Atturra connects payment systems for Catholic Development Fund

Australian advisory and IT solutions provider Atturra has implemented Boomi’s integration platform as a service to help automate the Catholic Development Fund’s corporate card reconciliation process.

The Catholic Development Fund (CDF) has operated since 1956, providing financial solutions to Catholic schools, parishes, aged care, healthcare, and social service providers.

CDF automates complex financial processes for its customers, including Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools (MACS), an organisation responsible for the governance and operation of 293 Catholic schools in Victoria.

Jason Frost, executive general manager of data and integration at Atturra, said they helped CDF connect core systems, including CDF’s core banking system, FlexiPurchase expense management, AWS Secure File Transfer Service, and SharePoint.

“Bookkeeping for one business can be complex, let alone for 293 operating across multiple environments,” he said.

The Boomi-connected environment cross-checks financial information against the numerous and differing enterprise resource planning (ERP) accounting platforms used by MACS’ 293 schools.

Jukka Rinta, executive manager of products at CDF, said the information ingested is delivered to schools via API payloads and fit-for-purpose content to connect purchase transactions with relevant financial information to varying ERP platforms.

“After being in operation for just three months, we have already seen vast improvements to the speed at which MACS can reconcile transactions,” said Rinta. “Now, up to 80 per cent of transactions are compared against the ledger within the same month. This is a huge win for governance and significantly reduces admin burden.”

In addition to improving user experience, the Boomi environment’s scalability makes it easier for MACS to onboard new schools.

“Due to legacy processes, MACS was managing 293 individual processes for its corporate card reconciliation, which meant its cohort of schools needed up to 90 days to reconcile simple transactions. This was a massive admin burden,” Rinta said. “MACS identified immediate value in creating uniformity across the schools’ financial processes. So, we sought to deliver a highly integrated solution that could handle the complexity.”

According to Rinta, the Boomi-connected process is now being evaluated for the unique needs of CDF’s greater customer base.