Ronald McDonald House Charities is a global charity, providing accommodation and other support for the families of seriously ill children. In Australia, 13 independent House Chapters are connected and supported via RMHC Australia in a federated structure.
Difficult reporting issues
Ronald McDonald House Australia has an annual income stream of around $21 million. $6 million of that comes from donations and the rest from the national Charities Trust, McDonald’s licensee/corporate community, fundraising activities and government patient transport schemes.
Each House Chapter administers the accommodation independently, runs its own fundraising programmes, and keeps its own set of accounts. To consolidate this at a national level was a laborious manual task, and concern was growing about effectiveness, efficiency and accountability.
“Demand for our services has grown heavily in recent years and we expect that growth to continue,” says Adam Blatch, General Manager, Governance & Business. “We have 394 rooms available and average occupancy is about 70 percent. Some patients’ families stay in our houses for a night, but for others it can be for months or even years.”
All Ronald McDonald House Charities in Australia report its audited financial statements to the organisation’s global office, and it also provides its audited financial accounts to the National Trust along with reports to the Charities and Not-for-profits Commission and the Securities and Investment Commission.
The House Chapters and national office had been using MYOB Premier (donated by MYOB in around 2000). Each Chapter had its own way of accounting for income and expenses, which was becoming an increasing headache for the national office.
“Consolidating all the information into one report could take us up to eight weeks,” Adam recalls. “It was a very messy, complicated process, involving lots of spreadsheets and other paperwork. We wanted a standard chart of accounts and consistent accounting practices, so we started to look for a new business system.”
“Consolidating all the information was a very messy, complicated process.”
Integrated business management
One of the House Chapters had already implemented MYOB Exo, and recommended it to the National office. The whole new system went live at the beginning of 2017.
“We were impressed by the workflow and system integration benefits offered by Exo,” says Adam. “The MYOB Partner integrated Exo with Exceed, our CRM system, and we also added the MYOB MyStaffInfo module to Exo Payroll (aka MYOB Employee Services).”
Exo was set up to provide a central information systems and technology environment that had individual databases for all 13 House Chapters, but with controls that allow that much-needed consistency in reporting across all the separate entities. The national office now runs a consolidated Exo database with a single GL structure.
Exo was also integrated with Phocas, a web-based Business Intelligence software providing live financial information to all House Chapters. Each gets to see its own accounts, which are updated every 24 hours – previously that data was 6-8 weeks old by the time it became available.
The Exo solution was deployed in the Cloud, not only as a cost-saver but to provide web-based communication with all the chapters across the country.
“We were impressed by the workflow and system integration benefits offered by Exo.”
Centralised system, major time savings
Ronald McDonald House Charities now has a standard chart of accounts and consistent accounting practices across all its House Chapters.
“At any time we want, we can run a report from our consolidated Exo account and it pulls together an income and expenditure statement instantly,” Adam says. “It’s condensed weeks of work into minutes.”
Automation and EDI have replaced much of the manual labour and paperwork. This has especially benefited the payroll structure, which is now handled centrally, in-house. The centralised database ensures that any changes to pay rates or workplace legislation are consistently correct.
The integration of Exceed CRM has automated invoicing and eliminated double-entry issues. Exo has also allowed the introduction of analysis codes, for consistency and clarity in reporting fundraising.
“The beauty of Exo is that we can scale it up to whatever each House Chapter needs,” Adam concludes. Exo is providing us the financial business information that we need to work smarter, not harder, and more efficiently than we’ve ever worked before.”
“Exo allows us to work more efficiently than we’ve ever worked before.”
Source: This article was originally sourced from MYOB
