October 2006

Charitable trust chooses Albany Software to manage its payroll, membership collections and supplier payments

South Suffolk Leisure, a charitable company responsible for leisure facility management, has purchased ALBACSip, the BacsTEL-IP compliant software from e-Business software author Albany Software, in an order valued in the region of £1,800. The Trust will be using ALBACSip to manage its payroll, Direct Debit membership payments and regular outgoing supplier payments.

South Suffolk Leisure was established to manage the running of the local Kingfisher Leisure Centre and Hadleigh Swimming Pool. The Trust started operating in April 2006 and as a new organisation it needed to implement a reliable, robust and user-friendly financial infrastructure. In order to set up the Trust's finance department, and manage Bacs payments to 100 staff and around 800 members, the Trust sought advice from Bromley Mytime Leisure Trust.

Adrian Shorten, Business and Finance Manager for South Suffolk Leisure, explains, "As a new organisation it was advantageous to get guidance and assistance from another Leisure Trust to help us with our finance department set-up. Bromley Mytime were able to provide us with that guidance and we opted for the ALBACSip software from Albany on Bromley Mytime's recommendation."

Steve Harvey, Financial Services Manager, Bromley Mytime Leisure Trust, comments, "Bromley Mytime has been very happy with the use of ALBACSip within the Trust's finance department. The software is robust, secure and very reliable and that is exactly why we advised South Suffolk Leisure to purchase Albany's Bacs software for its own payment system."

ALBACSip leverages Internet technology to deliver improved security, reliability and speed of financial payments. The software employs state of the art security by using Smart Card and PKI technology to help avoid the ever-growing risks associated with online communications and offers greater flexibility, more immediate reporting information directly to the desktop, and tighter control of all electronic funds transactions.

Adrian continues, "South Suffolk Leisure rolled out ALBACSip in three phases. The first phase was to get the staff payroll up and running. It was important to ensure that staff would be paid on time, so we needed to get the financial system set up as quickly and efficiently as possible. The second phase of the project enabled the Trust to receive membership payments from our members. This ran very smoothly so shortly after we were ready to start the third phase - setting up payments to our regular suppliers. South Suffolk Leisure now transmits files at least six times a month - twice for payroll and twice to pay suppliers, plus the collection of membership Direct Debits and the creation of new Direct Debit instructions each week."

Adrian concludes, "The service we received from Albany Software was excellent. Albany's engineers were very helpful talking us through the whole ALBACSip system and how it worked. The software is also very easy to use, which combined with the on-site training, ensured that the implementation was very straightforward."

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