The Legal Aid Commission (LAC) of Sri Lanka, established in 1978, has a mission to ensure equal access to the legal system for all citizens. Over the years, it has expanded from 11 centers to 84 across the country, focusing on providing legal assistance to vulnerable communities. The LAC stands out among other similar institutions due to its stability and effectiveness in fulfilling this critical need. A significant challenge faced by the LAC was its manual payment process for attorneys, leading to difficulties in tracking payments and instances of double payments.

To address the issue of repeated payments, the LAC collaborated with Purple Software to develop a Payment Management System (PMS). This system is designed to manage an organization’s financial transactions efficiently, tackling cash management concerns such as expenditure and disbursements. By automating the payment process, the system reduces the likelihood of human error, helping the LAC avoid duplicate payments and improve organizational performance.

The PMS for the LAC was built on several key principles. It included features like invoice management, payment processing, transaction recording and tracking, receipt generation, and comprehensive reporting capabilities. These features ensure that all financial transactions are managed from a single point, simplifying the tracking of payments and improving operational efficiency. Additionally, the system was designed to be fast and user-friendly, with a simple UX to facilitate ease of use across modern devices.

Throughout the project’s development, prototypes were created and tested with team feedback, ensuring a practical solution. Regular communication with the client allowed for a tailored approach, resulting in a secure and scalable architecture that transformed LAC’s internal processes. The collaboration led to remarkable improvements in reporting, where reports that previously took 5 hours to generate could now be completed in just 5 seconds, a 3,600 times improvement in speed.