--- title: A finance leader’s guide to iFinance and iSAMS Central | iSAMS description: For finance directors, bursars and business managers at independent and international schools — accounting, fee billing and real-time financial intelligence in one connected platform. --- [Skip to content](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#main) Inside this guide 1. [The pressure on finance leaders](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#about) 2. [Built for education finance](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#built) 3. [Secure, controlled processes](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#secure) 4. [Flexible fee billing](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#billing) 5. [Automation to month-end](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#automation) 6. [Full accounting and reporting](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#accounting) 7. [One source of truth](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#integration) 8. [iSAMS Central](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#central) 9. [Migration](https://info.isams.com/ifinance-migration-guide-lp2#migration) **1**/10 About this guide ![Two school business staff reviewing figures together at a desk](https://info.isams.com/hs-fs/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP2/hero.jpg?width=1600&height=686&name=hero.jpg) ![iSAMS](https://info.isams.com/hubfs/isams-logo-white.svg) # A finance leader’s guide to iFinance and iSAMS Central For finance directors, bursars, and business managers at independent and international schools. 8 chapters iFinance used by 350+ schools worldwide Research from 100 school bursars ## The pressure on school finance leaders has never been greater Finance directors, bursars, and business managers at independent and international schools are asked for sharper, faster financial insight, with leaner teams and tighter margins. Senior leadership expect it and governors ask for it. Many school finance teams still work across disconnected systems – reports run in one platform, fee billing sits in another, and spreadsheets hold the two together. The result is duplicated effort and decisions based on data that can quickly become out of date. Risk adds to the pressure. As Ian Mackie, Deputy Head of Operations at The Glasgow Academy, put it: the implications of a finance system that doesn’t work are severe for a school that depends on fee income to fund everything it does. ![A school finance lead working through figures at a desk](https://info.isams.com/hs-fs/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP2/ch-pressure.jpg?width=1600&height=1067&name=ch-pressure.jpg) ![iFinance](https://info.isams.com/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP/ifinance-logo.svg) **iFinance** is school finance software designed for independent and international schools, not a generic accounting platform adapted for education. Paired with iSAMS Central and SchoolsBI, it helps finance leaders cut manual work, rely on a single source of truth, and see financial performance clearly. [Book a demo](https://info.isams.com/book-a-demo-finance-guide?hsLang=en) CHAPTER 1 ## Built for education finance teams Most accounting platforms are built for businesses: designed for standard invoicing, general ledger management, and commercial reporting. iFinance is school finance software, designed around the operational and reporting needs of independent and international schools. School finance asks for more. Tuition fees are split across multiple bill payers, income is tracked at student level, reporting runs across entities, and finance has to line up with your school management software. Generic accounting software wasn’t built for that. iFinance is cloud-based accounting software for schools, with fee-billing built in. It integrates directly with iSAMS school management software, so finance teams don’t need to rekey data between their finance and school management systems. ![iFinance](https://info.isams.com/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP/ifinance-logo.svg) 2018 Launched **Integration was at its core from the start.** The aim was for finance teams to never duplicate data entry, whether for fee billing, parent and student details, or invoice data moving between systems. That principle still shapes the product today. More than 350 schools now use iFinance for accounting, fee billing, and reporting in one platform. [Book a demo](https://info.isams.com/book-a-demo-finance-guide?hsLang=en) CHAPTER 2 ## Secure, controlled finance processes from invoice to audit trail School finance teams protect families, income, and trust, as well as managing transactions. Fee fraud isn’t a hypothetical risk – it’s already happening to schools like yours, and the financial and reputational cost lands on families as much as the school itself. IRIS Education’s research of 100 UK independent school bursars found that where a scam succeeded, parents lost an average of £3,200 – and the risk sits in the gaps: emailed invoices, untracked bank transfers, and manual payment matching. ### What the research found Had experienced a fee-fraud attempt in the past five years100% Weren’t confident their fee-collection process was secure37% Reported losses of between £5,000 and £10,00019% [IRIS Education research with 100 UK independent school bursars](https://www.iris.co.uk/news/fake-fee-requests-con-parents-out-of-thousands-iris-education-research/). The risk sits in the gaps: emailed invoices, untracked bank transfers, manual payment matching, disconnected records, and unclear approval routes. Secure portal-based processes close several of them by giving families a clear route to pay and finance teams a complete record of what happened, when, and by whom. Invoices are published through the Parent Portal, payment histories sit in one place, workflows prevent inappropriate approvals, and user permissions give budget holders, auditors, and approvers the access they need without opening up the wider finance system. The result is clearer accountability and more confidence in fee collection. > The feature I’ve found most valuable while working at West Buckland School in iFinance is the ability to have different types of users – especially when our auditors come in. Sophia Williams · Finance Lead, West Buckland School [Book a demo](https://info.isams.com/book-a-demo-finance-guide?hsLang=en) CHAPTER 3 ## Flexible fee billing, built around how schools actually work Fee billing in schools is rarely straightforward, and school fee billing software has to cope with that. iFinance generates bills and charges for applicants, current students, and alumni. It handles split billing across multiple bill payers, assigns single, multiple, and recurring charges, and publishes invoices to the Parent Portal, where parents can see their full payment history and pay securely online. Student, parent, and invoicing data stays in sync with iSAMS. An address change, a new contact number, or a name amendment made in iSAMS flows through to iFinance, so there’s one source of truth across the platform. You also control when applicants enter the billing cycle, so you’re only billing the right people at the right stage – for example, when a deposit is paid or when a place is confirmed. ![A member of school finance staff working through invoices at a desk](https://info.isams.com/hs-fs/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP2/ch-billing.jpg?width=1600&height=1067&name=ch-billing.jpg) ### Fee rules and automation: linking charges to your iSAMS data Fee rules in iFinance link directly to your iSAMS data. If a senior tuition fee applies to every student in years 7 through to 11, you build the rule once. After that, a single action assigns the correct charges across those year groups. If a student moves boarding house, or changes bus route, the system flags the change and shows which charges need updating, so nothing slips through the gaps. Scholarship registers, fee remissions, bursary awards, and other recurring adjustments are logged and managed in the system. That removes the need for spreadsheets kept outside the platform. > It made sense to implement iFinance. We wanted synergy between our systems, a cloud-based solution, and the ability to draw on the data already in our MIS within the finance department. iFinance ticked those boxes. Cathy Tilly · Assistant Director of Finance, Latymer Upper School [Book a demo](https://info.isams.com/book-a-demo-finance-guide?hsLang=en) CHAPTER 4 ## Automation from billing run to month-end Deferred income journals take time every month for schools producing management accounts. iFinance automates them. 1. ### Revenue recognition and deferred income: automated from day one You mark fees and extras as advance or arrears charges when you set them up. When a billing run completes, the system calculates and posts the revenue recognition journals across the relevant periods. Whether you spread fees over four months, three terms, or another pattern, the journals post without manual intervention. When auditors or senior leaders drill into the nominal ledger, they see properly periodised data – not figures adjusted manually in a spreadsheet afterwards. 2. ### Auto debits: a truly paperless collections process iSAMS Auto Debits brings Direct Debit collection into iSAMS Fee Billing, with receipts posted straight into iFinance. It’s built for UK Direct Debit collections and replaces paper-based mandate processes. Parents can sign up online through a mandate link, or a member of staff can complete the mandate by phone on a parent’s behalf. Automated checks verify bank details at the point of entry, which reduces errors before a single payment is collected. Once a mandate is in place, you can submit collections to the provider automatically or manually, depending on your school’s preference. Status updates show which collections succeeded and which were rejected, and problem mandates, such as a payer cancelling or a rejected submission, are managed in iSAMS. Receipts post into iFinance and are allocated against the relevant invoice and payer account, with no extra manual steps. The result is a complete, paperless payment cycle – from mandate sign-up to reconciliation. 3. ### AP Inbox: paperless accounts payable The Accounts Payable (AP) Inbox uses optical character recognition (OCR) to read incoming purchase invoices. It extracts supplier details, invoice numbers, dates, and amounts, flags duplicates and identifies currencies. It also links to purchase orders, which speeds up document matching. You get less manual data entry and fewer errors. Documents that aren’t invoices, such as statements, brochures, and correspondence, are routed for review, so nothing inappropriate enters the accounts. The AP Inbox is included in the core iFinance licence, so there’s no bolt-on to buy. 4. ### Workflow and purchase order approval iFinance workflow approval lets schools build purchase order and invoice approval routes that match how their teams work. POs and invoices route automatically for approval before they post to the accounting system. You can set multiple layers of approvers, threshold-based rules, and automatic redirection when an approver is unavailable. Budget holders outside the finance team can see live budget status and approve documents in the system or through the mobile app without being full system users. The system stops approvers from authorising their own documents, which keeps duties properly separated. At every stage, an audit trail records who approved what, when, and any notes attached to the decision. [Book a demo](https://info.isams.com/book-a-demo-finance-guide?hsLang=en) CHAPTER 5 ## Full accounting, with 300+ built-in reports At the core of iFinance is a full accounting engine with multi-currency support, recurring invoicing, accruals, and prepayments, and a full general ledger. More than 300 built-in reports cover cash and bank positions, purchase analysis, sales, fixed assets, tax, and extended business analysis. You can also build and save custom reports to fit your school’s requirements. Reports drill down to transaction level and export to Word, PDF, or Excel. For groups with existing management reporting in Excel, the iFinance Excel Add-In maps live data into existing reporting packs, giving finance teams continuity while they get used to the wider platform. For schools that want iFinance data in Power BI, OData feeds pull exactly the data you choose into your own analytics environment, with access controlled by user. For leadership reporting beyond the finance function, SchoolsBI provides education-focused dashboards built on Microsoft Power BI. As an iSAMS partner, it covers areas such as academic performance, attendance, pastoral trends, and operational reporting. Finance leaders can use it alongside iFinance and iSAMS Central to put financial reporting in the same conversation as the rest of school performance. ![A finance team member reviewing printed reports beside a laptop](https://info.isams.com/hs-fs/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP2/ch-accounting.jpg?width=1600&height=1067&name=ch-accounting.jpg) ### GL Explorer and Transaction Browser: the unsung heroes GL Explorer and Transaction Browser let finance staff customise what they see on screen and drill into any transaction by student name, user, date range, transaction type, or nominal code. From any figure, you can click through to the underlying transaction, the original document, the approval history, and the audit trail. A blue flag marks any transaction that has been amended, showing what changed, when, and by whom. That transparency matters most at audit time. > If I want to look at last year compared to this year, I can do that so quickly. It’s really made my reporting life much easier. Fiona Sanders-Hewett · Chief Financial Officer and Deputy COO, King’s Ely ### Bank reconciliation and live bank feeds Live bank feeds connect to your school’s bank accounts and update four times a day. You can trigger a manual sync at any time. iFinance auto-matches incoming transactions against outstanding invoices and payments, and when it learns how a recurring unmatched payment should be treated, it remembers that for future reconciliations. Auto debits and online payments are matched as they arrive. ### Fixed asset register, expenses capture, and group consolidation All school and group assets sit in a single database, with automated depreciation journals, linked lease records, scheduled maintenance dates, and CapEx forecasting. Fixed asset schedules are generated for auditors, which makes year-end simpler. Staff can submit expense claims from a smartphone, with photo receipts and Google Maps mileage. Claims post to the finance ledger automatically once approved. For school groups, iFinance supports monthly consolidations across different entities, currencies, and account structures, with consolidated results available in real time. [Book a demo](https://info.isams.com/book-a-demo-finance-guide?hsLang=en) CHAPTER 6 ## One source of truth: iFinance and iSAMS working as one The biggest benefit of iFinance shows up when it’s connected to iSAMS. The two share a single integrated environment, so data flows directly between them. Parent details, student records, and admissions data are current in both systems. Invoice documents generated in fee billing can be opened from the nominal ledger and the sales ledger in iFinance, so auditors don’t need access to the fee billing module to verify transactions. The integration was a key factor in The Glasgow Academy’s decision to adopt iFinance alongside iSAMS. With the two systems sharing data, the school cleared years of discrepancies between separate datasets, and in its own assessment, the effect on staff time was significant. ![Two school staff members reviewing information together on a tablet](https://info.isams.com/hs-fs/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP2/ch-integration.jpg?width=1600&height=1067&name=ch-integration.jpg) > To have iSAMS talking to iFinance and to be sharing the data, as opposed to having two different sets of data, has really helped to clean up our data. Ian Mackie · Deputy Head of Operations, The Glasgow Academy Bellevue Education Group operates 12 independent schools across the UK, Switzerland, and Qatar. It needed a consolidated, multi-currency accounting platform, and the combination of iSAMS and iFinance delivered one that the other systems it evaluated couldn’t match. The fee billing run, previously a time-intensive process, became much more efficient after integration. [Book a demo](https://info.isams.com/book-a-demo-finance-guide?hsLang=en) > The integration of iFinance with iSAMS’ core MIS gives us a much slicker process than we had for billing, and the fee run is so much easier. It cuts down our processing time enormously. Tim Carey-Yard · Finance and Operations Director, Bellevue Education Group CHAPTER 7 ## iSAMS Central: see the whole picture iFinance helps schools manage their finances and iSAMS Central turns that data into insight for finance leaders, senior leadership teams, and governors. Central is the iSAMS analytics platform, built on Microsoft Power BI and hosted in Azure. It pulls directly from your iSAMS data, including iFinance and Fee Billing data, to give school leaders real-time dashboards. Where traditional reporting shows what happened, Central helps you understand why. Schools that need more advanced or tailored reporting can use SchoolsBI alongside Central. SchoolsBI is an iSAMS partner whose education-focused Power BI dashboards cover areas such as academic performance, attendance, pastoral trends, and operational reporting. Together, the two give leadership teams a connected reporting environment for evidence-based decisions. Central’s operations, HR, and finance dashboard is built for the business side of school leadership. It brings staffing data and financial metrics together to help finance leaders and senior teams manage operational risk and school resources. ![School leaders reviewing dashboard data together in a meeting](https://info.isams.com/hs-fs/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP2/ch-central.jpg?width=1600&height=1067&name=ch-central.jpg) ### What finance leaders can see in Central - **Fee billing and income data**Fee charge data across your student population, so you can track income trends, outstanding balances, and billing cycle performance. For groups with multiple entities, this data can be viewed on a consolidated basis. - **Income and expenditure against budget**Income and expenditure against budget across departments, cost centres, and time periods, so you spot variances early, instead of finding them in the monthly management accounts pack. - **Budget holder performance**Budget commitments compared with actual spend by department and cost code, which gives senior leaders oversight without questioning individual budget holders. - **Operational and financial risk**Staffing data combined with financial metrics, which shows where operational and financial risks overlap and supports joined-up decision-making at board level. ### AI-powered reporting Finance leaders often need a view that no pre-built dashboard offers. Central’s Q&A feature lets you type a prompt and builds the visual from your own live data. You can view the result, adjust it, and save it for repeated use. ### Historical data for long-term planning Central stores historical data across key metrics, so finance leaders can spot long-term trends rather than relying on point-in-time snapshots. That helps with fee income modelling, budget planning, and presenting multi-year financial performance to governors or board members. ### Macro and micro – on your terms Whether you need a whole-school overview for a board meeting or a department-level breakdown for a budget review, Central adjusts to the level of detail you need. Permissions control what each user can see, so you can share the right data with governors, heads of department, or external stakeholders. [Book a demo](https://info.isams.com/book-a-demo-finance-guide?hsLang=en) CHAPTER 8 ## Migration: a structured and supported process Concern about disruption makes many finance teams delay a move to a new accounting system. Moving to iFinance is a structured, supported process, and schools tell us it’s more straightforward than they expected. A good migration starts before the first data workbook is completed. It starts with being clear about what causes friction today: reporting that takes too long, billing that relies on paper or spreadsheets, data that gets rekeyed, support that’s harder to reach, and manual checks that carry risks. Discovery is also where you decide what changes and what stays familiar. Some approvals, reporting habits, calendar checkpoints, or governance routines may already work well. Keep those and move the processes that benefit into a more connected, controlled environment. Change management matters. Successful projects usually have a clear internal lead with authority to make decisions, visible support from senior leadership, and early communication with the people who’ll feel the change day to day – from finance colleagues and budget holders to governors and, where relevant, parents. ![A bursar working at a laptop in a school office](https://info.isams.com/hs-fs/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP2/ch-migration.jpg?width=1600&height=1067&name=ch-migration.jpg) > We moved to iFinance when we in-sourced our finance from another school, so we didn’t actually have our own system – it was like starting from scratch. We were already using iSAMS, so the way iFinance integrated with iSAMS was really helpful for us. It looked quite straightforward, and I got a lot of confidence from the team about the migration process. Cara Demetriades · Bursar, St John’s School ### A clear sequence, with a dedicated Project Manager Every school is assigned a dedicated Project Manager for the duration of the implementation. The process follows six stages: 1. **Company and bank account setup** 2. **Chart of accounts and budget code configuration** 3. **Supplier and customer data import** 4. **Fee billing integration with the iSAMS school management software** 5. **Open balance testing and sign-off** 6. **Training and go-live** Within those stages, the work happens in manageable steps. Schools typically map their coding structure, test data imports, validate opening balances, rehearse billing and reporting processes, train the team, and then go live. Site visits, peer conversations, and access to a test environment help teams see how their own data will behave before the new system becomes business as usual. Timelines flex. Recent iFinance migration work shows that the right timeline depends on what the finance team can absorb. Some schools can start as soon as the groundwork is clear, while others need a longer runway to protect business-as-usual work, test reporting thoroughly, and fit the project around fee billing, year-end, holidays, and other pressure points. Preparation matters more than speed. Dedicate real resource to the project, understand how your current data links together, bring practical questions before implementation, and make sure training uses your school’s own scenarios rather than a generic software walkthrough. The biggest upfront decision is how to structure your nominal accounts and analysis codes, which in practice means deciding how you want your reports to work. This is where your Project Manager helps most, configuring iFinance around your school’s reporting needs, rather than a generic default setup. > It’s changed our control and the amount of our productivity hugely. What would have taken me a day now takes me probably half an hour. Gillian · Bursar, Wesley College Dublin 1,800+schools and groups globally are supported by iSAMS 350+schools using iFinance You won’t be doing it alone. iSAMS by IRIS supports more than 1,800 schools and groups globally, and more than 350 schools use iFinance. Schools with similar reporting needs, calendar pressures, and finance-team capacity challenges have made this move before you. ![](https://info.isams.com/hs-fs/hubfs/iFinance%20Migration%20Guide%20LP2/cta.jpg?width=1600&height=686&name=cta.jpg) ## Ready to create a more connected approach to finance? See how iFinance, iSAMS Central, and SchoolsBI can cut manual work, give you clearer visibility, and support better decisions across your school. Book a personalised demo or talk to our team about migration. 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