Clydebank Housing Association Adds Value and Creates Efficiencies with HomeMaster

Clydebank Housing Association decided to move to a new integrated housing and finance management system when they lost confidence in their previous housing management system and upgrading it became prohibitively expensive.

They chose HomeMaster for the following reasons:

• They wanted to fully integrate finance and housing management into a single system
• It offered functionality that they couldn’t find in any other product, especially in producing ARC reports
• HomeMaster is web-based so easy to use for staff working remotely or on site
• It offered cost savings and an annual subscription structure

Clydebank Housing Association is a social housing provider in Scotland, currently the largest of the community-based Housing Associations in West Dunbartonshire, with a range of customers: over 1200 tenants, 600 factored owner-occupiers and other non-tenanted customers. The Association currently has 3 new build housing developments on site, and it is widely involved within the community through its activities at their Centre81 Regeneration Centre.  Its company structure comprises two main entities – a registered charity and a fully owned subsidiary, CHA Power Ltd, which is a private limited company. For transactional accuracy, there had to be clear separation between the separate entities and no cross-company transactions. VAT also had to be accounted for differently as the subsidiary company is VAT registered and is compliant with Making Tax Digital.

As Lynette Lees, Chief Executive of Clydebank Housing Association explains: “HomeMaster has provided us with a fully integrated housing and finance management system that meets our specific needs. We have been able to add value for our customers and create efficiencies as well as ensuring that we have all the checks and controls in place that we need and that tie in with our detailed policies and procedures. I am satisfied that we have a system that we can rely on and that will continue to evolve.”

“We went live in December 2020 and the housing management aspects of the system were seamless right away, having spent the time cleansing our data and doing vigorous testing before the implementation date. To align our finance and maintenance functions to fit our operational requirements has taken a considerable amount of work, but the support from HomeMaster has been excellent. They are very responsive and considerate, and we never felt unsupported. It’s a comfort to know that they are always there, and they have never left anything unresolved.

“HomeMaster has made our external audit process much easier. We have been able to give the auditors direct access to HomeMaster and they have given us some positive feedback.”

ARC reporting

Clydebank Housing Association have started to produce their ARC reports using HomeMaster and Joe Farrell, Head of Housing Services at Clydebank Housing Association explains the difference that HomeMaster makes.

He says: “I would estimate that it takes us less than a quarter of the time to produce ARC reports. Previously, we exported a data grid from the system then had to filter and manually extract the data. Some reports would require two days’ work. Now, 90% of reports can be produced at the click of a button. You put in the start date and end date, then print the report. This is certainly the case for the housing management and maintenance reports.

“I would certainly recommend HomeMaster. It’s night and day compared to anything else, and the staff love it because it’s so easy to use”

Maintenance and Repairs

Jack Devlin, Housing Services Manager at Clydebank Housing Association describes his experience of using HomeMaster: “It has enabled us to transform our processes for paying contractors. Previously, we had a manual system with 14 different steps. This meant that it was sometimes taking us over 30 days to pay contractors, which didn’t help our relationships with them. Now that we’re using HomeMaster, we can pay them in 7 – 14 days.

“We’ve gone from the monotony of manually inputting invoices and all other details onto a system, to simply data checking, as the majority of our maintenance contractors upload the invoices directly. This saves us a lot of time and means that staff can now focus on other things.”

Customer Support

Jack continues: “Another benefit is the ability to upload all the relevant information about a job onto the system. The contractor can then log in and see all the relevant details. In addition, if any tenants contact us to enquire about the status of their repairs, any member of the team can look at HomeMaster and find out the live status. In fact, we’ve just gone live with the new tenants’ portal, because the contractor portal was working so well. This means that tenants can access direct real-time information about their tenancy and the status of any repairs if they wish.

Lynette Lees adds: “At Clydebank Housing Association we are dedicated to customer service and well-being and being able to communicate with all our customers using their preferred communication channel through HomeMaster is a great tool for us.

She concludes: “I’m delighted that there is now a package that can be tailored for the Scottish Housing sector that is built around our compliance needs. I’m really positive about HomeMaster and the work that we have done jointly so far, and I look forward to sharing best practice with other housing providers as the HomeMaster customer base expands.”