Case Study: Community Living Trust achieves faster, more accurate budgeting and quarterly forecasting with IDU's idu-Concept

IDU's smart business systems ease the load for service organisation

The Community Living Trust, a Hamilton-based service organisation supporting nearly 700 clients with around NZ$20m turnover, was struggling with an inefficient, spreadsheet-driven budgeting process across eight services and multiple departments. Accountants could not analyse data until it was imported into the General Ledger, leading to errors, long manual cycles and lack of visibility — so the Trust engaged IDU and evaluated its idu-Concept budgeting and reporting software.

IDU implemented idu-Concept, a web-based front end linked directly to the General Ledger, removing the need to compile multiple spreadsheets and allowing managers to comment, drill down to transactions and produce accurate reports. The solution was deployed during the annual budget process, delivered quicker adoption by non-technical managers, enabled quarterly forecasting that was previously impossible, and shortened budgeting cycles from months to weeks — while giving the Trust better control over staffing costs (which represent 75% of expenses) and real-time financial visibility as GL integration is expanded.

Community Living Trust

Sharon Muller

Accountant