Farncombe Estate

Following a series of calls between FormusPro and Farncombe Estate, it was established that, given their timescale, a minimum viable product (MVP) approach would be required.

Farncombe consists of two companies, Life and Estate. The ability to manage intercompany transactions was a key aspect of the solution.

Farncombe also needed to record costs against their profit centers (hotels) for reporting, it was decided to use Allocations to satisfy this requirement.

General Ledger Allocations, introduced in Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central 2023 Wave 2, enhances the efficiency of distributing costs and revenues across various accounts and dimensions.

Farncombe uses several 3^rd party tools to operate their business. Hart, a property management system, Procure Wizard, a purchasing management system and PLEO, a credit card receipts system and MoorePay a payroll solution. These were all integrated into Business Central, with an interface using Excel file imports, allowing Farncombe to seamlessly allocate sales and costs between profit centers (hotels), something that was very important to them.

FormusPro would deploy Dynamics 365 Business Central SaaS (cloud) and given the MVP requirement, no third party addons would be in scope for the first part of the project.

Objectives: The primary objective of the implementation of Business Central was to replace their existing system (Sage200), thus creating efficiencies across multiple areas.

Other objectives and key success criteria included:

• Allow for clear and accurate budgeting and forecasting
• Slim down their Chart of Accounts
• Simplify and automate reporting including USALI/Analytics reports
• Negate ‘off system’ processes i.e., spreadsheets.
• Join up their financial reporting whilst avoiding manual workarounds.
• Integrate with 3^rd party tools (non-Microsoft) with the ability to import data.
• Microsoft Excel Integration to allow for faster data input.

Solution: FormusPro deployed D365 Business Central, including the Financial Management module, the Purchase & Accounts Payable module, the Sales Order & Accounts receivable module and of course Microsoft’s inbuilt security features to secure the entire project.