Counter Culture
Why Shelley Twitchin chooses Aqilla accounting software for smarter, faster financial insights in the non-profit and charity sector
Shelley Twitchin is a strategic finance leader and qualified accountant (FCCA), and a Partner at Counter Culture Partnership, which supports charities, social enterprises, and cultural organisations with finance, governance, business planning, and strategy.
In her role as a consultant and outsourced Finance Director, Shelley provides support and strategic advice to a range of charities, schools, museums, and heritage organisations, often operating across multiple entities, funding streams, and currencies.
Shelley has worked with Aqilla’s accounting software for over ten years. Her experience with the software began when she was Finance Director at King’s Place Music Foundation and has continued into her current consulting work, where she now recommends Aqilla to her clients as a partner in her consulting firm.
This long-term, hands-on experience gives Shelley a practical view of how accounting systems perform over time, not just at the point of selection, but as organisations evolve and their reporting and analysis needs change.
Making time for better financial decision-making
Across her work as aFinance Director, Shelley sees a recurring challenge, particularly in the not-for-profit and cultural sectors.
Too much time is spent dealing with historic data and day-to-day processing, leaving limited capacity to focus on future decision-making, sustainability, and strategy.
“Finance consists of dwelling in the past, the present, and the future. You have to be able to dwell in the past, analysing your historic information and answering questions about why things happened the way they did — but then that informs your future decision-making.”
For many organisations, the issue is not a lack of data, but the difficulty of accessing and analysing that data quickly enough to support confident leadership decisions.
Getting the right data quickly to answer the right questions with advanced financial reporting software
Shelley recommends Aqilla because it enables finance teams to move efficiently from data to insight.
“Aqilla helps you get the data out quickly in the format that you need it to be in to answer those questions, and it allows people to spend more time in that future box.”
By reducing reliance on spreadsheets and manual manipulation, Aqilla allows finance leaders to focus more on analysis, forecasting, and strategic planning.
Supporting efficiency in resource-constrained organisations
Much of Shelley’s work is rooted in the not-for-profit sector, where organisations are under constant pressure to achieve more with limited resources.
“The industries that I’m working in are primarily rooted in the not-for-profit sector, where everyone is looking to be more efficient with less resources, so affordability is key. Aqilla is an affordable solution.”
This balance of affordability, flexibility, and capability makes Aqilla an ideal cloud accounting solution for charities, cultural organisations, and social enterprises that need robust accounting software without enterprise-level complexity.
Encouraging wider stakeholder engagement with Finance
Shelley values the way Aqilla supports broader involvement in financial processes across organisations.
“[The way the platform itself is constructed] creates buy-in from the wider team and allows people to be involved in finance processes where previously they might have just allowed the finance function to be quite siloed”
This wider engagement helps trustees, boards, and leadership teams ask better questions, improve financial understanding, and strengthen governance.
Built for curious leadership teams
For Shelley, Aqilla is particularly well suited to organisations that want to go beyond basic accounting and make better use of their financial information.
“It’s the right choice for curious leadership teams. If you have data, but don’t know how to use it to answer your questions, Aqilla helps you get that data out quickly in the format you need.”
Why Shelley continues to recommend Aqilla accounting software
After more than a decade of working with Aqilla — both as an in-house finance leader and as a consultant Shelley continues to recommend the software because it supports the full spectrum of finance activity: understanding the past, managing the present, and planning for the future.
For organisations seeking flexible, affordable cloud accounting software that supports advanced financial reporting, multi-entity structures, and confident decision-making, Aqilla remains Shelley’s preferred solution.
Looking for cloud accounting software with advanced reporting and flexibility?
If your organisation needs UK-based cloud accounting software that supports multi-entity, multi-currency reporting and advanced financial analysis — whether in-house or through an advisor — book a demo to see Aqilla in action.
