Listening to customers and designing to specification has made Universal Homes unique in its industry of building homes and creating lifestyles. A recently implemented financial system - Greentree - is playing its part in strengthening this business.

“As we were previously producing reports manually in Excel; aesthetically there’s very little difference in how our reports look, but behind the scenes to produce the report we have a new-found flexibility!”

Prior to 1997, Universal Homes used a customised building based software package on an AS/400 IBM mainframe system. “The software would take you to a point of trial balance, but that was the limit of the financial reporting. There was no possibility of exporting data,” says Rachel Yovich, financial accountant for Universal Homes.

Critical decision

In February 1997, with a change of ownership in the parent company, Universal Homes was free to source systems that would better suit their operations. “A project costing package was our core requirement, alongside a totally integrated, year 2000 compliant financial system,” says financial controller, Debbie Landale. “With our RFI in the market, Cardinal Group presented two solutions in conjunction - Greentree and Workbench (a project management system developed by Task Management).

It was critical to Universal Homes that both systems be developed in the same language, to avoid interface problems and it be a modern language, easy to use such as JADE. Other advantages of it being JADE-based was the fact that it was a modern language and the ease of use. Universal Homes Ltd reviewed five other systems, including SAP, Navision and Soloman, but the successful integration between the Greentree and Workbench systems was the deciding factor.

“With our end of financial year in December and annual audit due in January, it was critical the system went live on December 1,”says Rachel. “However, we wanted to allow time for the system to settle in, so decided to become a beta site in October 1998 to be assured of the system’s integrity.”

As New Zealand’s first Greentree beta site, Universal Homes purchased all the released modules of the Greentree financial package. “As a beta site we had the benefit of providing useful input into the end product and appreciated Greentree International taking on board our requests,” says Rachel. “Over the months, we worked closely with them and the support team from the Greentree Business Partner to meet our December 31st deadline.”

“The Cash Management module is also excellent”, says Rachel, “with the reconciliation side speeding up processing, and enabling our banking software, Westpac Trust’s DeskBank, to directly interface into Greentree.”

Debbie continues: “As we were previously producing reports manually in Excel; aesthetically there’s very little difference in how our reports look, but behind the scenes to produce the report we have a new-found flexibility! With all our budgets in Excel, the ability to use the Greentree Excel add-in to upload the information straight into Greentree is outstanding. If we want to review our budgets quarterly, six monthly or compare current to past budgets it is a simple process.”

“The Cash Management module is also excellent”, says Rachel, “with the reconciliation side speeding up processing, and enabling our banking software, Westpac Trust’s DeskBank, to directly interface into Greentree.”

Financial reports contain historical information and the financial team at Universal Homes wanted to spend more time focusing on future activity. They are now producing reports by the 8th of the month and have shaved two days off their month-end timetable. “With the time saving, flexibility and efficiencies we are experiencing, it now allows the financial team do more value added activities for the company,” concludes Debbie. Universal Homes has purchased an 8 user Greentree licence, with a further 50 licenced users for its companion product, Workbench.

About Universal Homes

Universal Homes have been in operation for 40 years and are continuing to offer attractive and exciting developments for people seeking better lifestyles.

In the beginning they created houses... houses which gave many Aucklanders their first affordable home. Now they have moved on, and today provide homes that span generations of homeowners. First building homes for the parents, now building residential lifestyles for their children.

For more information visit www.universal.co.nz