Cambridge Health System —
Finance & Accounting Workbench
Cambridge Health System — Finance & Controllership
The Challenge
A Healthcare Finance Team Closing the Month Without a Shared Command Centre
Cambridge Health System's Finance & Controllership team manages accounts payable, accounts receivable, month-end close, and financial policy compliance for a multi-site health organisation. The team was operating from a combination of email inboxes, shared Excel files, and an ERP system that did not surface day-to-day work priorities in any usable way.
Month-end close was tracked by whoever owned the checklist — a shared Excel file emailed around the team on day one of close. Status updates required chasing each item owner individually. On any given day, the controller could not see at a glance how far through close the team was, what was blocked, or who was responsible for what.
Approval queues — invoices awaiting sign-off, expense claims, new vendor onboarding — arrived by email from multiple directions. Without a single queue, items were missed, approvals were duplicated, and budget holders who needed to sign off found it difficult to locate outstanding items they were supposed to act on.
Month-end close tracked in a shared Excel — no live progress view, constant status chasing
Approval requests arriving by email from multiple sources — items missed, duplicated, delayed
AP/AR aging not visible without running ERP reports — overdue invoices only discovered during reviews
Policies and SOPs scattered across shared drives — staff could not find the current version quickly
The Solution
A Finance Workbench That Surfaces Each Day's Priorities on Login
The Cambridge Health System Finance Workbench was built on SharePoint Online as a dedicated Finance & Controllership site. The home page personalises to the signed-in user — surfacing the close period (Sep 2026, Day 4 of 7), month-end completion percentage (54%), budget variance (-1.8%), and an approval queue showing the user's pending actions on login.
The month-end close checklist is a Microsoft Lists-backed web part with owner assignment, status flags, and dependency tracking. As items are marked complete, the completion percentage updates live. Checklist items can be commented on and reassigned without leaving the portal. The close calendar integrates with Outlook and shows the current period's daily deadlines alongside any upcoming compliance dates.
AP and AR aging snapshots are embedded Power BI visuals reading from a scheduled data refresh connected to the ERP system. The approvals queue consolidates invoice approvals, expense claims, and vendor onboarding requests from Power Automate flows into one table, sortable by amount and days pending. The Policies & SOPs library is a structured document library with version control, category filter, and full-text search — the current version is always the top result.
What Was Delivered
Project Screenshots
Cambridge Health System Finance Workbench
Measured Outcomes
The Controllership Team Now Starts Every Day With the Same Shared View
Technology Stack
Built Entirely Within Microsoft 365 — No Finance Add-On Required
Ready to Build This?
Build a Finance Workbench on SharePoint Online
We design and build finance and controllership portals on SharePoint Online — month-end close tracking, consolidated approval queues, AP/AR dashboards, and policy libraries, all inside your existing Microsoft 365 tenant without additional software licences.