HFL Education, legally Herts for Learning Limited, is a not-for-profit limited liability company owned by schools and the council of Hertfordshire, with any profits reinvested back into the local education ecosystem. It was set up in 2013 as a spin-out from Hertfordshire County Council.

As CFO, Andrew Griffiths has been with HFL since it was formed and was part of the original team that produced the business case to set it up. He leads an in-house finance team of six or seven people, running entirely without outsourced accountants or bookkeepers, on a Xero-based stack covering approvals, deferred revenue and prepayments, supplier payments and case management.

Visit HFL Education.

ApprovalMax for Approvals

ApprovalMax has significantly improved our approval workflows and billing processes. The AI feature that reads and captures bill data saves a considerable amount of time and reduces manual input. Overall, it has streamlined our controls and improved efficiency across the team, with less paperwork and an easy trail for following up on invoices and quotes with employees and staff.

Visit ApprovalMax.

Mayday for Deferred Revenue and Prepayments

Mayday is used for both deferred revenue, to recognise revenue over time, and prepayments, to recognise expenses over time. Given the volumes HFL deals with, Mayday's AI-powered inbox flags which transactions need a schedule, and the team reviews, approves and posts the journals to Xero directly from there.

Visit Mayday.

Apron for Payments‍

Apron is used to manage supplier payments. The team trialled a few solutions before landing on Apron, which came out as the most efficient and best value option for HFL, cutting down the manual work involved in getting payments approved and out the door.

Visit Apron.

Bold Desk for Case Management

For case management, HFL has contracted with Bold Desk, which lets the team manage queries as tickets, track interactions and automate some of the repetitive follow-up work.

Visit BoldDesk.