vital. Staff can input data or check numbers from anywhere, which helps speed up processes and saves time better spent helping clients.
The software has the flexibility and capacity to adapt to the Mission’s future needs as well.
"We’re a charity so we don’t have lots of money to spend on back-office functions. We needed a lot from the system, and it was all done for a great price. So that is really positive."
Before MYOB Advanced Business | After MYOB Advanced Business |
|---|---|
Server-based with no remote access Potential loss of data especially in emergency Difficult to maintain and make changes Difficult and expensive to keep up to date Difficult to protect from automated security threats | Cloud-based solution with remote access Data and information backed-up in the cloud Ability to code transactions to different departments Overall view of organisation finance for management |
