Wednesday 12th November, 2013

Aberdeen City Council has announced significant budget savings of £5 million due in part, to their new financial management system from Advanced Business Solutions (Advanced).

Advanced has allowed the Council’s 400-stong finance division to exert considerable control over budgets to maximise efficiencies, which has contributed to the Council’s significant savings. In recognition of the great strides the Council has taken, the finance team recently scooped two prestigious Accounts Payable News Awards.

Earlier this year the council added 'Business Objects' to the system, providing a complete suite of interactive performance management, information management, reporting, and analysis tools, all of which integrate with other tools ‘Collaborative Planning’ and ‘eFinancials’.

Aberdeen’s Financial Services Manager, Garry Stevens said: "The solutions integrate perfectly to form a solid financial management system. In the past staff had to circulate numerous spreadsheets in different formats to various people. Since implementing this system we are using a more practical and consistent approach to reporting our budgets."

"Collaborative Planning is user friendly, and now everyone is encouraged to use it, not just finance staff. This means the accountancy team spend less time on data collection and more on data analysis. This reduces complexity yet increases accuracy in the budgeting and forecasting process."

"We have greater control of over or under spend across departments. In fact we were one of the few councils that had a balanced budget with an under-spend in the last financial year."

 He added:  “We now pay 98.2% of our suppliers within 30 days". Over the last year the Council processed 210,000 invoices.