Educational institutions have complex financial demands. They manage multiple entities, research grants, compliance reporting, and decentralised teams — all while navigating integration with HR, payroll, student records, and procurement systems.
To meet these challenges, finance teams need systems that go beyond the basics. They need adaptable, reliable platforms built for complexity, with embedded controls, functional automation, and real-time visibility.
FinanSys understands this complexity. Aligned with the APUC Framework requirements, our offering delivers comprehensive capability across finance, procurement, reporting, and compliance, with the experience, infrastructure, and support to match.
The solutions we provide — Infor SunSystems and UniFi — are designed to address every item on the education sector’s wish list listed below.
1. Multi-Entity and Real-Time Consolidation
Universities and colleges operate across diverse departments, research units, and trading subsidiaries.
Managing this structure requires a finance system that supports true multi-entity operation and consolidated reporting.
SunSystems and UniFi from FinanSys provide real-time consolidation across companies, with full intercompany processing, multi-currency support, and flexible entity hierarchies.
Institutions gain a single, accurate view of financial performance across all areas, without data exports or manual consolidation adjustments.
2. Flexible, Multi-Level Chart of Accounts
A rigid chart of accounts creates barriers to accurate reporting and agile management. Institutions need to define and control their own structures and change them as needed.
SunSystems meets this with multiple levels of structure, support for multiple parallel hierarchies, and the ability to reclassify and copy account structures quickly.
Codes can be defined to suit cost centres, activities, projects, or funding lines, and can be updated with no loss of historical data or integrity.
All structures support access control and audit validation as standard.
3. Integration with HR, Payroll, and Student Systems
The finance function cannot operate in isolation. The APUC Framework calls for seamless integration with:
- HR and payroll systems
- Student record platforms (e.g. Tribal, Ellucian, etc.)
- Identity management tools like LDAP and Shibboleth
- Procurement portals such as PECOS and Parabilis
FinanSys delivers all this through UniFi, a next-gen platform with powerful middleware and integration.
With APIs, connectors, and pre-configured integration templates, institutions can link finance systems with HR, payroll, student records, and procurement systems without bespoke development.
4. Real-Time Access for Budget Holders
Finance teams should not be the gatekeepers of insight. Modern systems must offer self-service portals, role-based access, and real-time insight into budgets, commitments, and transactions.
With UniFi, institutions can provide real-time access to budget holders and managers, with role-based dashboards, filtered reporting, and secure visibility of commitments, spend, and available funds.
Access is controlled centrally and aligned to each user’s role in the institution, reducing risk and improving decision-making.
5. Procurement-to-Pay Workflow
Institutions need end-to-end support across requisitions, purchase orders, goods receipting, invoice matching, and payment. The system must also support integration with sector procurement platforms and HMRC’s digital VAT mandate.
Our solution covers this in full. SunSystems, complemented by UniFi, provides native support for three-way matching, electronic approvals, invoice status tracking, BACS integration, and e-invoicing compliance.
Support for PECOS and Parabilis is available, with configurable rules for approvals, tolerances, and exception handling.
UniFi supports organisations using PEPPOL by providing e-invoicing data in any required format. Thanks to our flexible data connectors, we can send and receive data via any API or protocol.
This enables seamless integration with your payment workflows — not only for issuing invoices but also configured for reception of e-invoices and processing them directly within our P2P Enterprise Suite.
6. Research Grant and Project Accounting
Research funding introduces complex requirements for tracking budgets, spend, and outcomes across time and funders. Institutions must manage project-based accounting while maintaining separation from core finance activity.
FinanSys delivers dedicated support for research grants. Project hierarchies can be defined and tracked throughout the grant lifecycle, from proposal to close.
Forecasts, commitments, and claims are aligned with funding schedules and reporting requirements.
UniFi adds workflow and reporting functionality, enabling project owners to track spend against objectives in real time.
7. Capital and Fixed Asset Management
The ideal finance system should support full asset lifecycle management, depreciation schedules, capitalisation rules, asset hierarchies, and integration with AP and GL.
Institutions should be able to track work-in-progress, capitalisation thresholds, and disposal records, all linked to project accounting and funding sources.
Solutions from FinanSys provide these capabilities and more.
8. Reporting and Dashboards
Standard reports are not enough. Institutions need flexible, user-defined dashboards that allow drilling into data and sharing insights across teams.
FinanSys’ solutions come with a powerful reporting engine, with trial balance, budget variance, audit trails, and forecast reporting available as standard.
With UniFi, for example, users can create dashboards linked to Excel, Cognos, Business Objects, and other tools.
Multiple report hierarchies can be maintained to meet internal and statutory formats, including HMRC, HESA, and SFC submissions.
9. Built-In Compliance for Sector Standards
Compliance with statutory and regulatory reporting is mandatory across the education sector.
Institutions need systems that can produce:
- Digitally submitted VAT returns to HMRC
- Statutory reports for HESA and the Scottish Funding Council (SFC)
- Annual expenditure reports, including formats such as Spikes Cavell
- Outputs aligned with Office for National Statistics (ONS) requirements
Systems must offer either native capabilities or flexible configuration to meet these obligations without the need for manual intervention or third-party workarounds.
FinanSys fully meets these requirements, with comprehensive compliance functionality out of the box and the ability to customise as necessary. Institutions gain peace of mind with built-in controls and proven capability to support all required submissions.
10. Security and Audit Control
With various teams and layered approval structures, educational institutions require strict control over system access and activity. Security must be precise, not approximate.
- Granular permissions for functions such as journal entry, budget visibility, and approvals
- Configurable workflows tied to institutional roles and financial thresholds
- Comprehensive audit trails that track every user action, with time and context
The system must support institution-wide governance by embedding control into every process, not as an afterthought.
Our solutions provide detailed role-based security down to the transaction level, fully customisable approval workflows, and audit logs for all user actions. Every access point, change, and approval is recorded and reportable, enabling institutions to maintain transparency, accountability, and regulatory compliance across their financial operations.
Why FinanSys?
With over 25 years of experience and the highest number of global Infor SunSystems Cloud customers to date, FinanSys is a leading partner.
We are ISO 27001 certified, SOC 2 Type 2 compliant, and the only SunSystems provider accredited by the ICAEW for training.
By selecting FinanSys and our combined SunSystems and UniFi offering, the APUC framework will be adding a proven, future-ready solution purpose-built for the needs of education institutions.
Our customer-centric approach means we listen first, implement with care, and support consistently. Every project includes a dedicated customer success manager and access to our local and global support teams.
SunSystems and UniFi — delivered by FinanSys — provide everything the APUC framework demands.
Comprehensive functionality, integration across institutional systems, real-time access, full compliance, and proven reliability.
We believe our solution is not only a perfect fit for the sector — it is the right choice for the future. Talk to us today to find out more!
