Proposal for outsourced financial management services: Contact A Family (Contact)
by Insight Associates
intelligent financial management for ambitious businesses
Introduction and contents
As outsourced financial management specialists, Insight Associates can provide all the services you would expect of a well-functioning finance department, including bookkeeping, accounting and strategic financial support.
We go above and beyond the services you would expect of your average bookkeeper and accountant. We don’t just provide you with some numbers each month – instead, we work with you to ensure the information you receive is relevant and useful, before helping you interpret and understand that financial data. We provide high-level, proactive financial advice and strategic guidance, helping you make better decisions based on clear, accurate financial information.
That’s because we believe that financial insight is fundamental to business success. We work with ambitious businesses looking to invest and do the hard work now, in order to meet their objectives and maximise their growth potential for the future.
Adding value to your Charity
It is a point of pride at Insight Associates that we never offer our services to clients unless we are certain we can add value to their business. Following our Teams Meeting with Susan Hantman (Finance Transformation Manager) & Suzy Russell (Executive Director of Finance & Resources), we genuinely believe that we can help Contact build the financial infrastructure you need to meet your objectives and prepare your finance department for the next phase of your organisation’s development.
Finance
Director
Accountant
Bookkeeping & Accounting
The brief
Contact a Family (trading as Contact) is a charity established in the 1970s to be a support network for families with a disabled child. Nowadays, the charity provides hugely important services across a range of formats, including direct support to families, training for support practitioners, and specific programmes focussing on various areas.
Since 2017 Contact has outsourced its bookkeeping and management accounts provision to an external service provider. Whilst the relationship with the existing service provider is good, they use Sun Systems as the accounting system, to which the charity only has read-only access which hampers the ability to access ad-hoc and timely information in response to the charities requirements. As a result, a lot of the financial analysis and reporting work for the charity is managed via manual updates of spreadsheets.
Susan Hantman has been investigating options for new finance systems, including Iplicit, who put Susan in touch with Insight Associates.
This proposal reflects our understanding of your organisation’s current requirements based on conversations with Susan & Suzy, together with the ‘Outline of Requirements’ document issued by Contact as part of the tendering process.
Objectives
Contact has approached Insight Associates for support in achieving the following objectives:
Phase 1
- Provision of a new, modern and flexible finance system to replace Sun Systems.
- Bookkeeping and transactional input, and first-review management accounts production.
- Preparation of annual statutory accounts in advance of external audit.
- The implementation of a monthly financial reporting structure to aid the organisation’s financial decision-making.
Phase 2
- Provision of ‘FD-style’ strategic support and input.
How we will help
Below, we have outlined the services and solutions we believe will help you meet your objectives. These services are designed to help you understand exactly where your charity stands financially and hand you back the control you need to make well-informed, confident decisions about your business’s future, with our support. General advice and assistance on day-to-day financial matters will be provided throughout.
A) Financial and accounting infrastructure, systems and processes
- Accounting and Business software – as part of our services, we will migrate your accounting and related business systems to iplicit, an award-winning accounting and enterprise system.
iplicit is a cloud-based accounting solution for growing and medium-sized businesses. For businesses that are currently using entry-level solutions such as Xero and Quickbooks, iplicit represents a huge step up in terms of both functionality and data reporting, enabling the firms we work with to make decisions based on detailed and accurate figures. For organisations in the charity sector, it has functionality including restricted fund tracking, trustee reporting, and VAT partial-exemption compliance.
- Bookkeeping and accounting – we will take care of all day-to-day bookkeeping and accounting transaction processing.
- Purchase and sales transactions – we will take responsibility for recording your purchase and sales transactions on a day-to-day basis.
- Cash management* – we will use our extensive cash flow management experience to ensure a smooth flow of cash through your business, ensuring there are no nasty surprises. We will produce a weekly cash flow report for you.
- Credit management and control – our proposal includes a small allowance for basic credit control processes.
- Electronic workflows – we will set up electronic workflows on the iplicit software to enable the paperless authorisation of purchase (and other) transactions by your team, as agreed with you.
- Supplier and other payments – we will initiate and approve any supplier and other payments on your behalf, when supported by fully approved and authorised invoices or other confirmations in use and agreed within your systems. All work is undertaken in line with our strict security and anti-fraud procedures and guidelines.
* Please note that we will require full access to your online banking facility for effective cash flow management.
B) Gift Aid, VAT returns, and Annual Accounts
- Collation and submission of quarterly Gift Aid claims.
- We will undertake and submit your quarterly partial-exemption VAT return and reconciliation.
- Preparation of draft statutory accounts in preparation for external annual audit, along with liaison with auditors as required.
C) Reporting
We believe that all organisations need comprehensive, timely and accurate financial information in order to make good decisions about the future.
We will therefore develop and deliver a comprehensive, tailored monthly management accounts pack, which will:
- Provide accurate and reliable information about your financial situation tailored to your charity to facilitate good management decision-making.
- Interpret with you the information provided to ensure you make the best possible decisions for your charity based on facts you understand.
- Compare actual results against budget and prior periods (where available).
- Focus on the quality and relevance of information over quantity.
- Continually evolve over time according to your charity’s precise needs.
D) Meetings
We nominate a senior member of our team to act as your Client Manager. They take responsibility for delivery of our commitments to you, ensuring our team are fully briefed as required.
We believe that the key to our success is a close working relationship with all our clients. We will therefore seek to have regular meetings with you (both online and face to face) to enable us to build that relationship, help us understand your organisation, work with you to interpret the information we provide, and offer proactive advice as required.
E) Post and correspondence
Whilst most ‘correspondence’ now arrives electronically, we would propose that our office address is listed as your Accounts or Finance Office, ensuring that all paperwork is directed to us.
We will also set up a dedicated email address for you so that all interactions can be dealt with efficiently. Many of our clients also have a generic email for accounting matters (e.g., accounts@examplefirm.com), which they then redirect to us.
We will deal with all external parties on your behalf, just as you would expect your own in-house team to do if you had one.
We can provide all services listed within the ‘Outline of Requirements’ document, subject to the following exceptions/clarifications/comments:
5.1 – Monitoring
Quarterly review meeting in addition to weekly operational meetings, monthly review meetings and quarterly meetings to review VAT Return and re-forecast – what would this cover?
6 – Accounts Payable
Will petty cash transactions be recorded and reconciled by in-house team member with information required for journal posting supplied to us?
6.6 – BACS Payments
Provision of a pre-list of payments due – this is unusual in a system where all items for payment have already been approved by the relevant authorisers, and creditors will be paid in line with contractual due dates. Iplicit workflows can provide a payment batch report for authorisation prior to upload to banking system.
Payment authorisation is actioned at bank by Contact’s Head of Finance – many clients entrust full treasury management to us, including payment authorisations (by pre-agreed team members only), so this is an option if desired.
7.2 – Monthly Recurring Journals
Split invoices – suggest applying split by project/cost centre based on same percentage split as applied in payroll journal for month. We will code invoice on that basis and send to relevant project and/or cost centre approvers based on agreed authorisation workflow structure.
8 – Income
In what format is the daily income data collated by the Income and Fundraising teams and shared with us?
13 – Procurement
Identification of savings throughout the procurement process is not a core service provided by us. Further information around the bulk purchase and synergies mentioned in the document is necessary, although it is expected that we will be able to assist to some degree, in terms of fraud prevention, credit control and due diligence, etc.
Please note that this proposal does not include an allowance for the following services. We can of course amend the proposal and associated costs should these be required.
- Benefits management, including P11D forms.
- Monthly payroll provision is already outsourced and the current arrangement is not expected to change, so no provision for this is included in this proposal.
Your investment
At Insight, the organisations that we work with do not see us as a cost-saving solution, but as an investment in their future. We optimise their finance department to remove barriers to growth, creating streamlined processes that scale easily and allow our clients to reach their full potential. With a fully UK-based team, we do not outsource any of our work offshore, instead focusing on delivering the skills and high quality output our clients need from us.
We provide all the services you would expect of a fully functioning corporate finance department, taking responsibility for every aspect of our clients’ financial management and accounting.
We believe that working with Insight Associates should be viewed as an investment in your charity, in order to meet your business objectives and future needs and to deliver faster, more strategic growth. By investing with us, you’ll gain access to innovative and disruptive world-class software, a full team of experts and the strategic insight that comes with collective decades of financial management expertise.
When you compare our costs to the cost of hiring the same sort of expertise in-house, we believe we compare very favourably. Hiring a full financial management team would likely set you back hundreds of thousands of pounds in salaries alone, without even mentioning additional costs such as sick pay, National Insurance and pension contributions.
When you outsource your finance function to us, on the other hand, you don’t only have year-round, uninterrupted access to a full team of experts, free of the inconvenience of holidays and sick days. Your fee also includes a subscription to world-leading accounting tech, in addition to all the strategic advice and guidance you need to feel confident about your business decisions.
Your fees explained
Setup and onboarding fee : £6,250 Monthly fee: £6,500
Setup and onboarding fee
This is a fixed, one-off fee payable at the start of our relationship to cover the cost of migrating Contact across from its current systems and onto ours. All accounting processes will be migrated to our iplicit software.
This setup fee is designed to cover the one-off cost associated with:
- Setting up the systems, procedures, processes, software and models necessary for the ongoing reporting and control processes.
- Implementing the early stages of the migration to iplicit.
- Familiarising ourselves with your business and with any existing systems, software and spreadsheets, etc.
- Liaising and dealing with yourselves and any existing service providers throughout the handover process.
- All time spent on the initial setup process, including (as necessary) initial visits to your offices, online meetings, telephone calls and other communication.
Monthly Fee
All services in the ‘how we can help’ section above are included in the monthly fee.
Assumptions
In arriving at this quote we have made a number of assumptions. Any significant changes may incur an additional charge.
- We have assumed opening balances can be imported from your existing accountant.
- There will be a 6 month programme of work to bed down systems, procedures, reporting and working practices based on the information you have shared with us. Should expected workloads differ significantly from our preliminary discussions the monthly fee may be revised.
- Fees include disbursements and exclude VAT. Disbursements cover travel & mileage from our offices to yours plus subsistence and an allowance for office costs and consumables.
- Monthly fees are payable monthly in advance by standing order or direct debit.
- Our initial contract period is 12 months. Termination notice thereafter is 6 months.
Our Performance Guarantee
All our contracts include a Performance Guarantee, which takes the form of a three-month break clause which can be triggered if either party feels that the relationship is not working or that Insight Associates hasn’t delivered as promised. This break clause can be used irrespective of the contract terms.
Should either party trigger the break clause (which nobody ever has!), all fees up to the point of the break would still be payable, but there is no commitment beyond this. We would of course fully cooperate with yourselves and any other provider in a handover.
Your team
The initial onboarding of all our clients is undertaken by our senior team, who have the wealth of experience and knowledge required to take you smoothly through that process.
During this process we also learn about your charity, how it operates and your key processes, as well as getting to know your people. As we near the end of the onboarding process, it will become clear to us who on the team is best placed to lead our responsibilities to you as our client. You will be allocated a Client Manager (who may have also been involved in the onboarding), who will take responsibility for our deliverables. Your Client Manager will allocate the work we are undertaking for you amongst the team and ensure that there is adequate cover and knowledge to provide you with the best possible ongoing service.
We use specialist client management software to manage your workflows, ensuring that we have full visibility of the tasks that need doing and that nothing falls through the cracks.
Why Insight?
In this proposal, we have outlined how the services we provide make us different to your average bookkeeper or accountant – and how working with us can help your business reach its objectives by providing the financial foundations necessary to support long-term growth and development.
To find out about our services in more detail, and to better understand how they differentiate us from the crowd, we encourage you to visit our informative webpage https://insightassociates.co.uk/why-were-different .
Fully regulated for full peace of mind
Insight Associates is fully regulated by the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA), one of the world’s largest and most widely recognised accountancy bodies incorporated by Royal Charter in the UK. It has over 250,000 members, who are proud to count themselves amongst the world’s best-qualified and most highly-sought-after accountants working in every sector of the industry.
As an ACCA regulated firm, we are held to the most rigorous professional standards and are subject to regular review. Our Managing Director, Garry Mumford, our Client Services Director, Simon Hammond, and our Senior Finance Manager, Cara Smith, are ACCA fellows and Garry and Simon hold Practicing Certificates. Other members of our team are also qualified or studying to become so.
We also carry comprehensive Professional Indemnity insurance to offer you greater peace of mind.
Cyber Safe
We’re a certified business with Cyber Essentials, helping us guard against the most common cyber threats and demonstrating our commitment to cyber security.
The certification holds us to high standards across a range of areas, from firewall and virus protection to data access controls. Our systems and processes are regularly reviewed and integrity-checked, ensuring they are constantly adapting to new threats and our clients’ ever-developing requirements. We take cyber security very seriously and invest significantly each year in ensuring our systems are maintained to a very high standard.
Insight Associates even carries comprehensive cyber and data liability insurance, in the unlikely event that it should be required.
The onboarding process
As we have previously mentioned, our work with Contact will require us to agree, set up and implement a number of systems and processes to enable us to support you effectively. This process can take several months and will usually consist of the following steps:
Step 1 – Discovery
We’ll undertake a detailed assessment of your existing systems and processes and develop a comprehensive plan for handover, including timescales, in collaboration with all parties.
Step 2 – Understanding
We’ll look at the information and data that Contact’s management will need to make well-informed decisions and define data collection requirements for optimum reporting.
Step 3 – Implementation
We’ll set you up with user access to our accounting software, iplicit, assess the level of access each user needs, and agree a suitable coding and accounting structure.
Step 4 – Workflows
We’ll agree, set up and implement internal and external workflows and responsibilities and secure banking access.
Step 5 – Handover
We’ll start data collection, processing and handover of responsibilities to Insight Associates.
Step 6 – Reporting
We’ll start developing our reporting processes, including the production of your monthly management pack. We’ll agree who will receive the management pack, in addition to reporting timescales and deadlines.
Step 7 – Ongoing development
As we settle into our working relationship with you, we’ll continue to proactively develop and refine our processes and reporting in collaboration with yourselves.
How things work at Insight Associates
There will be a lot of change
We exclusively use the iplicit platform
We employ human beings
We build relationships
Quality is our by-word
We understand our clients are not finance experts
There will be a lot of change
Insight works almost exclusively with ambitious growing business that are open to change, clear about what they want from the future, and are ready to let go of the past and move forward. It’s the stage of business life we call adolescence.
And, just like adolescence, the process will at times be difficult and painful. It’s important to keep remembering that without this upheaval, your business will not be able to move on.
We exclusively use the iplicit platform
iplicit is a world-class, marketing-leading cloud accounting solution that is currently disrupting the world of fintech. Insight Associates are proud to be iplicit Outsourcing Partners and have been working with their senior team and founders for over 20 years. Our long association with iplicit has led to an excellent working relationship and complete confidence in the software’s capabilities.
The way we see it, for a business to develop to its full potential, it will need systems and software that it will grow into – not out of. As ambitious, growing businesses form the vast majority of our client base, we do not use smaller accounting solutions like Xero and QuickBooks. They are excellent, yes, but they are designed for small businesses!
We employ human beings
We work hard to put in place robust, resilient systems and processes for the businesses we work with. Our team has its own set of processes that are the same for each client, so it is easy for different team members to step in and cover the work that has to be done.
However, and as you might expect, our senior team have developed specialist knowledge and skillsets over their many years in the industry. If they are not around, you may not get an immediate answer to your query, especially if it is complex in nature. However, the rest of the team will always ensure that they cover what they can.
Human beings also make mistakes; however, a rigid process of checking, rechecking and ensuring that all duties are evenly divided means that we are convinced that our own processes are far more secure and reliable that almost all of those we experience in the businesses we engage with.
We build relationships
Our clients are our friends! We really want to get to know you, learn all about you and understand you, your business and your hopes for the future.
Basically, we end up only working with people we like, and who like us. We cannot do our job otherwise – it simply does not work.
Quality is our by-word
We will only ever deliver work to you where we have absolute confidence in its quality. To achieve this, we have built rigorous monthly procedures, accounting reconciliations and checks into our processes. All management information is reviewed before being issued, so it is also seen by another (normally more senior) pair of eyes.
If we are not confident that the quality of our information is good, we will not send it to you.
We understand our clients are not finance experts
You most likely started your business because you were passionate about solving a problem or filling a gap in the market. We already know you are the leading authority on your product, service or solution. So, we don’t expect you to be finance experts as well. That’s why we’re here.
We’re never going to judge you if you don’t know the answer to something or you need us to explain a particular concept. If you knew it all already, we’d be out of a job!
Conclusion
We very much hope that this tailored proposal for Contact meets your expectations and answers any questions you may have about our services and how we believe we can help your charity achieve its growth and development objectives. All businesses need quality, reliable and timely information in order to operate effectively – and we are confident that the services detailed in this proposal will provide exactly that, adding significant value to your organisation.
We believe that our unique approach and ethos will provide the proactive support that Contact requires to achieve its future objectives. We particularly look forward to working closely with Sue & Suzy at Contact to develop a mutually beneficial, long-term working relationship.
We welcome any questions you may have.
If there is anything you would like to discuss in more detail, we would be delighted to speak with you and answer any questions you may have. We are very conscious that we have made a number of assumptions about your requirements – please note that these can of course be modified to ensure the best possible fit between our services and your needs.
Once you have taken the opportunity to review the information contained in this proposal, we would strongly recommend a follow-up meeting at your convenience to discuss in further detail.
Many thanks for asking Insight Associates to provide a quote for our services. We look forward to hearing your thoughts on this proposal and look forward to talking through it with you.
Should you have any questions in the meantime, or if you would like to arrange your follow-up appointment, please do get in touch on 01279 647447 or email info@insightassociates.co.uk.
References
- Rob Saggs, CEO of CHESS Homeless – rob.saggs@chesshomeless.org
- Jakhya Rahman-Corey, Director of the Swarovski Foundation – jakhya.rahman-corey@swarovskifoundation.org
- Arti Sharma, CEO of NurtureUK – arti@nurtureuk.org
