Better BACS at a better cost, with no downsides

“
“Everybody’s found the system so easy to use. It’s so quick, it’s so slick, nobody has any issues. On the odd occasion we need help, like when we ran into something at 4pm on a Friday, it’s picked up and dealt with just like that. From start to finish, it’s been very informative, and been kept up to date with what’s going on. It’s a very user-friendly system and it’s a lot cheaper than what we were paying.”

Finance Manager, UK Police Force

Looking to find a more economic way to run multiple large scale BACS payrolls, without losing any of the functionality or reliability, a UK Police Force turned to AccessPay for its simplicity of use and transparent pricing.

The Challenge

The Police Force administers a weekly BACS run every Thursday for its suppliers, and 3x BACS payrolls during the month – one for police, one for staff, and one for pensioners. With 2500 employees and 4000 including pensions, keeping a streamlined workload and sensible cost structure is crucial to the force’s capacity.

But with its legacy finance platform, incumbent for more than a decade, there were both price and process concerns.

“The old way we used to do it, I could never remember the path to get my reports. I had to write it down and figure it out each time. And every Thursday, BACS was one of those jobs where people used to think ‘Oh God, do I have to do that?’”

A whole new world of BACS simplicity

bacs-payrolls-uk-police-force-case-study-image-1

 

“Now, I click reports, and it’s there. It’s so, so quick. I would recommend it to anybody. BACS used to be an onerous task, it’s just so quick and easy. I literally click three buttons. It’s very very simple. Now people are volunteering to do it on Thursdays. It’s literally two minutes.”

AccessPay’s simple and streamlined interface was built with users in mind, from Treasury Managers to Payroll Assistants. Designed with a pick up and play mentality, its intuitive process is quick and easy to learn, saving users time which they can use to focus on more critical tasks instead.

At a fraction of the price

Making regular payments to more than 4000 employees and pensioners, plus suppliers, the costs can quickly rack up for a customer using a cost-by-transaction model. AccessPay’s flat fee structure makes it a cost-effective option for organisations of any size and any transaction volume.

“I think we’ve been with AccessPay for 4 or 5 years now. The savings are significant, we’re not talking about a couple of hundred pounds. They were significant a couple of years ago, I wouldn’t like to think what it would be now! And when we saw the AccessPay pitch, sometimes you think that’s too good to be true and they can’t deliver, but hand on heart you really did deliver, and the savings were really significant. Our previous supplier just couldn’t compete on price.”

With no sacrifice on security

As a police force, they have very stringent information security requirements. Any financial platform looking to work with the force needs to demonstrate its dedication to keeping personal details safe at a level much higher than the general demands of other customers. And as a public sector organisation, moving suppliers alongside simultaneously moving to the cloud, comes with more than a little reluctance.

“To even entertain the idea of moving to the cloud and AccessPay, there are processes and documents that have to be filled in by yourselves. And all that came back, all ticked, all complete. All the security aspects were fulfilled and evidence. It was a no-brainer, basically. And it was done very very quickly, with a seamless switchover experience.”

Read more about AccessPay’s better BACS solution.