Tell us about Ash Waste

So, Ash Waste is a commercial waste disposal company deal with businesses all over the UK. So, we've got numerous depots. We but we also have businesses such as Skip hire, which also cater for sort of more the Northwest and Wales. We've got a piece of machinery that sort of washes down old waste to create aggregates so that we can, we like to try and recycle and reuse as much as possible. And we've got different other businesses, such as storage facilities, little businesses to sort of just help us create that little bit extra, little bit extra profit. I'm management accountant for Ash, so a lot of my job requires reporting. A lot of decision making based off the reports that that I can get out of whatever financial data we've got.

Why did Ash Waste decide to evaluate a new Sage solution?

We've grown quite a lot over the past few years; we're continuously trying to grow and open new depots in different parts of the UK so we can cover as much as possible. But at the same time, we're kind of trying to keep quite streamlined within our department. So, I mean, the way to do that is to try and streamline your processes and your systems and also try and reduce your reduce paper and try and make things as automated as possible. Try and, you know, try and eliminate any sort of human error. So, yeah, we're trying to put a lot into our process and into our systems at the minute. Yeah, so the challenges that we were trying to address really were, were, was the hand, the human handling of our processes. So, a lot of spreadsheets, a lot of manual entry, which, you know, nothing could be perfect, especially when someone's typing it in. So, a lot of the systems we're trying to implement were very much automated or give us a bit more data. So, we're just trying to feel our way into sort of a paperless system.

What system did you previously use?

So, we used Sage line 50 before we tried to go into Sage 200 it worked to a point. It wasn't a horrendous system, which is why we kind of looked at Sage 200 in the first place. We knew it kind of worked. I think that the point of Sage 200 is more to future proof us. We know that we're getting bigger. We know that we are growing. So, it was kind of finding a system that wouldn't fall over if it had too many people on too many postings. So yes, Sage was where we landed.

What challenges were you facing and how did they impact your efficiency?

I think efficiency wise; it's always going to be slower if you've got someone sort of handballing information into a spreadsheet. We still use spreadsheets as accountants, very heavily reliant on them. But I think when you've got spreadsheets for reasons that you could kind of eliminate them. It just makes sense to put a system in place. Really, it was.

Why did Ash Waste choose Sage 200?

We knew that it would be an easier transition to go to Sage 200 from Sage 50. We all know the layouts. We all sort of know what we're doing on Sage 50. We'd had a small look on Sage 200 plus. I'd used it 10 years ago, so I kind of knew what it entailed. It. It just seemed like it would be a quicker transition, and it and it kind of had all the aspects of a system that we needed as well. Yeah. So Sage 50 is, although it works, there's, there's a lot that it's not quite as vast as Sage, 200 it's, it's not got quite as many add-ons we were looking as obviously, as I explained earlier, with our numerous companies, we do have quite a lot of intercompany trading. We have quite a lot of assets, and I think that we couldn't keep any of that within Sage 50. We would have to manually put them between different companies. But I knew that with Sage 200 you can kind of integrate all that together.

What functionalities within Sage 200 have most impacted Ash Waste?

Yeah, to be honest, the whole system has benefited us as a whole, we it's a lot more auditable. So, the with Sage 50, it's very easy for someone to just delete something if they've done it wrong. Sage, Sage 200 gives you a bit more accountability, I think. And with having sort of reversing entries and it being done properly, if you like, it makes my job a lot easier when it comes to it to audit time and also having a lot more automation within the system. You know, I started because we've had the system quite a short amount of time. My deadlines have been a bit past where they should be, you know, trying to get everything working this month, for example, I started this month late, but I've already caught up. So, you can see how much quicker the system is for us already, and then as we go on, I think the time will just get shorter and shorter.

Tell us about the benefits of the additional Sicon Modules you have chosen.

So Sicon has been a huge time saver. The intercompany module has meant that I don't have to manually input our invoices that that that are going between companies. Now that we can just do that at the same time as inputting it on the original company, it just means that I literally just have to reconcile at the end of the month. Could take me an hour, two hours, rather than a day or two. And the fixed assets have given us a lot more control. So, before we did have a fixed asset register on a spreadsheet, and I would figure it out based on formulas, which would give me my depreciation at the end of the month. Now, because I'm able to put that into its own entity within Sage 200 it's a press of a button, the depreciation is all worked out for me, and I can go into each individual asset and have a look at all. There's so much information that you can import on each asset that I feel like we do have a lot more control now. My favourite feature for Sage 200 would definitely be the inter company. I think it's saved me so much time. You know, I'm literally just going on now, and the work's done for me, so I'm never going to complain about having to do less work. So yeah, it's huge time saver, and definitely my favourite function.

What did your month-end look like previously?

You'd probably be looking at around three weeks from start to finish, and that would be starting just before the start of the month, so that I can complete those processes by about, usually about the 21st 22nd and then get all my financial reports out that that week, we could be looking at finishing the month now within about maybe about two weeks, I would say, I think I started On around the 10th this month and was finished by around the same time. Yeah. So, yeah, it's a huge, huge time saver. There's a lot, a lot where there are financial accountants have to put a bit more information themselves. But because that's done so much sooner, my job becomes a lot, a lot faster and a lot easier to be honest with you as well. So, it's a green light from me.

Have you noticed a difference in your reporting since switching to Sage 200?

With the reporting functionality. We were still quite early days. There's still quite a lot that we're looking at, but I have noticed that there are certain especially the Excel reporting. I've noticed that there's a lot we can use there. We do like to report on our different depots to see what profit has been made per depot, whereas, again, that used to be me and putting on a spreadsheet, and then we would maybe update the costs. I then have to repeat the process. And each time you talk in a couple of hours, for each process with the Excel reporting, I'm able to just update it, refresh and then open it and it's it just saved me hours of time and allows me to make more adjustments when I need to.

Are there any features of Sage 200 which has impacted the team?

Yeah, I mean, we're still, we're still finding things now, like I say, we're still early days at the minute, but it, it's mainly the stuff that we knew it had have turned out to be a real time saver. We were hoping it would, you know, it wasn't the be all and end all, if it didn't particularly save us time, because we knew that there were other sections, and we knew as well that, you know, future proofing ourselves mean that the system doesn't just fall over. You know, with Sage 50 the amount of times that I'd have someone shouting over at me because the system's closed down again, someone's in the middle of something Sage, 200 is pretty solid, and we've not really had any issues in terms of it closed. And down, or even just the speed of it. Just if you've got momentum and you, you're working away, you want the system to keep up with you. Sage 50 was starting to slow down, whereas Sage 200 is kept up. And yeah, it's been a massive help.

How much time have you saved since implementing Sage 200?

One of the big-time saving processes for us has been the fixed assets being within the system. And now I'm just adding the adding them into the system, putting how much life I need on them, and the percentage of depreciation and hit of a button at the end of the month, and it's just creating all the depreciation for me. It's putting what I need into any intercompany loan accounts. It's kind of figuring all that out for me, whereas before, that was very manual process that could have taken me a couple of days. Same with intercompany as well. That was just me getting a list of what company owed, what company, and then putting both transactions on each stage, whereas now, because we're able to put the transaction on both sides within the same transaction, all of that's been cancelled out. So that, again, has saved me a couple of days. And so, yeah, it's been a huge help.

Tell us about your experience working with itas?

I think it's been a positive experience. I think that everyone we've spoken to been really pleasant, really knowledgeable. We haven't really had any issues at all. The communication as well has been incredible. I don't think we've asked a question that hasn't been at least responded to within a couple of hours at most, and even if the question needs some more time to be thought about, we were told that, you know, we were given clear deadlines. So, yeah, I think it's been, yeah, great experience.

Tell us about the scoping process.

So, from the initial call, we kind of told, we kind of told itas, this is what we need, where we need to be. You know, we've got multiple companies. We need to tie all that together. So, we were very vague, and what we wanted. We knew that we just wanted everything to be kind of seamless. Because in finance, we deal with all the companies. We do have different departments where which deal with those companies, we kind of have to tie it all together. So with us being quite vague, I think it did help, in a way, the itas consultants could figure out the perfect system for us, figure out the perfect fit, and also offer us things that we kind of didn't know were out there that might help us as well, which we went for and yeah, it's all turned out to be really beneficial.

What did the implantation process look like for you?

We didn't really know the different steps within implementation were a bit of a mystery to us. To start with, we didn't really know where we were going to go with it. We knew what we wanted, but we had no idea how to sort of get there. Obviously, Sage 200 we've had for years and years and years. It was quite a big step to actually change to a new system. So, we kind of let itas guide us a little bit on that being a lot more knowledgeable on implementing a new system than we are. So, we kind of, we kind of gave dates of what we wanted, we knew we wanted to tie it in with year-end a little bit and try and have a clean cut. This is where we want to be as of year-end. And, and it has kind of just ran with it and told us what we needed to do, where we needed to be, which was a massive help. I think any change really is worrying, especially with finance. It's, you know, if it doesn't work out the way you want it to, it can set you back quite a lot. We were worried that, you know, the system just wouldn't be for us. We were so used to Sage 50. Now we could, we could post things our eyes closed. And I think when you when you get to that point and your team, it is working. But you know, you kind of have to progress further with all of your processes. It's yeah, it's a tough thing to agree on, but yeah, we were okay. We were in good hands.

Did you have any challenges during the implementation process?

Anyway, there's never going to be a perfect system straight away. There were, there were certain things that, you know, if a code wasn't set up right, or, you know, it was, it was going to the wrong field, there's always going to be little bits. We'd run a p&l and, you know, there were little bits that were out. Yeah, but there was never, it would always be fixed the same day, if not the next day. You know, there was, there was no problem with just getting in touch with our consultant, getting in touch with our project manager, and then they would just have it sorted for us. And so, yeah, to be honest, I think that, yes, we did have challenges, and we were obviously trying to learn a new system as well, but it was helpful that we just had someone there to sort it out for us.

After implementing Sage 200, how are the team feeling?

I think anything that's new, it's never going to be, you know, all plain sailing. But now that I think everything's in place, everyone started to get used to the system a bit more. We are a lot happier now, and I think that everyone's a lot happier with the fact that they know that what they're doing is correct. So, if they are having to reverse something, it's being dealt with in the right way, and it's, you know, not going to annoy any auditors, or there's no be nowhere shouting from the big boss.

How was the training and testing for Sage 200?

So, what was really useful about the training was that we were given dummy accounts to play around with, I think. And I speak for the whole team, I think when I say that we're very much doers rather than listeners, like we'd like to get on the system, have a go, try and break it as best we can, and then that's how we can figure out, right? This needs to change. This needs to change. There was, there was an element of, obviously, someone talking to us about what we need to do. All those sessions were recorded, which, again, was a great help to go back and just have a look at, right? How did we do this again? And we also had clean deadlines of, right? This, this training is going to happen here. Go on, have a go, and then we can go back, and you can ask any questions. That was really helpful as well.

How was the Go Live process?

The go live was actually quite seamless. To be honest, it was. It did go very smoothly. It would. It could have gone smoother because we changed a few bits. So I think we, we gave it us a bit of a headache at times, where we had an idea in our heads that we wanted to do our year end on stage 200 and then after talking about it a little bit, we decided that, actually, no it would be better to do it on 50 and then start afresh on 200 but we only told it us that halfway through the process that actually we might need to change this a little bit. Which they were very accommodated about, which is, which is good. But, yeah, I think the Go Live process did turn out to be a really easy, easy thing to go through.

What was your experience like with your project manager?

So, something worth mentioning about itas is you are given a project manager right from the beginning, and you will have the same project manager throughout our project manager is also really knowledgeable. It wasn't just someone who ties it all together, it was somebody actually knew or seemed to know the system. So sometimes she would even answer the questions for us before it got to the consultant. But it was it. So, you had that one person throughout, but then any issues you did have, there was always someone who knew what to do with that. So, if you had someone who was very knowledgeable on stage 200 but not so much on the finance, there was someone else to bring in who could help with finance. There was, you know, there was someone to bring in each time, every time we had a different problem.

What was the transitioning process like from implementation to support?

So as soon as we were done with the implementation process, we were given a date that was that we were happy with, waiting until the system was completely signed off, and we kept our hyper care, if you like, until the system was completely signed and we were happy with all the reports. We were given a clear-cut date to say, right now you're going to meet your support team, put straight on to operations manager, relationship manager, project managers. We were all in a meeting with the team, talk through the process of how we're going to give support tickets. Now it still feels like hypercare. To be honest, it still feels like we're being really looked after. And also, we mentioned because we had our vat returns coming up, we didn't know how to do that yet, so operations manager and the relationship manager was jumped on with me the next just after the weekend and talked me through that. So, it's just we've got no issues. Think it's going to be, yeah, quite an easy process, I think, with reporting.

How much time has Sage 200 saved you?

We've definitely saved time on reporting. The fact that you can, you can just pull out a report, you can change it the way you want it, and you can upload it back into the system, has really helped us. Because before with Sage 50, it was very stagnant. You could only do what he gave you. Whereas now we can bring it out, we can put budgets into our reports, we cannot, you know, we can analyse it that way and then pop it back into the system and update it, and then bring new, fresh numbers out. It's it saved us a lot of time.

What are your future plans for Sage 200?

With the time we're saving, we will be able to look at a lot more into analytics we were currently. We've just kind of caught up and made ourselves broke even with our time almost now going on from this, because it's going to take us a lot less time. We are going to start looking at different systems, different reports in now so that we can just get more out of it. And we, you know, we'd like to do things like, you know, profit and loss per route and stuff like that, and really dig down into the financials and see what's working within the business. Before, that wasn't really an option. Whereas now we've, we've got that time, we've kind of got that information as well to be able to really dig down into and see what works.

Would you recommend Sage 200 as a solution to other businesses?

I would definitely recommend Sage 200 to other businesses. I think that it's a huge time saver. I think that the layout of it, it's user friendly. Your kind of you, especially if you've used something like Sage 50 before. It's not too dissimilar to that. A lot of the functionalities are the same in your base level stuff as in your purchase ledger, your sales ledger. You can still create your invoices, the differences in the background and the information that you can extract out of that, which I think is a huge benefit.

Would you recommend itas as a Sage partner?

I would, yeah, I think itas, as a Sage partner, has been very beneficial for us. I think that is a bit more of a closer feel like the it seems like a small company. I know, obviously itas isn't a small company, but it does. It feels that way with the experience you get, I think there's all nothing's too much. There's always someone there. You know, you're ring itas, and there'll always be someone to speak to you. If it's not the right person, they'll find the right person. So, yeah, I think, I think it's really been helpful. I think we're quite happy. Yeah, I think that it's, it's just been a pleasure working with itas it's, yeah, they've all been really pleasant, all really knowledgeable, and yeah, we felt well, looked after.