Goudsmit saves time and gains flexibility with Isah Finance

He explains: “For as long as I have been at Goudsmit, we have worked with Isah combined with a financial package from Unit 4. Together with one direct colleague and our financial director, I handle Goudsmit’s financial administration on a daily basis. In general, the connection between the two systems worked fine for us. We were used to constantly exporting and importing data between the two systems. Now that we are working with Isah Finance, we realize how much more practical it is compared to our previous setup!”

Smooth setup for a multicompany environment

The direct reason for looking into Isah Finance was that Goudsmit expanded from two to three companies. “When everything is in the same database, it is just much easier,” says Sierd. “In addition to implementing Isah Finance, we immediately started using the multicompany environment. This allows us to manage data centrally while keeping the financial administration neatly separated.” The implementation of Isah Finance went very smoothly. “A new system gives you the opportunity to rethink the way you work. Many people have a tendency to set up a new system the way they have always done it. We consciously chose not to do that. Instead, we thought carefully about what we would need for the future. Koen, the Financial Consultant from Isah, was very helpful in crystallizing a configuration that would work best for us. Unfortunately, we were in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis, so most meetings had to be held via Teams. Fortunately, Koen had already visited our office several times beforehand, which made it much easier to work effectively online. It was reassuring that the Isah consultants spoke the same language we did and did not overwhelm us with technical jargon. That made the implementation process very pleasant for us.”

Saving two days on month-end closings

Even though Sierd has only completed two month-end closings with Isah Finance so far, he immediately sees major advantages in the new way of working. “Previously, we had two separate databases, which meant I had to transfer data every week — sometimes twice a week if the month-end closing fell during that period. While exports usually went smoothly, data often got lost during imports, which led to problems. If a colleague entered something incorrectly, we had to fix it manually, which typically involved a lot of investigation and wasted time — for example, a missing VAT number in a journal entry. Sometimes you could find the missing information yourself, but in other cases you had to wait two days for a customer’s response before you could complete the import. That unnecessary delay is now completely gone! Now, when I start the process of assigning company characteristics, all journal entries are exported correctly. We save at least two full days when it comes to month-end closings.”

Isah Finance offers flexibility

Another practical advantage Sierd experiences is how easy it is to correct mistakes. “For example, if you accidentally post a sales invoice for our holding company to the production company, you used to have to credit it and re-enter everything from scratch. Now, you can simply correct it with a few clicks. Isah Finance is much less rigid than our previous system.”

That flexibility also shows in how customizable the screen layouts are. “If you have the general ledger screen open and want to search for a specific item number, you can just drag that column into view and search directly within it. I often add extra columns temporarily, like an invoice number or purchase order number. If I like the setup, I can save it and reuse it later. That kind of flexibility makes working in the system much faster and more efficient.”

The next step is financial management information

“Right now, we’re not yet using financial management information from Isah — but that’s more due to internal priorities,” explains Sierd. “We already pull a lot of data from Isah Operations and use it in Power BI dashboards. Next year, we plan to start doing the same with financial data. I’m really looking forward to that because I’ve already seen how many possibilities there are.”