Springfield Nurseries

Springfield Day Nurseries are a leading childcare provider situated in Conwy County, North Wales. Dedicated to providing a supportive learning environment and over thirty years of experience, Springfield Day Nurseries offer a premium childcare service to parents with babies and children up to the ages of thirteen.

With over thirty years of experience, Springfield Day Nurseries offer a premium childcare service to parents with babies and children up to the age of thirteen. They are dedicated to providing a supportive and vibrant learning environment.

Operating across five different sites, Springfield uses the Bacs service to collect their customer payments. Originally engaging another software provider, Springfield had been collecting Direct Debit payments for around five years.

About a year previously, Springfield had been made aware that several security updates were to be implemented by Bacs in September 2016. Susan Drawbridge, Company Accountant at Springfield Day Nurseries, said:

“We started getting email reminders from Bacs about security upgrades. We had known about the planned changes for some time but because we never heard anything from our provider, we assumed that we would be unaffected by the changes.”

When Springfield was eventually contacted by its provider, they were told they’d need to pay to upgrade its software to continue collecting Direct Debits.

The Solution

“We were stunned and found ourselves in a difficult position. We could either pay over the odds for the upgrade or try to engage a new vendor at short notice, risking not being able to collect our Direct Debit payments,” explained Susan.

Quickly deciding they wanted a new provider, Springfield started to look for a more agile and customer-focused company, Susan remembers contacting SmarterPay for the first time.

“SmarterPay really stood out – the Sales team were very professional and understanding. They got back to us very quickly and provided us with useful documentation that really helped our decision-making process.”

SmarterPay knew that Springfield had only three weeks to install, configure and trial SmarterPay On Premise before it would need a live system to collect the weekly Direct Debit payments. Accommodating these circumstances, SmarterPay was installed and configured so that the same version for the trial could also be used for live submissions.

With an easy-to-use interface and Support team on hand to assist, no additional training was required for Susan and her team to be able to make their first live Bacs submissions on time using SmarterPay.

As well as meeting the three-week implementation deadline, Springfield was also able to make substantial cost savings. Susan reflects: “I would definitely recommend SmarterPay. They replaced our old solution quickly, professionally and were very friendly throughout the whole process which made everything so much easier.”

SmarterPay On Premise

SmarterPay On Premise allows you to organise, automate and manage your business payments easily and effectively to pay your staff and suppliers on time and collect customer payments.

• Automated Bacs submissions
• Reduced manual business costs
• Real-time visibility of payments

For more information about SmarterPay On Premise or any other products and services, please get in touch.