Recommended Finance System For Primary Schools

[discoveranother]

Hi all,

 

Our schools use the SIMS \ FMS via the local authority.

 

I'd like to try and get schools to move away from this to a cloud-based system. I am aware of Scholarpak and Bromcom.

 

I don't use the packages myself but had a demo of Bromcom several months ago to check it out before mentioning to our schools. The webinar was impressive. However, recently obtained costs from Bromcom and they just seemed too expensive. For example, one school currently pays £4,490 for SIMS \FMS, T2P and CPoms. If they went with Bromcom it would cost £8,001 for the first year and £3,901 for each year after that. I was very disappointed considering Bromcom said they could price match.

 

What do others on here please recommend for Cloud-based finance and costs ?

 

Thanks all

[TechMonkey]

I don't know what the first year cost covers, but any new MIS you migrate to is going to be costly up front. You can't compare first year costs to your current costs. Training, migration costs, setup costs all add up. It's interesting first year costs are over double, but I have no idea what that covers. Ask Capita for a quote for if you were setting up from scratch, and compare that.

 

Looking at your ongoing costs and the new ones, you are saving money and I bet that is not a like for like, with SIMS having less. But again, not sure what the quote includes. You could speak to iSAMS, but I predict that will be either equivalent or more than the SIMS costs.

 

Factor in how much time a better, web based MIS will save, and the costs are massively different.

[discoveranother]

I don't know what the first year cost covers, but any new MIS you migrate to is going to be costly up front. You can't compare first year costs to your current costs. Training, migration costs, setup costs all add up. It's interesting first year costs are over double, but I have no idea what that covers. Ask Capita for a quote for if you were setting up from scratch, and compare that.

 

Looking at your ongoing costs and the new ones, you are saving money and I bet that is not a like for like, with SIMS having less. But again, not sure what the quote includes. You could speak to iSAMS, but I predict that will be either equivalent or more than the SIMS costs.

 

Factor in how much time a better, web based MIS will save, and the costs are massively different.

 

Thanks for the response.

 

The downside is that it's going to take the school around 7 years until they break even current price compared to Bromcoms price.

[TechMonkey]

But what about the initial install cost for SIMS? You aren't comparing Apples and Oranges. Take the setup costs out, they are a one off project expense. They are an "are we willing to spend this much to improve our processes and user experience" cost.

 

Also, does that include any features available in Bromcom that SIMS doesn't have or you have to have a third party for? Does it offset any other costs? Not needing SQL onsite? Less hardware needed? Then, as I mentioned, user time, the ability to use Bromcom from home, or any device.

 

£4,490 for SIMS compared to £3,901 for Bromcom is an annual saving.

[czedlik]

Hello

 

My School used before FMS Capita... We did was happy then we are change for Sage 200 Cloude.

The price for the setup: 5.3 k punds.

The price for coste per year is 3 k pound for 2 school primary.

 

Staff at the moment is more happy becouse they don't need to use VPN to working from home and much faster.

[slugshead]

Our finance team are moving from Sage200 to iFinance by the iSAMS guys

[trekmad]

Hi Slugshead. Would you be willing to share your experience of moving to iFinance with our accounts team?

[Alex0x7F]

We've transitioned over the last couple years from SIMS and Sage local server, to ScholarPack (fantastic for primary!) and Sage 200 Cloud. Made life much easier for our admin staff.