Building a future-ready finance function for Royal Holloway Students’ Union
Royal Holloway Students’ Union (RHSU) sits at the heart of student life, delivering representation, advice, events, societies, and managing multiple commercial venues across campus. Operating in a complex, fast-moving environment, the Union saw its legacy finance systems struggle to keep pace with growth. The team recognised that through technology innovation, manual processes and disconnected platforms could be removed, creating a more efficient finance function.
RHSU partnered with 4PointZero to design and implement a modern, cloud-based finance ecosystem. Together, they shaped a clear vision for seamless system integration, automated processing, robust controls, and multidimensional reporting, enabling real-time insight into performance across departments, venues, and societies.
The finance team relied heavily on spreadsheets, manually transferring sales data from EPOS, Braintree, and MSL systems into their accounting platform. This resulted in duplicated effort, increased administrative workload. Valuable time was devoted to data entry and reconciliation rather than meaningful data analysis. Approval processes were informal, controls were limited, and producing reliable management information required extensive manual effort.
Working closely with 4PointZero, RHSU evaluated a range of leading accounting solutions before selecting three core platforms: Twinfield for secure, scalable accounting and governance, Basecone for automated invoice processing and approval workflows, and Ezora for real-time analytics and seamless daily operational postings. 4PointZero led the implementation rollout, from data migration to system setup and workflow design, supported by bespoke training and a dedicated two-month Hypercare period to support the team and embed new working processes.
The new systems automate many routine tasks, allowing the finance team to spend less time on manual work and more time on strategic activities. As the new system and processes embed, the team have noticed the positive benefits of having an integrated system that supports better decision-making and more effective resource planning through automated management reporting.
“Modernising our financial systems is already making a meaningful difference to the way we work. We still have a long way to go, as system and process changes take time to embed. We are now much closer to having clearer insights, ready to implement stronger controls and have reduced some manual processes, with further improvements planned over time. Students’ Unions are complex, particularly when managing group finances alongside high-volume commercial activity, so it’s a challenging process to implement new systems, as well as keep business as usual going. We are optimistic overtime we’ll streamlined more of our processes and gain more efficiencies.
The support from 4PointZero throughout implementation and Hypercare has given us the confidence to adopt new ways of working quickly and successfully. The team is responsive, helpful, and always willing to support us with our questions and queries.”
Min Chauhan, Head of Finance and Resources