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Epic fail?

16th Feb 2015
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 Last year I was confidently predicting that my change to a hosted desktop solution (HDUK) and a document management system (Lindenhouse) would save me loads of time and make it possible for me to work from wherever I could get an internet connection.

Well, HDUK came up trumps and works really well. The support is excellent – very helpful staff who turn around requests very quickly – even at weekends. It’s enabled me to work on holiday (essentials only I promise!) and from client’s premises without taking my laptop and have access to all my records just using a desktop onsite.

Brilliant – very happy.

The Virtual Cabinet thing hasn’t really happened. I attended webinars, paid my money, had the onsite installation and initial training, and then, well, nothing.

What went wrong?

Me.

I didn’t really make sufficient time at the time of the installation to practice using the product (I’d just got back from a long weekend and had lots of work to catch up with).

By the time I sat down to get to grips with it I’d forgotten some of what I’d been shown and I was slightly daunted by the amount of work facing me – creating folders, moving files etc.

So I put it off.

And, well nothing.

I went back to my old practices (which work okay).

I can’t blame the product, I just blame me. I didn’t plan the implementation properly. In fact I could go back a stage further; I didn’t make sure that the product was something I was certain I needed.

Maybe I got caught up in the marketing and the feel good factor?

So what did I learn?

1.    Plan, plan and plan again.

2.    And, only commit to spending my money once I’m sure I need something.

And then double check.

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Replies (7)

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By ShirleyM
16th Feb 2015 21:46

I had a similar experience with Invu

We used Sage practice software at the time. I thought Invu would integrate with it and pick up the client code, but it never worked properly. I got the impression (rightly or wrongly) that it was really L50 that the integration was designed for.

We had to manually enter the client code, the year, the folder (eg. tax, accounts), etc. We may as well have just keyed a complete file name and saved ourselves a bundle of money.

At that time (now changed I believe), Invu scanned OCR files into tif format rather than pdf, which wasn't much cop for sending to clients, and it meant we couldn't annotate the files (other than in Invu itself). There wasn't any archive facility, and we were also led to believe that emails would be filed automatically. We discovered (after purchase) that the email filing would cost another £1K, or so.

It may have been the filing structure was set up wrong, but there wasn't any method that I could see, that would prevent misfiling. Careless entering of search tags would result in lost files.The search worked, but it brought up so many files that you had to keep filtering and filtering. In the end, it caused more problems, and took up more time than it saved so we scrapped £5K worth of software.

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Man of Kent
By Kent accountant
16th Feb 2015 22:31

All that glitters

@Shirley - I sometimes think, which you've alluded to, that we don't realise that what we have is fine and we don't need the shiny new whatever it is.

My file structure is simple and works really well. I have template folder structures which I just copy and paste for new clients.

The big issue I had at the time was the issue over the security of sending client data via e-mail. Well I think I took the bait on this one, I should have waited and thought it through.

Looking ahead the Iris portal, dropbox and probably several other offerings will provide a solution which works for me and clients when transferring data has to be more secure than standard e-mail.

 

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By ShirleyM
17th Feb 2015 06:43

The sales patter often omits vital information

We were promised that the person doing the installation would not leave until everything was working correctly. That did not happen. We had a long list of problems 'to be sorted later'. That really impressed us (not!). Day one, and promises already being broken. The vendors of Invu blamed our brand new hefty file server (also professionally installed and we had informed the vendors of Invu the full system spec before purchase).

A total waste of time and money.

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By remhonps
17th Feb 2015 12:16

the song says, it's not what you do, it's the way that you do it

After 6 years in use, we moved last year from INVU to Linden House.

Linden House did the conversion and the "old" INVU history is readily available via Linden House's Virtual Cabinet.

Virtual Cabinet is a peach if you can connect with your client database - our client bedrock is ACT!  We find it a joy, easier and quicker in functionality in use because we can scan, file and  search using the ACT! link and ACT! client record.

The digital sign-off with the Virtual Cabinet is such a big plus and has transformed the way that we work. We got Mercia to design some tax and accounts front covers for us and now issue tax returns as a PDF inside what we call a "Tax  Binder" consisting of:

Mercia's front cover plus 2 page comment (an ACT! Template) consisting of comment, payment methods, timescales, instructions, retention etc.Tax Graph - income breakdown and tax as % of income.SA302 substitute.Data Input sheets (courtesy of BTC) and supporting documents followed by theSA100

All of the above is created digitally, "merged" using Adobe Acrobat, issued digitally via the Virtual Cabinet, signed and approved digitally, returned and filed digitally inside Virtual Cabinet and easily accessible through the ACT! record. The principle is no different with AR01's, accounts, and payroll - all  sent and approved digitally via Virtual Cabinet.

Our new TAX Binder has been well received - was described by one client as "superb" - and some of our savvy clients are uploading documents through their Virtual Cabinets straight to our desktops.

We were prompted to move to Virtual Cabinet by concerns over Data Security sending PDF files by email, the swingeing fines should breaches arise because of error, the validity of approvals by email in general, issues surrounding RTI approvals and timescales, postal costs and a wish to "up our game".

The ground was prepared with our clients beforehand and both the presentation and delivery has gone down very well with our clients arriving (as it did) at the time of the eBay and Sony hackings. The topic of data security has proved to be a big concern to our clients - with some flatly refusing to use Dropbox considering it unsafe - and I think we got the timing dead right.

To such an extent that 9 months on , we have increased our fees by 4% this year - with a direct reference to increases in software costs because of the increases in compliance and data security - and no-one has demurred, one commenting as she signed "Well Peter, you have spent such a lot of money this year protecting us .....".

All in all, a "win-win" scenario as our clients are now paying for what they perceive as added  extra value, we've got better working practices and data-security, and we are paying less than we did for INVU. Linden House support is good as well.

As background, in addition to the ACT! database bedrock, the software we use is VT accounts, Payroll Manager, BTC and Absolute (IRIS) Company Secretarial software although we are now starting to introduce Kashflow having moved the practice accounts over. The auto-reminders don't half get the money in sharpish.

I am a sole practitioner with one member of staff on a 4 day 25 hour week, with 2 others working a one day - 5-6 hours a week.

Happy to post the client communication that prepared clients for the change if of interest to anyone.

 

 

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
18th Feb 2015 19:20

For us it was emails that needed sorting

Whether created or scanned, client documents have never been a problem, there have just never been enough of them to warrant a formal management/arching system.

At 40-50 a day in/out however, emails were a nightmare to file and retrieve.  What's more, with documents merely recording historical dead stuff it was emails that we constantly needed to refer to in order to ascertain what was happening now & recently.  If ever a client calls or emails about an issue, 9 times out of 10 it's emails I need to search for to get the up to date story.

Also, with our MS Exchange server everyone's emails are separate, there is no easy way to review all emails on any one client.

It was an ACCA visit in 2009 that raised this as our biggest weakness and so I searched around and found Mailsafe. This sits outside the email server and captures every email in/out and enable you to 'index" it with up to 6 fields, we use 5 client ref/name, topic, sub-topic, year, free text description.  You can pre-set fields by attaching to email addresses or domains, making auto-indexing easy.  So now, if I need to see any email to do with a clients CGT work in 2012 or discussions over a client's quote and fees in 2014, it's only a few seconds away.

It works with our hosted MS server and the version we use only costs £200 pa, probably one of the best bits of software we've ever invested in.

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By carnmores
22nd Feb 2015 08:41

@Paul


If per chance there is more than one client involved can you index to them as well or only one , also did you look at using OneNote as a saver

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Teignmouth
By Paul Scholes
23rd Feb 2015 09:55

@carnmores

Hi - yes, you can index an email as many times as you want, most usually between topics, eg the email may cover CGT and PAYE but, yes, you can also index it to different clients.

Not sure if Onenote was around in 2009 plus I don't think it was available for Macs until recently, so I've never used it.  I'm assuming it allows collaboration between people, does it also link with emails, it like Google docs?

 

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