PS Finanicals ....or?

[dry]

I've been handed a document with system requirements for PS Financials, with a view to it replacing FMS due to our impending academisation.

 

From my edugeek research it seems that those schools that use it aren't having a great time with support and find the software unintuitive to the point of it being unusable. Is this still the case?

 

It's been marketed to our SBM as a 'cloud' solution, but from the doc that I've been handed, 'cloud' is a term used very loosely. Looks like it's just a conventional Windows server hosted by them and presumably RDPd into by Finance.

 

I also don't like the idea of having outdated, unintuitive and difficult to manage clients installed on Finance's PCs! Had enough messing around with INIs via Capita thanks very much

 

Has anybody who was considering PS gone with HCSS? It seems a much better option from my perspective, but the decision will ultimately come down to whether the solutions can meet our finance requirements.

 

Thanks

[minivanman]

Our Trust uses PSF - migrated off 12 separate FMS installations just before Christmas.

 

The PSF's cloud is a private cloud service so supports not only the accounting application, but also allows the storage of our finance team documents, shared files etc. They have just added budgeting, payroll and personnel and those are all going to be delivered through the one private cloud service which we see as being a huge benefit as everything else we looked at what actually different connections, support teams etc.

 

The user interface is either a Windows application delivered via RDP or a HTTPS connection to the browser based front end for Purchases, GRNs, Invoicing etc - so there is no software to be installed on any of the Trust's PCs - again ideal for us as we are geographically dispersed and our IT support is extremely limited due to all of our schools being primaries with no local IT support.

 

Your last point is valid - the decision does come down to meeting the financial requirements - we looked at HCSS, Sage, Civica and we also gave Capita/FMS a chance to bid (though I don't know why!). PSF was a clear choice for us on the Financial requirements and the technology deployment has meant that we have had no need to install anything or worry about access as our users can use the service from the school or even home!

 

We had concerns about support as we had read some of the negative postings, but so far we have had no issues - apart from the users having to get used to a "proper" accounting system after FMS - and the PSF support has been good.

[localzuk]

I've been handed a document with system requirements for PS Financials, with a view to it replacing FMS due to our impending academisation.

From my edugeek research it seems that those schools that use it aren't having a great time with support and find the software unintuitive to the point of it being unusable. Is this still the case?

 

We've just had it installed and staff are getting on with it OK. Support has been top notch so far. Also, don't take the requirements document as gospel - there are some bits missing (software requirements, eg. Office on the client machines).

It's been marketed to our SBM as a 'cloud' solution, but from the doc that I've been handed, 'cloud' is a term used very loosely. Looks like it's just a conventional Windows server hosted by them and presumably RDPd into by Finance.

 

Yes, that is how their "cloud" offering works. We have it hosted internally, and use it in the same way - RDS server with the client on and all our finance team use that environment.

I also don't like the idea of having outdated, unintuitive and difficult to manage clients installed on Finance's PCs! Had enough messing around with INIs via Capita thanks very much

 

No need to. Just use RDS. A single machine to keep up to date then.

Has anybody who was considering PS gone with HCSS? It seems a much better option from my perspective, but the decision will ultimately come down to whether the solutions can meet our finance requirements.

 

We have gone with HCSS for budgeting only. The accounting package is just not mature enough yet - a lot of features are "coming soon" but not there.

[Meldrew]

My main beef with PSF is myPortal that users use to enter orders (via a browser). Is just awful. We have kept with paper orders as it is just too bad to roll out to staff generally. It has no input validation, so forget to enter a field - the order is just lost in the aether. Want to enter an order which has item with longer description than 30 characters - nope. You've got to put something in, add the line to the order, then go back to it and add a proper description. Want to search for an order - you get a big list with no information about which order is which, so you have to click each order to see if its the right one. But the best bit, when you click the back button from each order, it takes you back, not to your search list, but the search query window, so you have to do your search again from scratch and try to remember which order you clicked on last time and look at the next in the list. Just terrible.

 

The desktop client, looks generally okay, but I've not used it very much at all.

 

Meldrew

[localzuk]

We have noticed an issue with the myPortal thing - attaching files, it doesn't accept .tif files, only .tiff...

 

Actually, that's something odd about the whole system - they only accept TIFF and JPG files as scans/attachments, no PDFs. That irks me somewhat.

[Michael]

I've been involved in a similar project recently and the Trust went with Sage Edu. It's all cloud based and I know cost was a huge plus in its favour.

[minivanman]

Hi Meldrew - we are not having the problems you describe. Validation seems to work for us - supplier, account, cost centre, vat code, catalogue code etc, as does extra long descriptions, etc.

We have had a recent implementation so perhaps we are on a newer version and also have just had training so its all fresh in everybodies mind which probably helps.

Perhaps the best thing would be to talk to PSF and see if they can help you.

 

Hi Localzuk - we also don't appear to have problems with PDFs etc, as with Meldrew perhaps the best thing is to speak to PSF. I know that PSF had to do some work with UNC paths to allow users to upload and view documents when using the HTTPS.

[localzuk]

I have the document in front of me for scanning requirements and it says Tiff or JPG at 300bits. The installation engineer specifically told me no pdfs...

[snagrat]

Pdfs ok here

[dry]

Thanks for the replies so far. A lot to mull over!

 

I'll mention Sage Edu as at the moment our business manager is still working out what solutions are available.

[localzuk]

Pdfs ok here

Kinda not my point. PS Financials documentation and their engineers have specifically said for us not to use them. If they somehow work, that's great, but at the first sign of an issue we'd not have any support because we'd be using an unsupported file format.

[Meldrew]

Hi Meldrew - we are not having the problems you describe. Validation seems to work for us - supplier, account, cost centre, vat code, catalogue code etc, as does extra long descriptions, etc.

We have had a recent implementation so perhaps we are on a newer version and also have just had training so its all fresh in everybodies mind which probably helps.

Perhaps the best thing would be to talk to PSF and see if they can help you.

 

Hi Localzuk - we also don't appear to have problems with PDFs etc, as with Meldrew perhaps the best thing is to speak to PSF. I know that PSF had to do some work with UNC paths to allow users to upload and view documents when using the HTTPS.

 

We've had ours installed since January 2016 and there is supposed to be an upgrade coming soon, so fingers crossed the MyPortal will be much improved.

 

Meldrew