AIR STUDIOS RECORDS IMPROVED PROFITABILITY USING HANSA FINANCIALS Recording studio uses Hansa financials and job costing to manage complex billing requirements and to drive down costs

25 June 2002 -- London based AIR Studios, one of the largest recording studios in the UK, has completed an order valued at 6,500 with Hansa Business Solutions for an integrated financials, job costing and business management software solution. Hansa Financials was selected because of its broad functionality and ability to manage AIRs highly complex invoice and billing requirements. This is expected to have a positive impact on the company profitability and cash flow.

Established in 1969 by The Beatles producer George Martin, AIR Studios is a state-of-the-art recording complex. AIR has recorded the film scores for international movies such as Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings, albums for pop groups including Travis, Coldplay and Radiohead, as well as undertaking post-production on TV programmes for the BBC such as the popular 'Cutting It drama series currently screening on BBC1.

Prior to searching the marketplace for a new system, AIR was running a small accounts package operating independently from a bespoke package used to create invoices. The accounting system was not Y2K compliant and produced very limited accounts management information. Additionally, AIR was desperate to move away from managing the accounts information in standalone, disparate systems as vital data was being lost.

Part of the Pioneer and Chrysalis Groups, AIR first looked to integrate with one of their enterprise accounting systems, but quickly concluded that the systems were too large and complex for its needs.

Due to the nature of our business, we recharge a significant amount of expenses back to the client and, as a result, they demand very specific requirements as to how we break down this information on invoices. As Hansa Financials is a fully integrated system, it will ensure that we capture all the data on incoming invoices that we need to re-charge within a single underlying database. This is far easier to use than anything weve had before and were confident this will improve our overall profitability, as well as assisting us in collecting and settling invoices more quickly, thus improving cash flow," explains Jacqui Howell, FD & general manager at AIR.

Howell continues, Hansa Financials has proven to be an ideal package for our needs. It provides extensive flexibility, automation and integration between the various modules and is excellent value-for-money. It enables us to save a considerable amount of time by eliminating the re-keying of data and duplication of work, and this has freed up peoples time to get on with other tasks."

Having already gone live on the financial modules within Hansa, AIR is looking to extend the benefits of the software by taking advantage of Hansas job costing functionality to manage individual projects more effectively.

As a result of the meticulous invoice process at AIR, billing a client for work that is being undertaken on a project basis is quite complex. With supplier invoices arriving in at different times, it is vital to be able to record all costs associated with an individual project to ensure that the client is re-charged for all out-goings.

Howell concludes, Previously we have been relying on people remembering to record all information relating to a project and transferring it into the accounts system. But with Hansas job costing module, once the information is entered into the Purchase Ledger it can be allocated to a project simply by putting the project code on it. Hansa also provides on-screen reports for all items on a project which still need to be invoiced and enables us to drill down to initial transactions and access a full history of a project with ease."

About Hansa Business Solutions

Hansa Business Solutions is one of the fastest growing suppliers of CRM, financial and logistics software in Europe. With its headquarters in Buckingham Gate, London, the group has 120 employees in 11 countries. The local product managers are specialists in the needs of each country and adapt the software according to local requirements. Hansa software is used by around 55,000 companies in 60 different countries and it is translated into 20 languages.

All Hansa products are written in the modern ANSI-C programming language, which allows the quick and simple adaptation of software for different operating systems. Hansa Financials is believed to be the only software product suite that is truly cross-platform, enabling LAN and WAN configurations with mixed servers and clients operating on the same network.

Currently Hansa Financials is available for Windows 95/98/2000, Windows NT, Mac OS and UNIX. Hansa is also the first supplier in Europe to have launched both client and server versions for Linux.

Since 1997, it has been possible to use Hansa products through the Internet and these products are now in frequent use over internet-connected mobile handsets.