Industry
Education
HQ
London
Employees
8
Key benefits
Removal of petty cash, Spend visibility, Easy expense management
Dania school uses Soldo to reduce overspend and simplify expenses for staff and volunteers.
Education
London
8
Removal of petty cash, Spend visibility, Easy expense management
Dania School is a small independent preschool and primary school in North London. The cohort of 35 to 40 pupils is looked after by a permanent staff of eight teachers. This is the story of how they transformed expense management with Soldo.
Many aspects of Dania School are run by employed staff, but some are carried out by volunteers – often parents of children at the school. Peter Melbye, Chair of Governors at Dania School, outlines the challenge this presented.
“We needed a way to manage the petty cash and discretionary expenses required for the daily running of the school, without burdening staff and volunteers with paperwork.”
The answer was Soldo. By giving volunteers and staff prepaid cards with built-in budgets and rules, Dania School solved the issue of money management. The Soldo mobile app makes it easy for the team to capture and report expenses. And the administrative team gets control and visibility over all costs.
Staff and volunteers are put in charge of an expense category in the school’s budget, spending their budget using Soldo. Peter describes the straightforward process:
“A transfer is made from the school’s bank account to each Soldo account on a monthly basis, and the amount transferred is equivalent to what has been allocated in our budget.”
Expenses are easier too, Peter continues:
“The app allows staff to track their spend against budget and they can also take photos of the receipt or other supporting paperwork relating to the purchases they make. Since Soldo is integrated with Xero, our bookkeeping is also more automated.”
Since adopting Soldo, spending on discretionary operational expenses is tracking at or below budget. It’s a clear contrast to the status quo before Soldo. Peter mentions,
“Previously, we had frequent overspend on operational expenses because our staff did not have real-time visibility of where they were with their budgets.”
But now, along with reduced overspending, record-keeping is improving:
“We also have fewer instances where supporting paperwork is missing, and senior managers’ time is not spent constantly approving daily spend that is needed for the school to operate smoothly.”
And it’s not just the team at Dania Schools who are impressed by Soldo. Peter says,
“Our accountants are also pleased with the solution because they spend less time on manual bookkeeping.”