ST CHRISTOPHER’S MULTI ACADEMY TRUST USES SAGE INTACCT FOR EDUCATION FROM ION

About St Christopher's Multi-Academy Trust

Established in 2013, St Christopher's Multi-Academy Trust operates 19 primary academies across Axminster, Beer, Exeter, Plymouth, Torquay, and Tavistock/West Devon.

These academies work together to provide principled, high-quality education within a Christian foundation. The trust actively empowers and encourages each school to flourish while always remaining open to learning from others and sharing its own expertise.

St Christopher’s operates with a centralised team handling finance, HR, payroll, and facilities. For many years, the Trust had been using PS Financials/IRIS, facilitating budgeting through IMP Planner, and outsourcing payroll through the local authority.

Why Sage Intacct for Education from ION?

St Christopher’s large finance team operates across clusters, presenting a unique and somewhat complex structure that could be well served by Sage Intacct for Education. St. Christopher’s wanted to implement a more efficient system to support their multiplex structure. They also needed to improve their purchase to pay workflow which did not provide budget holders with spend insight. This resulted in multiple queries towards the finance team and key team members spending too much time responding to internal requests.

Additionally, the team was reliant on Excel to produce reports, creating a reporting process that was admin-intensive, open to risk of error from broken formulas, and less secure than it could be. Moving to a true cloud solution would allow for an overview of all schools and consolidated, automated reporting at the click of a button.

It was essential that their new system was true cloud to provide real-time information across multiple schools. Cloud-based infrastructure would ensure no limitations on tabs opened and provide a secure platform accessible from anywhere.

With ambitious plans for growth, St Christopher’s also found the ability to scale without significant additional cost extremely appealing. Sage Intacct for Education would allow them to add schools easily and quickly themselves with no further external development costs.