Matthew Lessells, Executive Director of Estates, spent time with our Finance Team to hear how they support services across NTW Solutions and Cumbria, Northumberland, Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust (CNTW). The Finance Team is made up of several specialist areas and between them they look after everything from payments to suppliers and staff, to the assets on our books. The visit shone a light on the pace of change in finance, the care that goes into paying every invoice to the penny, and the fresh ideas the team are bringing in to make things simpler and faster.
A big part of the job is paying invoices correctly and on time. The team’s push to use purchase orders wherever possible makes this smoother for everyone. When an invoice arrives with a valid PO, it can be matched and paid straight away. Without one, it can take a lot of detective work to track down where the invoice should be charged to and who needs to approve the payment– especially when the only clue is a site name like “Ferndene” and nothing else.
The scale is significant. Depending on the year, the team processes tens of thousands of invoices with over 80,000 invoices passing through the team last year. To make the process smoother and quicker they are using AI features in Oracle, their main software package. An example of this is automated invoice processing which can automatically match invoices to purchase orders to reduce manual intervention. Not everything is digital yet. Some small suppliers still send handwritten invoices, which need a careful, line‑by‑line check.
Alongside day‑to‑day payments, the team looks after complex areas like VAT – where rules and judgments change and require careful interpretation to avoid incorrect VAT claims to HMRC. The team also support the Estates and Capital teams for all our construction projects. They meticulously record the impact any capital schemes have on our assets. Auditors test these controls and will often pick items from the asset register – even down to a chair bought years ago – to confirm it exists and matches our records.
Recruitment into finance roles hasn’t always been easy, but the team has had real success by opening secondments to anyone in the company. That approach has successfully brought in colleagues from Domestic Services and Catering who can have a go at the role with the safety of having a job to return to if it’s not for them. The team has also welcomed a university placement student, whose knack for finding faster ways to use their software has helped everyone work more efficiently. The team also have a long history of successful apprenticeship placements with a number of now permanent staff having started their working careers as an apprentice, with two more apprentices planned to start soon.
Every penny spent is recorded and balanced in vast spreadsheets and there’s a big sense of satisfaction when the sums balance, the accounts are signed off and the audit is passed. It’s often unseen work that makes a visible difference with suppliers being paid, collecting debts owed and collating all detail into the final set of annual accounts.
