SIMS Alternatives - Finance Options

[foofighterjim]

I'm currently reviewing our options regarding MIS providers and I have made initial enquiries with Arbor, Bromcom and ISAMS, one thing that has been brought up are the finance options that each provides (or doesn't). Our bursar is currently using FMS in conjunction with Access (Education Finance Software | School Accounting | Access (theaccessgroup.com)) for various aspects including budgeting.

 

What I would like to know is, what finance package are other schools using once they have moved to one of the aforementioned MIS systems? I would be particularly interested to hear from state / independent secondary schools, especially if they fall under Birmingham LA. All thoughts and opinions are more than welcome though.

[psydii]

Access for the whole finance piece. Though we are a SIMS school for the foreseeable.

[foofighterjim]

Access for the whole finance piece. Though we are a SIMS school for the foreseeable.

 

That is very interesting to know, thank you, that is already a big help. Out of interest, what type of establishment are you working for?

[psydii]

Large secondary in an LA.

[CHiLL]

When we looked at moving away from SIMS a few years ago, we were told by the council that we had to use FMS to process the paperwork in the correct way, since they also use FMS. If we couldn't process things like orders, reconcilations, etc in a way that they could access in FMS, they would refuse to accept it. If you're an academy, you can do what you want. But if you have to use Birmingham Council, it's FMS only. At least that was the case a few years ago, but we haven't been made aware that their stance has changed on that.

[foofighterjim]

When we looked at moving away from SIMS a few years ago, we were told by the council that we had to use FMS to process the paperwork in the correct way, since they also use FMS. If we couldn't process things like orders, reconcilations, etc in a way that they could access in FMS, they would refuse to accept it. If you're an academy, you can do what you want. But if you have to use Birmingham Council, it's FMS only. At least that was the case a few years ago, but we haven't been made aware that their stance has changed on that.

 

Thanks, this hasn't come up in my discussions with our Bursar so I will add it to the list of things to check. I can't imagine they would still get away with this stance now though.

[Gazdeth]

Same from Barnsley LA, Sims is getting re-licensed in April, warned schools if they picked something different than FMS then its on them to make sure they can submit the correct returns in the correct format. Basically half arsed threat to stay put.

[GVaughan]

Afternoon All,

 

My name is Gerald and I work for Bromcom and have been doing a lot of work recently within the Birmingham area. I can confirm that since last April we carried out further development for LA payments with one specifically being Birmingham City Council which is great as previously this was only possible when using SIMS or CMIS. Since we have made this development we've onboarded serveral schools who required this and are using it well.

 

Many thanks,

Gerald

Edited February 2, 2022 by GVaughan

[pete]

We're using Sage 200.

 

As a budget holder, it's rather annoying (permissions aren't granular enough to provide decent reporting within the application and reports exported from Sage are poorly formatted). The finance dept quite like it though.

 

They're gone through FMS > Corero > Sage 200 and Sage is closest to the ideal that they've got.

[foofighterjim]

Thanks for the feedback so far.

@GVaughan thank you, I'll make a note of this.

[TechMonkey]

There is AIQ which have a school specific solution. I'm pretty sure iFinance from iSAMS is this rebadged and tweaked to fit in with iSAMS. I've not used the unbadged version, our Accounts team seemed to get on with the iSAMS version with very little input from the IT Department.