Brighton & Hove Albion Foundation

Purchase Order System - Case Study

AITC (Albion in the Community) is now known as the Brighton & Hove Albion Foundation, the official charity of Brighton & Hove Albion Football Club. The foundation uses the power of football to inspire and engage local communities, delivering a wide range of programs focused on health and wellbeing, education and social inclusion. They work with over 46,000 people annually across Sussex.

Additionally, in March 2022, More Than Football was launched which now supports hundreds of men, aged 30-50, across Sussex, and was created in order to help support their mental health through the power of football. Add to this the work the foundation does with other focus groups, both boys and girls, plus disabled children, and you see how valuable their work has become.

So, no surprise that in recognition of the foundation's achievements, they were awarded the prize of Best Football Community Scheme (Premier League and Championship) at the Business awards ceremony this year (2025).

Back in 2015, AITC's Head of Finance & Operations approached Cloud B2B, about the possibility of providing AITC, as it was then, with a Purchase Order System. After introductory sessions showing the software options Cloud B2B could offer, the client committed to having a Purchase Order and Supplier Invoice (POPIA) system developed with customised workflows for the approval of Purchase Orders and resulting supplier invoices or credit notes. Also critical was the availability of system reports for auditability. Initially, some 70 users were to have access to the system with multi-level approval steps according to value.

Over the next few years, the foundation expanded the use of the cloud-based system requesting 5 sets of changes and additional functionality via Change Management, thereby developing the core product, ensuring that as the business developed, the system met any new challenges.

In addition, a new requirement arose for the provision of a separate system that allows staff users to upload receipts for expenses incurred by them, e.g. mileage for travel. The new system allowed a customised approval regime, by the manger who was responsible for that particular expense. This was developed and supplied successfully in 2018.

Fast forward to 2025, and the foundation's Management Accountant, requested that rather than having a separate expense system, a revised specification for an Expense module be added to the existing POPIA System.

Combining the 2 systems made sense in terms of user licenses as well as allowing the export of data related to the expenses to be exported for the Accounts department to process and pay approved expenses. The new module also featured additional information such as the ability to handle expenses, both single and multiple line, by Department - single and multiple, where applicable, plus nominal code, account references, and a field for users to add comments to justify the expense. For mileage, start and end postcodes have been added to further justify the expense. Additions to the user Dashboard for high-level admin users will also show expenses raised but not yet submitted, to more accurately forecast expenditure.

AITC's Head of Finance & Operations commented:

"We have worked very successfully with Cloud B2B over the last 10 years, to provide the foundation with the business-fit solutions that have met our ever changing needs, which has been a key feature of our relationship. The ability to understand our requirements in detail and provide the customised systems, cost effectively, has been the key to our long-term history with Cloud B2B. I would recommend them to any prospective organisation, who are looking for flexibility and diligence in providing solutions that genuinely go the extra mile to provide true benefits and efficiencies."

Daniel Page (Cloud B2B MD) said:

"It's been a pleasure to work with the AITC team to provide the foundation with solutions that meet their requirements, and we look forward to continuing that good work, whatever their needs! We feel that the key to working with the foundation, as with all our clients, is our ability to make sure the functions and features we develop provide solutions in not only short time frames, but without the heavy development costs that other companies may require, due to the flexibility of our core systems architecture."

Brighton & Hove Albion Foundation | 136 Freshfield Road | Brighton and Hove | Brighton | BN2 0BR
https://bhafcfoundation.org.uk/