In IRIS, is there a way to mass produce the SA checklists as files?

In IRIS, is there a way to mass produce the SA...

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Each year I send out in the post to each client the annual letter requesting the SA tax return information. With each letter I enclose the IRIS checklist showing the PY info for that client.

This year I'd like to send this out by email with the checklist as an attachment. The problem I have is with the checklist. The only way I can see of creating the checklist is by Personal Tax/Administration/Checklists/Range of clients, and then selecting one client, creating and saving the checklist, then repeating client by client.

Or is this the best way: select all applicable clients, save as Word document, and then cut and paste into individual Word docs?

Any thoughts?

Replies (13)

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By cjtrevor
04th Apr 2013 20:10

checklists

 

As far as I know there isn't an easy automated way of doing this in Iris.  The two ways you describe will work but will be painfully slow if you have hundreds of clients.

For this reason we still send out by post.

 

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
05th Apr 2013 00:12

Till now, easier with PDF editor

We've been doing this for several years now but it is a bit time consuming.

Just select all or a range of clients from the checlist screen then produce one PDF with all of them and work through it extracting each set of pages per client in Adobe Acrobat or another PDF editor.  This is far quicker than generating the pages a client at a time.

We also generate a cover page and a genaral checklist to attach at the back (for stuff people tend to forget like new pensions, charitable donations, more children, Money Launderning ID catch ups etc etc) .  All  3 docs are then combined and emailed out.

BUT now we all have OpenSpace (don't we) and this is what we'll be using this year.  All you need to do is send a round robin email to all your clents (email merge with Iris output csv) that their checklists will be uploaded in the next day and to keep an eye out for the email notification, then you do a mass upload to OpenSpace of all the checklists.

I had hoped that when producing the mass PDF above you could also tick the upload to OpenSpace button and on a test run it all seemed to be going great, the upload screen fired up and I saw one PDF being uploaded but it turned out just to be the PDF for the current client, not the rest of them, even though the mass PDF saved in the selected folder contained the checklists for the clients.

I then thought that instead I could sit in client X in Personal tax and use the "range of clients" option to pick one client at a time to produce the checklist in PDF & tick the upload button.  Again, my hopes rose as I watched it produce the PDF of Client Y's checklist and then upload it but, unfortunately it still uploads to client X's OpenSpace.  In other words I now have client Y's checklist sitting in Client X's OpenSpace (fortunately I have turned off all auto email notifications in OpenSpace).

I've told IRIS about all this but as we only have a few days before the checklists are due out I suggest there are 2 alternatives:

A: In personal tax go to each client in turn and generate their checklist in PDF ticking the upload to OpenSpace.

B: Generate the mass PDF mentioned above, for all clients, extract each client's checklist with a PDF editor, which you can then drag & drop into the client's comms tab and hit upload to OpenSpace.

A is by far the easiest and quickest way and, even though not ideal, in having to print each PDF separately, it's still far quicker than any other way I can think of and so I'll be doing this and putting our general checklist and cover notes on the website for clients to grab.

 

Thanks (1)
Replying to Tax Dragon:
Red Leader
By Red Leader
05th Apr 2013 16:22

thanks for the replies

Paul,

Thank you for the very detailed reply.

I think I might try the Word option I alluded to in my post. That way the client can enter the figures in the Word document and email it back without the need for scanning.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
05th Apr 2013 17:35

Better still...

When our clients ask us we use Acrobat to create a fillable PDF.  The problem with the word version is that once people start entering info all the boxes and sections go out of sync and we've even had clients delete whole sections.

With a PDF, it looks nicer and clients can't [***] it up (well yes some can).

Instead of Acrobat, which is quite pricey, I've been trying out NUANCE's PDF Converter Pro 8 and I have to say it matches Acrobat and seems far quicker.

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By petersaxton
05th Apr 2013 18:38

How about this method?

 

http://tinyurl.com/cdj8ge5

Oh, did you say Iris? :-)

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
05th Apr 2013 23:58

Peter

That's really good and, between you and me, it's what Iris need to enable.  They do have an email to clients facility but it's outside Outlook and not really of much use.

The main thrust of my post was the need to do this securely, the tax return checklists contain confidential information, can you encrypt the PDF when you email it? 

Re your question, it was the OP who mentioned Iris as he uses it, which is why I responded so, whilst I'm really impressed with this facility in Digita it is a bit diluted by your need to...how should I put it, wave it about?

I'm a little too old for that sort of stuff however given that Iris will let you use OpenSpace, free of charge, it would be great if you could persuade Digita to release this facility to us?

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By petersaxton
06th Apr 2013 01:02

Digita NetClient

I know that Digita have NetClient which does what OpenSpace does, I think. I don't know if Digita does encryption of PDFs.

I think AnyAnswers is for more people than just the OP so people who may want to automate information requests may find it useful to know that Digita do this in what seems to be a better way than Iris. I'm sure you and others realise that this is just one feature and obviously people have to consider a lot of features.

I'm happy to bring this feature to the attention of people who may be interested in different software's ability to produce information requests. I'm sorry if you don't approve.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
08th Apr 2013 07:46

Upload to OpenSpace

Reference the ability to upload a range of client's checklists straight to OpenSpace, Iris have told me the above problem will be resolved in this month's release.

@Peter: Accepted but the tone of your posting indicated a different motive.

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By petersaxton
08th Apr 2013 08:00

Paranoia

I'm sure everybody else was more relaxed about it.

Soon I'll be looking at Digita's NetClient which is similar to Iris's OpenSpace. Once I get my new website up I will most likely buy it.

Tomorrow I am taking a look at Digita's Data Mining tool which as been expanded to search Digita Corporation Tax as well as Digita Personal Tax.

I think Digita has been behind Iris but that can be an advantage. Digita seem to be considering ease of development so they can more easily adapt to their customers needs and wants.

 

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Replying to landscaper:
Red Leader
By Red Leader
08th Apr 2013 12:15

P35s

On a related matter, this year I emailed out the P35 letter with the P35 as a PDF attachment. This saved 20% in time compared to the previous year when I used the post.

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
09th Apr 2013 08:55

Customer needs & wants

Peter - as Iris has found, and as evidenced on Accountingweb, there's such a divergance between accountants in what they need & want it is very difficult to find a way through that keeps everyone nearly happy.

Out of interest how do Digita gather info on what their customers want/need?

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By petersaxton
09th Apr 2013 10:21

Digita User Focus Groups

I attended a one day meeting last month in London. Digita have been holding such meetings throughout the country. Digita users split up into groups covering each application and explained what improvements they would like in future versions. Digita staff would make notes and discuss the ideas. Digita plan to hold these meetings regularly.

This is what I received from Digita.

 

“ARE YOU READY TO SHAPE YOUR OWN FUTURE?

JOIN THE DIGITA PRODUCT FOCUS GROUPS

With the rapid pace at which technology and software are developing, we all face one of the most challenging times since the transition from DOS to Windows. Change brings with it opportunity and that is why we want to make sure that our software development decisions are aligned with your requirements.

As I announced at our Annual Conference, we are keen to establish regular product focus groups that represent a cross-section of our user community covering the areas of Personal Tax, Corporation Tax, Accounts Production, Practice Management and Company Secretarial.

The Digita Product Focus Groups will provide you with an opportunity to spend time directly with members of our product development team and thereby influence the future direction of the software. This will ensure that we capture your thoughts as we develop our products in line with your specific needs.

We are looking for individuals who use our software on a regular basis, who are willing to share their time and experience to collaborate with other users and members of our product development and customer service teams, in order to help us develop the products that you will use in the future.

The groups will be regionally focused to minimise travel and will meet 3 days a year, with the first group starting in February 2013."

 

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By wobinb
22nd Apr 2013 13:47

splitting the PDF's

I am tackling the same problem, I have managed to split the PDFs using A-PDF content splitter:

http://www.a-pdf.com/content-splitter/index.htm

I now have 350 individual check lists and now need to find a way of securely emailing them to the clients, any ideas?

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