Kashflow - appalling customer service, or is it just me?

Kashflow - appalling customer service, or is it...

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I've been using Xero and Freeagent with clients for a while now, and whilst Xero in particular has its faults, I'm generally happy to recommend both to clients, depending on individual circumstances of course. 

I've looked at Kashflow a couple of times, mainly because I think their £5/month version may suit some of my clients using spreadsheets, and whilst the product seems fine, the customer service doesn't. I've emailed them a few times now (I like to email in these situations as I find it reveals more about the responsiveness of the business than phoning) and have had to wait many days if not weeks for a response, even after chasers have been sent. I can't recommend service like that to my clients. Just interested whether I've been unlucky and should persevere, or whether others have had the same experience?

(Kashflow directors and employees need not reply, I'd like the accountant/customer experience, not the case for the defense please!)

Replies (12)

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By claudialowe
17th Feb 2015 12:58

Not just you......

I thankfully only have one client using it.  Still got an outstanding "issue" from June last year.  Had to email them this week regarding something else, about 2pm.  They didn't get back to me until the following day (despite their website saying that they respond to the majority of emails "within the hour").  Response was not helpful so replied again asking to be called - which they did.  But, they couldn't help me.

 

 

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Image is of a pin up style woman in a red dress with some of her skirt caught in the filing cabinet. She looks surprised.
By Monsoon
17th Feb 2015 13:02

I've never had a problem with KF customer service. In fact, I would say it was excellent on the occasions I have used it. That was a few years ago.

I can't stand the software itself, it's horrible, but that's a different subject! 

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By petersaxton
17th Feb 2015 13:18

Iris bought KashFlow!

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By Ken Howard
17th Feb 2015 13:44

Big firms usually means poor support

Yes, since KF was sold to Iris, the support and general communications have worsened.  I used to "enjoy" dealing with the same people at KF, often directly with the owner Duane, but since he sold out, it's been a succession of different people who don't seem to have a clue and you never get the same person twice.  Support seem to only be able to copy & paste answers from the knowledge base which means "noddy" answers more suited to a newbie user and completely irrelevant to experienced clients or accountants.

Not just KF though, similar poor "support" is now the norm from Freeagent too.  I've emailed them with a number of faults in their system over the past year or two, many of which still aren't fixed and require time consuming workarounds.  Same story, their front line support simply can't understand the problem and you need to escalate but even when they accept a problem exists, there's no mechanism for it to be solved, even fairly simple things.

That's why I get annoyed when people criticise Quickbooks Online - it's as if people think all the other cloud options are perfect - they aren't.  QBO isn't perfect but in my experience, no worse than the others.  All the cloud products are evolving and they all have their fair share of limitations etc.  I can't say that any of the cloud offerings (I use most of them) have perfect support - far from it!

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By petersaxton
17th Feb 2015 13:51

Support

Most companies think support should be carried out by lowly paid inexperienced people.

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Replying to SimonStone:
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By Ken Howard
17th Feb 2015 14:56

dumbing down common everywhere

petersaxton wrote:

Most companies think support should be carried out by lowly paid inexperienced people.

Yep, dumbing down the front line is the modern trend not only for businesses, but also for public sector organisations like HMRC, NHS, etc.  A very short sighted policy!

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Replying to Samantha20:
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By whatdoyoumeanwashe
17th Feb 2015 15:11

Everyone wants everything cheaper!

Ken Howard wrote:

petersaxton wrote:

Most companies think support should be carried out by lowly paid inexperienced people.

Yep, dumbing down the front line is the modern trend not only for businesses, but also for public sector organisations like HMRC, NHS, etc.  A very short sighted policy!

All part of the desperate attempt to make everything cheaper - the only method the developed world seems to have left to continue raising living standards.

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By DMGbus
17th Feb 2015 14:07

Same with PTP

There's an ongoing issue with PTP's Tax Expense product (P11D software) whereby duplex printing is often impossible or difficult to achieve.   To be fair to IRIS this is a pre-takeover issue that they inherited in taking over PTP.

Now, where PTP could improve is in the support - certainly poorer since the IRIS takeover.  On one occasion I think that after getting through to a PTP advisor they recommended speaking direct to them rather than using the default support which was routed via (delayed via) IRIS.

I do wonder if 12pay now that it is in the IRIS fold will suffer similarly.

 

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By whatdoyoumeanwashe
17th Feb 2015 14:21

Thanks all. I've not had issues with Freeagent, although thinking about it I can't recall when I last had to contact them. I had thought perhaps the Kashflow problem was related to their relative cheapness compared to other brands. I have big problems with Xero, but they are very specific, to do with their mis-selling of Stitchlabs as an add-on.

I think on balance I'll give Kashflow another chance then, since I won't entertain not using any cloud products at all, and if they've all got poor customer service we'll just have to hope it gets better!

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By petersaxton
17th Feb 2015 15:28

Cheap

but doesn't do what's needed!

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By whatdoyoumeanwashe
17th Feb 2015 16:10

Update: still had no answer to my question to support last Tuesday, and the ticket has clearly now been closed, since I've had the "How did we do?" email. Unbelievable.

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By Nick_ Robinson
31st May 2015 11:30

Kashflow

I am a relative newcomer to Kashflow.  I am a Chartered Accountant specialising in Insolvnecy but I am also a director of a Scottish Championship football club.  The Club has an associated charity arm - our Community Trust.

I put the charity onto Kashflow from February and am about to migrate the football club to it but I have reservations and have considered switching both to Xero.  I have been put off that by there being no obvious way to migrate all transactions for the current financial year without quite a lot of thought in terms bringing it in sections at a time.  Kashflow at least made getting my desktop Quickbooks migrated very easy.

As for Kashflow itself, I have a number of reservations:

1) Having made enquiries about the year end routine, it appears that all revenue account transactions are cleared down into a balance which is transferred to whatever revenue reserve account is specified.  The transaction detail is therefore lost.  I am unclear how then that fits with the compliance requirement to retain six years information?  My proposed solution is to download a full nominal ledger report to Excel as a back up but this is far from ideal.

2) As a result of 1) reports with comparative figures would seem to be impossible

3) As a charity, we require to monitor projects for which we have received specific grant funding (restricted funds)  We do that by assigning each transaction a project (cost centre) number which is OK when posting individual transactions.  We import directly from the bank and from PayPal and the latter can exceed 400 payments per month, each giving rise to two transactions.  There is no quick way to assign project numbers to imported transactions and each has to be opened individually and the project number assigned.  Another area that requires less than perfect workarounds (using 

4) Kashflow does not have a proper user permissions system allowing trackable multi user access from different locations.   For me this is one of the main points of using a cloud based system and a bit of an ommission.  They say they are working on this but as far as I can see, they have been saying that for at least two years and it is only partially delivered.  Again there is a workaround which works for our circumstances in that there is an "accountant" access and we use several accounts to allow access to appropriate people.

Its not all bad news and there is much to like about Kashflow.  The ledgers are sound and reporting up to trial balance level is good.  I like the unlimited size of comment against  transactions and the automatic imports save for the issues of assigning project numbers.  Profit and loss and balance sheet reporting is too basic for anything other than guides and we deal with that by exporting a trial balance monthly to an excel reporting package.

Nearly all the online systems appear to have issues and none are perfect so we will stick with Kashflow for now but its more on a "devil you know" basis and the lack of a better alternative.

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