Company overview.
Imagine Education is a fast-growing education organization operating across more than 60 legal entities. With a significant number of acquisitions underway and plans to list publicly, the company requires a high level of financial control, reporting consistency, and the ability to consolidate data quickly across a large and expanding entity structure. The finance team of 15 manages accounting across the full group, making efficiency and standardization a business-critical priority.
Challenge.
Before implementing Business Central with Binary Stream’s Multi-Entity Management (MEM), Imagine Education faced a growing set of challenges as the company scaled. With 60+ entities each operating in isolation, the finance team was carrying a manual workload that was no longer sustainable, and would only get worse with further acquisitions on the horizon.
- Siloed entity management: Each of the 60+ entities had to be opened, managed, and closed individually.
- Manual intercompany entries: Accountants had to navigate into one entity, enter a transaction, close it, open a second entity, and enter the corresponding transaction, with no side-by-side visibility to verify accuracy.
- High risk of data entry errors: Working across separate instances meant mistakes were easy to make and difficult to catch in real time.
- Slow month-end close: Completing month-end across all entities took too long leaving little time for analysis and value-add activities.
- 60 sets of working papers: Reconciliation at month-end required a separate set of working papers for every account item, across every entity.
“We needed a lot more control over our accounts, and much better ability to pull data quickly, consolidate it across the group, and do analysis.” — Mel Youngson, CFO.
Solution.
After evaluating options and connecting with Binary Stream through an inquiry into lease accounting, Imagine Education implemented Dynamics 365 Business Central with Binary Stream’s Multi-Entity Management (MEM). The decision was reinforced by Jimmy’s prior experience with Binary Stream in a previous role — where the team had relied on Binary Stream’s Subscription Billing solution — giving the organization confidence in the product’s depth and reliability.
The implementation addressed several immediate priorities:
- Unified multi-entity environment allowing the team to work across all 60+ entities, with side-by-side visibility into transactions as they post.
- Automated intercompany invoicing eliminating double entry entirely.
- Consolidated reporting foundation enabling the team to view financial data across all entities in one place.
- Scalable structure built to absorb additional entities from ongoing acquisitions without disrupting existing accounting workflows.
We’re no longer going to need 60 sets of working papers. We can actually look at a particular balance sheet area across all entities and do our working paper there in one.” — Jimmy Stewart, CEO.
Results: Faster closes, fewer errors, and a foundation built for scale.
While Imagine Education is still in the early stages of their MEM journey, the efficiency gains are already visible.
- Significant month-end close reduction: there is now a clear pathway to materially reducing the month-end close timeframe.
- Consolidated working papers: What previously required 60 separate sets of working papers per account item can now be done once, across all entities, in a single view.
- IPO-ready financial controls: With an intended public listing, Imagine Education now has the data consistency, consolidation capability, and reporting infrastructure to meet the demands of a listed company.
- Scalable for unlimited growth: With 60+ entities already in the system and more acquisitions planned, the structure is built to expand without adding operational burden.
“There’s massive efficiency from MEM for us.” — Danica Yang, System Accountant.
