Project Overview
The Outward Bound Trust, a charity that has benefitted over 1.2 million young people since 1941, had been struggling with outdated legacy systems, manual processes and limited integration between its finance, sales and fundraising functions. Duplication of effort and error-prone workflows were undermining the charity’s ability to manage its complex financial operations efficiently.
Working with Transparity, the Trust implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central, fully integrated with its existing sales and CRM platforms. The system went live in June 2025, already delivering significant time savings — including reducing VAT return preparation from a full day to just 20 minutes — alongside improved funding visibility and a cloud-based platform that removes the need for on-premise infrastructure.
The Challenge
The Trust had been struggling for some time with outdated legacy systems, cumbersome processes, and limited integration between its finance, sales, and fundraising functions. Duplication of effort and manual processes were undermining its ability to manage the complexities of the charity’s financial operations efficiently.
“We recognised the need to modernise our IT landscape, and we had clear requirements beyond standard finance functionality. We needed a system capable of managing charitable funding and integrating seamlessly with our sales and CRM activities. In line with our Microsoft First strategy, Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central was the obvious solution… Transparity’s experience in the charitable sector was a key factor in selecting them as our implementation partner. But what ultimately made the difference was their ‘non-salesy’ approach, which focused on understanding our organisation and demonstrating their ability to deliver the right solution.” — Rob Sharpe, Head of Business Systems and Digital Technologies, The Outward Bound Trust
The Solution
The Trust has implemented Microsoft Dynamics 365 Business Central to support all aspects of its financial operations. Beyond the standard functionality, the system has been fully integrated with the charity’s existing sales and CRM platforms, creating a seamless connection between fundraising, customer engagement, and finance.
“The solution helps manage all the complexities of charitable funding, making it easier to produce separate accounts for each fund, for example, the General Fund and our various Restricted Funds. We can now easily allocate and track expenditure against specific funds.” — Tim Moss, Head of Finance, The Outward Bound Trust
“Processing invoices used to be a very manual job, with every invoice entered by hand, twice. Now it’s more efficient. The OCR software captures most of the information and learns as it goes. Our old integration was temperamental and required multiple daily downloads. Now it runs automatically every hour, and we don’t even notice it.” — Tim Moss, Head of Finance, The Outward Bound Trust
The solution went live in June 2025, and the Trust is already seeing significant benefits. Business processes are more efficient, manual effort has been reduced, and visibility has improved across all areas of financial management. OCR scanning has greatly streamlined the submission of expenses and the processing of supplier invoices.
Reporting has also been enhanced, thanks to the improved quality of data held within the system and the ability to extract information quickly and easily. The organisation now has clearer visibility of funding and expenditure at a granular level, enabling the sales and fundraising teams to monitor performance against targets and giving management the insight needed to make more informed decisions.
“VAT returns were a particularly challenging activity for a partially exempt organisation, taking a full day to prepare. Now they take 20 minutes, and we have much better visibility of the transactions.” — Tim Moss, Head of Finance, The Outward Bound Trust
Business Central also delivers all the advantages of a cloud-based solution, including the retirement of on-premise servers and secure access from any location. Upgrades are smoother too, with no need for users to log out during updates. Transparity continues to support the Trust by managing these regular upgrades.
The Outcome
Significant time savings
Manual, inefficient processes have been replaced with automated workflows in Business Central and OCR scanning has streamlined expense submissions and supplier invoice processing. VAT returns that previously took a full day now take around 20 minutes.
Improved financial management
Greater visibility of financial transactions across sales, fundraising, and finance now gives the Trust a clearer picture of where funding comes from and how it is used. The finance team and budget holders can monitor performance more effectively and provide accurate reporting to donors and internal stakeholders.
Reduced manual data entry and fewer errors
Integrated systems eliminate the need for re-keying data between sales, fundraising, and finance, resulting in reduced duplication of effort and lower risk of human error.
Simpler upgrade path
The cloud-based solution enables the Trust to easily stay current with Microsoft’s latest enhancements. Going forward, updates will be more seamless, with no disruption to users, allowing new features to be adopted more quickly.
