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.
Replies (6)
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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.
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!
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?
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)
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.