The Access Group Reviews 

Julie Roberts was a pleasure to work with. She demonstrated exceptional knowledge of Access Finance and was always available to answer questions and provide practical solutions. She went above and beyond to resolve queries, and her insights helped me look at things differently and improve my understanding of the system. I would highly recommend her support and expertise.

We are still relatively early in our implementation journey with Access Finance and have experienced a number of challenges over the last few months. During this period, Julie Roberts took over responsibility for supporting us and helping to address the concerns we had raised.

Whilst there is still work to do as we progress towards go-live, Julie has been consistently responsive, knowledgeable and supportive whenever I have needed assistance. No matter how many questions or technical issues I have brought to her, she has always taken the time to come back with answers, guidance and practical solutions.

What has impressed me most is Julie's commitment to ensuring we are successful. She has helped restore confidence in the project at a time when we were becoming frustrated with parts of the onboarding experience, and I am confident that her continued support will help us get back on track and achieve a successful implementation.

If I were reviewing my overall onboarding experience prior to Julie becoming involved, it would have been 1 star. Julie's professionalism, responsiveness and willingness to help have made a real difference.

Thank you, Julie. You are a credit to The Access Group, and your support has been greatly appreciated.

Burton Contractors COINs migration (specifically Finance modules) was superbly handled by Ciji Abraham. He was technically very savvy and had a solid understanding of accounting rules and processes. He was very helpful in all aspects of the migration, provided solutions to migration issues being encountered by the team. He was very pleasant and professional in all our meetings and exchanged.

Narcis was incredibly patience and helpful to us when transferring to Access Education Finance. He has guided us thoroughly through the process, always willing to answer questions and repeat prior areas of learning covered. Thank you for your support!

Access has been great for our Trust, the budgeting and finance software is easy to use and easy to implement. Our schools are able to receive live reliable data to make informed decisions for pupils across our Trust.

Vlad has been excellent setting up our partner schools, always accessable and goes above and beyond to help.

We are migrating our school finance system over to Access and our consultant Vlad Jurcut, has been so supportive and guided us through the process step by step. He's very responsive to our email queries, is very friendly, knowledgeable and able to give us good advice. We're looking forward to our official launch date!

At my company, finance uses Access Dimensions. I work as SW development lead, supporting finance. I'm quite busy, often late reading my emails.

We asked for a test database for the developers. I received a meeting cancellation notice from them. It turned out, they assigned a consultant to the task, who organised a meeting (which was absolutely not necessary) whose notification I missed, thus not attended the call - and they charged for it, claiming that I haven't asked for a different time for the meeting ergo, I accepted it. Felt like Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

The other shock came recently, as I initiated the cancellation of the test DB "subscription". When discussing the terms 8 months ago, I reviewed the short contract extension, and mentioned that it doesn't cover cancellation. I asked to add a cancellation option at each annual renewal, to which the sales person responded that it is already in the master contract terms with a 90 day notice period, so there's no need. I never saw the master contract as it was signed before I joined the company. To my cancellation request the same sales person responded, the test database was added to the master contract, and may be re-negotiated at the contract renewal date - in 2028 - 2.5 years from now.
I dug up the email from that sales person, we're still working on the cancellation. We'll see how it goes.

Update
After this review Access Dimensions reached out to me and resolved the cancellation debate, so I need to improve my review.

Our team was extremely happy working with the Coins implementation team and how everything was handled. The project was expertly executed by Ruth Costello Project Manager and Senior Consultants Raj Mohan and Ciji Abraham delivering a robust Commercial, Procurement and Finance solution across multiple business entities. The whole team was knowledgeable, highly professional, and honestly a pleasure to work alongside. We look forward to continuing with the next phase of our Coins implementation journey.

Julie Roberts did an outstanding job building our finance database. She was incredibly knowledgeable and demonstrated a clear understanding of our requirements from the very beginning. Her friendly and approachable manner made the entire process smooth and accessible, she was always quick to respond to any questions or requests we had.

What really set Julie apart was her willingness to go above and beyond to ensure everything was delivered to the highest standard. Her attention to detail and commitment to excellence were evident throughout the project. I would highly recommend Julie to anyone looking for a reliable and highly skilled professional.

However, our experience with Access before this was not good. We were assured that our previous data base with Access would run reports in a certain format and the system never delivered. Hence having to pay for a new data base to be built. We were bounced between departments for months, with no one willing to help us solve the issues we were having. And then we were passed to Julie Roberts who was amazing. It is a shame that this did not happen earlier.

"I’m very happy with the experience of working with the Coins implementation team. The project was expertly managed by Ruth Costello, with support from Ciji Abraham (Finance & Data Migration), Raj Mohan (Commercial & Procurement), and David Stiller (System & Security). The entire team was knowledgeable, professional, and genuinely a pleasure to work with."

Double charged and no customer service to correct it. Took nearly two months until one phone call with Hana E from the Retention team was able to help us.
The case logged on the portal was ignored, the sales manager keep referring us on with no outcome, the accounts team responded but did nothing, eventually the account manager did get finance to raise a credit note but they didn't issue it to us or tell us how much it was. They never should have double billed us in the first place, and it should not have taken nearly two months and multiple attempts by us to have it corrected. It's easy to see Access do not care about long term customers.

I requested a bespoke training session, one on one to go through some queries & guidance for Access Education Finance. I wanted to better understand some of aspects of the finance system, so that I could increase my knowledge & use it to my advantage. Julie Roberts was excellent, very knowledgeable, and quick! She understood exactly what I needed and was able to answer 5 of my questions in the 1st 20 minutes of the training. Julie also recorded the session, which was brilliant so I can refer back to it. I left the session feeling more confident about navigating my way through the system and knowing where and what I need to do going forward. Thank you Julie 😊

Great response from Vlad to a couple of issues that I had with the finance software. All sorted very quickly thanks

Received excellent support from our consultant whilst implementing Access Finance. He was always quick to respond and provided solutions to any problems or issues that arose throughout the implementation process. He was particulary helpful finding an alternative when the the digital training content didn't work. He was very approachable, accomodating and positive.

Vlad Jurcutt has been facilitating Education Finance training.
I have enjoyed working with Vlad. He has been clear and very patient with his instructions and training.
He has not rushed me when I was working through the training videos but been polite and encouraged me to complete tasks regularly. Vlad has a positive and easy manner so I have felt comfortable asking questions. I am glad he has been part of my Access journey.

Access Finance system had help enhance my role as a finance officer with multi schools.

Our consultant was very knowledgeable and she kept to timeframes despite the size of our database which she did not expect. She kept me updated throughout the process and even assisted with some finance/ invoice queries at the end of the job.

I am in the process of setting up ACCESS as a new client. Vlad has been really helpful in assisting me to navigate my way around the new system going above and beyond to ensure my experience is not as daunting after using another finance system for over 20 years. He has really put me at ease and reassured me every step of the way.

I was given a thorough introduction to the Access Finance system by Julie, who is clearly not just knowledgeable about the system itself, but has a very deep understanding of school finance rules and processes. As someone new to the sector, this additional insight was very helpful! I felt the training was paced to suit me, with plenty of time to answer questions or go into some areas more deeply. The sessions focussed on my organisation's actual accounts rather than being abstract and so I learnt more than I was expecting. A valuable and enjoyable training experience - I would highly recommend!

These are my personal thoughts and not associated to the School I work for. We had been having issues reported to us from students since the start of September term. Originally we were referring back to the department heads that use the system. Once we knew GCSE Pod itself was the issue trying to get though to anyone to speak too was a 100% no go. NO ONE in school had access to the required support portal to raise a ticket or any extra contact information as the phone system said that's how you need to contact them. You need to raise a support ticket to register for access but need access to raise a support ticket how does that work. Tried numerous times to speak to someone via a number I eventually found even finance option and after sitting on the line for over 15mins at a time no one answers. In a busy office you cant sit on hold for any length of time as you have staff and students to deal with. I ended up using the online form for non support enquiries saying we were not renewing took a further 10 days for someone to then reply (October 25) emailed back to say reasons why (still no phone contact) and thought that would be the end of it. Their finance department are still chasing for the £4,500 ish for a years licence 31/10/25 onwards. Still trying to say we have cancelled and not renewing then to be told Today there is a 90 day notice period. They don't send out the renewal invoice 90 days before the renewal or check to see if you are happy with the system, they just want to take the schools money. School budgets are under strain already and companies like this should not be allowed to work in this way. I would recommend any school steers clear of these and use some of the other well know online platforms. Even our broadband and filtering is not a 90 day notice period. Not that we appear to have a copy of any contacts that were likely signed years ago by staff that would have long gone.