Basildon Borough Council selects MRI to help manage its £600 million asset base and over 130 leases
MRI Software’s capital and lease accounting solution assists with IFRS compliance, comprehensive reporting and increased efficiencies
Basildon Borough Council, a local authority which provides a variety of services to the residents of Basildon, Billericay and Wickford, including housing, legal services and leisure facilities, has selected MRI Software’s capital and lease accounting software to improve the efficiency and accuracy of its asset tracking and lease management.
Basildon has over £600 million assets and more than £35 million of leases, all of which must be managed in line with IFRS compliance. MRI’s capital and lease accounting solution will provide Basildon with systems to facilitate comprehensive tracking, monitoring and reporting of each asset and lease within its portfolio.
The lease accounting module in particular will play an important part in monitoring the Council’s finance leases, with all finance leases required to be placed as an asset on the balance sheet and reported on at the end of the year. It facilitates this in an efficient, simple to use system that eliminates the errors of multiple users and outdated reporting styles.
The capital accounting module, which replaced a disparate spreadsheet based system and is used alongside the Council’s Integra finance solution, provides a centralised and fully automated means of accurately storing and managing all fixed asset data, controlling each asset at component level and providing highly accurate and reliable depreciation calculations.
Tony Foucher, Group Accountant, Basildon Borough Council, comments, “In an organisation such as ours, with as many assets and leases as we have, it makes it very difficult to effectively record and monitor the whole asset base. The combined solutions from MRI move us forward leaps and bounds in our recording and reporting processes, providing us with a system that allows for flexibility, increases efficiency and makes us compliant in our reporting.”
Basildon Borough Council was previously reporting its large volume of asset and lease data at the end of the year. However, since implementing MRI’s solution the Council has been able to amend the data and records in real-time, making it easier and far more time efficient when it comes to the end of year reports.
It is key for organisations in the Public Sector to ensure they are doing all they can to future-proof their business and processes through the use of solutions such as MRI’s that provide full compliance, reporting and increased efficiencies.
Foucher, concludes, “MRI has provided us with an extremely efficient and effective solution that has helped to streamline our reporting and future-proof our organisation for impending changes in compliance processes. We are extremely impressed by MRI’s desire to continually adopt customer feedback and enhance the systems accordingly. We are very happy with the relationship we have with MRI and the solutions it provides.”
