Practice Company Secretarial Software recommendations please

Practice Company Secretarial Software...

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We currently use Digita Company Secretarial software in our accountancy practice, as well as the other modules in Digita's accounting practice software.

Whilst we like the other modules (mostly - it's feeling a bit dated compared with programs like Xero and so on!) and we are not looking to change, the Company Secretarial module feels very much like a separate add-on and we find it crashes regularly (possibly a contributing factor is our server is cloud based). In any case the integration is often a pain rather than a benefit, as it tends to update the other modules with information from Companies House that we don't want updating (such as changing address formats so there are too many lines or characters to be acceptable for online filing to HMRC, or changing everything to upper case).

I don't use the Company Secretarial software personally so can't be more specific.

Our Digita licence is coming up for renewal very soon, so we're looking at alternative options. What do you use that you'd recommend please? As a size guideline I think we have around 220 companies on the software at the moment.

Thanks.

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By KevinLyons
30th Mar 2015 15:59

Better the devil you know?

We've not had any stability issues with the programme but use it on an in house sql server.  We're often very tempted to switch off the integration of the data though.  Ever since that came in we have issues such as the name of a director being too long for, say, Personal Tax but correct for CoSec.  That's more of a database format issue between Companies House and HMRC but causes frustration sometime and i've not seen a good solution from anyone else.

We like the Digita suite but this is the one part where we have looked at alternatives.  Our company clerk has had detailed demos of several other products but nothing, that we've seen yet, is really any better and have just renewed the licence.  In hindsight it would be best left as a standalone product.

 

 

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By User deleted
30th Mar 2015 23:39

If you use IRIS ...

... you don't have "integration" issues as there is a single data base common to all modules, which gives away the lie that Digita is a truly integrated system. 

To me being able to "turn off" integration is an oxymoron par excellance!

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Replying to monksview:
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By KevinLyons
31st Mar 2015 16:22

so how does it...

There are circumstances where a single database doesn't appear to work for the various recipients of form submissions so the ability to switch off the automatic integration is useful. 

Would be interested to know how IRIS handles this situation as a comparison

Client (of Italian origin) has four middle names which exceed the SA field length limit.  CH need the full names.  As a matter of principle does IRIS deal with that without manual amendment to one or the other form?

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Replying to monksview:
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By newmoon
01st Apr 2015 10:41

Digita Company Secretarial is integrated I think.

Old Greying Accountant wrote:

... you don't have "integration" issues as there is a single data base common to all modules, which gives away the lie that Digita is a truly integrated system. 

To me being able to "turn off" integration is an oxymoron par excellance!

The integration problem is because Digita Company Secretarial uploads corrections from Companies House that feed across the whole database, because it is integrated. However the format used by Companies House is not the same as the acceptable parameters for HMRC. If HMRC and Companies House worked on the same parameters for online filing it wouldn't be an issue.

But that besides, we have other reasons for looking for alternatives to Digita Company Secretarial, but nobody has posted any alternatives yet! 

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By User deleted
31st Mar 2015 17:23

IRIS ...

... picks up initials and surname for the SA100, the full names for AR01. (You input the forenames in a single field with spaces between, the software then extracts the initials so you only need type in the names)

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By User deleted
02nd Apr 2015 11:53

I think ...

... a competent software house would be able to deal with the parameters required by different parties.

Is not IRIS an alternative then? Silly me for thinking it was.

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