The Auckland Rugby Union (ARU) manages, administers, markets and provides resourcing across 19 rugby clubs around Auckland. It had been making do with a financial system that needed a lot of manual input to generate reports.
Inflexible system impacts accountability
The ARU is behind Auckland’s club, school and representative rugby competitions, and helps develop the game through schemes like the Auckland Rugby Academy, Pro-Sport Programme and many other coaching courses.
With no cloud hosting and an inflexible chart of accounts, this complexity was not being well supported by its existing financial system. That was beginning to affect accountability, reporting and transparency.
“It was definitely time for an upgrade. We needed to move with the times and start looking into the modern technology we could harness.”
- Warrick Nansett, Head of Business Support and Planning
Retirement time for 20-year-old system
The system made running reports and accessing and inputting data, slow and labour intensive.
It was time for a change, and ARU had a comprehensive check-box of requirements – it needed delegated authorities, automated approval of accounts payable transactions and the ability to scan accounts-payable invoices.
“We were also looking for something paperless,” Warrick explains.
ARU considered updating its existing system, but on a recommendation from brother organisation The Blues, ARU decided to migrate to MYOB Advanced.
“They let me look at all their research and information. They had gone with MYOB Advanced, and had done all the legwork to back up their decision,” he said.
"We needed to move with the times and start looking into the modern technology we could harness."
No bolt-ons needed
MYOB ticked all the boxes, including that critical improvement in reporting.
“The general ledger set up is really flexible, so you can pull more powerful reports,” explains Warrick.
The system’s simplicity was also a strong selling point.
“With some of the other options, you had to buy a lot of bolt-on extras. That wasn't the case with Advanced. It's all self-contained.”
Working with their MYOB Business Partner was another key piece of the puzzle.
“They outlined a detailed implementation timetable, identified all the potential risks, and then helped us work out how to manage and mitigate those risks,” explains Warrick.
A clear win for the team ARU
What struck Warrick immediately about MYOB Advanced were the efficiencies in data input. Compiling month-end board reports, for example, used to take several days – it’s now pulled together in hours. Budget managers can also run their own analysis reports, and have full visibility into their own cost centres.
For Warrick, the power of the MYOB Advanced general ledger system is that it enables you to have any combination of general-ledger accounts and sub-accounts, made up of as many segments as you need.
With automated AP approvals and better spend-to-budget management, ARU has tightened things up in accounts payable too.
"At lot of the time we'd previously spent manually doing tasks like that is significantly reduced," he says.
