St John the Baptist Catholic Multi Academy Trust Modernises with Sage Intacct for Education
About St John the Baptist Catholic MAT
Based in Norwich, St John the Baptist Catholic Multi Academy Trust (SJB) serves a growing network of 10 schools consisting of 9 primary and 1 secondary schools. Rooted in Catholic values and inspired by the life of Christ, SJB aims to provide exceptional education for its students alongside fostering faith and personal development.
The Trust supports its schools through a centralised finance team working alongside Finance Officers at each institution and has ambitious expansion plans for the near future. In order to support their growth, SJB sought a modern and robust financial management solution.
Previous System Challenges
Previously using Sage 200 as their finance solution, SJB faced significant challenges with their legacy software:
- The manual sales ledger processes required extensive manual intervention, leading to inefficiencies and increased risk of errors.
- As an early adopter of a single-database system using schools as cost centres, support has been limited and the cost centre approach proved time-consuming and inefficient.
- Sage 200 lacked scalability which caused growth constraints as they took on additional academies.
- The manual Purchase-to-Pay (P2P) process created delays and administrative burdens with lots of back and forth.
Objectives
To overcome these challenges, SJB MAT sought a new finance system with the following objectives:
- True Cloud-Based Solution: Enable secure, remote access and streamline system updates without downtime.
- Automated Consolidation: Simplify financial data aggregation across multiple schools for faster reporting.
- Paperless Purchase-to-Pay: Digitalise the entire P2P workflow to reduce manual effort and improve efficiency.
- AAR Automation: Streamline the production of Annual Accounts Return (AAR) reports to save time and resources.
St John the Baptist Catholic MAT + Sage Intacct
After careful evaluation, SJB selected Sage Intacct for Education (SIFE) to transform its financial management and chose ION as its implementation and support partner.
Sage Intacct for Education is an industry-leading cloud-accounting solution designed specifically for the unique needs of Multi-Academy Trusts.
With true-cloud infrastructure, Sage Intacct provides users 24/7 remote access to financial data, alongside up-to-date real-time insights and analytics.
ION delivered and configured the solution to suit the specific needs of the Trust. This consisted of creating a fully digitised Purchase-to-Pay workflow to allow schools to raise and approve requisitions electronically and provide real-time visibility into budgets. Utilising sage Intacct’s powerful automation tools, ION was able to automate the Trust’s routine processes such as bank reconciliations, AAR submissions, and the consolidation of reporting for trust-wide visibility. Sage Intacct for Education also provides a number of MAT-specific tools such as allowing the Trust to add new schools internally within seconds as they continue to grow.
What St John the Baptist Catholic MAT said...
Peter Pažitka, Director of Finance and Operations, said:
“We started using Sage Intacct earlier this month (January 2025) and we believe it will transform our financial processes. The improved support and scalability give us the confidence to grow without worrying about increased complexity. ION’s expertise and guidance throughout the implementation process made the transition seamless — we felt fully supported and in safe hands every step of the way. ION provided training to all users during the implementation and onboarding phase. The responsiveness and expertise of the support team since we have gone ‘live’ has been exceptional. We are looking forward to reaping the benefits of the move in the
near future."
