St John's School in Northwood took the decision to bring its finance function in-house, having previously had it managed via another school
With no finance system of their own to migrate from, the team was effectively building from a blank page. As the school was already running iSAMS for its core MIS, the integration with iFinance made the choice of accounting system more straightforward than it might otherwise have been.
Bursar Cara Demetriades led the move, with the existing iSAMS relationship a key factor in the decision.
“We moved to iFinance when we in-sourced our finance from another school, so we didn’t actually have our own system – it was like starting from scratch. We were already using iSAMS, so the way iFinance integrated with iSAMS was really helpful for us. It looked quite straightforward, and I got a lot of confidence from the team about the migration process.”
“The migration itself was actually the best part”
Less time on processing, more time on analysis
In-sourcing a finance function for the first time brings an obvious risk: with no system of their own to fall back on, getting the data migration right mattered more than usual. Cara had real concerns going in – but it turned out to be the standout part of the whole process.
“The migration itself was actually the best part of moving to iFinance. I was really nervous about the data not being migrated across well, but we had full training, and it was really helpful. All the data was moved across, and we also got support troubleshooting any issues with it – the support was incredible, really good.”
Day to day, two features have made the biggest difference to how the finance team works. Correcting a miscoded invoice no longer means pushing a journal back and forth to fix it.
Bank reconciliation has had a similar effect, pulling transaction data directly from the bank and matching it automatically against the school’s records.
“I love the bank rec. The way it pulls all the data in from the bank and auto-matches it for you means you just have to glance and go, ‘Oh yeah, that’s right, off you go.’ It makes the boring, easy processing really quick, so you can focus on analysing and doing more of the value-add stuff. It works really well for us.”
Q&A at ISBA 2026 with Cara Demetriades – Bursar, St John's School
Q&A at ISBA 2026 with Cara Demetriades – Bursar, St John's School
Hear directly from Cara Demetriades, Bursar at St John’s School, who implemented iFinance with no existing finance system in place – and find out why it transformed the way their school manages finances from day one
Building on a strong foundation
St John’s isn’t yet using the full range of iFinance, and the team already has a clear sense of what’s next. Purchase Order is the priority, with invoice uploading close behind, as the school’s invoicing volumes grow alongside its expanding income streams.
“There are some features we’re not currently using, so I’d like to move on to purchase order next. We’re also not really using the uploading invoices feature at the moment – we’re still very paper-based. So we’re under pressure there, because we’re doing more and more invoicing as we increase our income from different things.
“As we do that, we’re creating capacity by gradually expanding our use of iFinance. So far, it’s been brilliant for us.”
“I really love how easy it is to correct something when you’ve got it wrong – if you’ve coded an invoice to the wrong account, you can just go in and edit it, without having to push a journal backwards and forwards to fix it.”