Leaving Iris - Digita or Taxcalc?

Leaving Iris - Digita or Taxcalc?

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I've finally had enough of iris extorting huge increases year on year and am looking to switch to digita or Taxcalc. Interested in hearing from aweb members specifically:

1) experience of data conversion
2) level of integration eg automail
3) reliability
4) do they whack you with iris levels of price inflation once signed up.?
5) general impressions

Replies (16)

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By nmprobinson
10th Mar 2016 16:11

Digita...

...We bought Digita but I personally did not get on with it.  Many users on here will recommend it.

We reverted back to VT and BTC.  Which we all prefer.

Anyway in a nutshell if you like Digita I have a licence going spare!!  I'm not sure if Digita can transfer this or not but they will not let me out the contract (legally binding blah blah!).  

Of the two you mention I prefer Digita.  Taxcalc had lots of flaws for the way we operate.

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By ireallyshouldknowthisbut
10th Mar 2016 16:12

.

How many clients do you have, and what size are you going to be a in few years?

 

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By jasonholden
10th Mar 2016 16:18

TaxCalc

We use TaxCalc, we swapped last year, after testing many of the alternatives we have found TaxCalc to be truly amazing to use and at sensible pricing.

Their support ... only ever had to use it once during an upgrade and it was probably one of the best levels of support I have experienced from a software company.

If you want any idea how good it is, we took on a trainee last year and the TaxCalc software has allowed the firm to benefit from her work from an early stage.

Jason

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By norstar
10th Mar 2016 16:58

Size
I should have said, we're approx 300 clients for each product (business tax, personal etc). We may be taking over a practice in three or so years so adding another half...

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Replying to 356B:
By jon_griffey
10th Mar 2016 17:31

Economies of scale

norstar wrote:
I should have said, we're approx 300 clients for each product (business tax, personal etc). We may be taking over a practice in three or so years so adding another half...

Do you not have a modular (i.e. unlimited clients) licence for Iris?  The marginal cost is then just any additional users and so should bring down the cost per client.

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By norstar
10th Mar 2016 17:45

Modules
We've got unlimited clients, but they're hiking the cost up and this year it's up by a double digit percentage which takes the piddle. On top of that, it's not reliable for us at the moment.

I don't mind paying for software, but 7 to 14% increases each year is just not on.

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By norstar
10th Mar 2016 17:47

Modules
Duplicated post

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Glenn Martin
By Glenn Martin
10th Mar 2016 20:06

If I were starting out now..
I would take a look at Capium as it looks great for the money and is cloud based which seems a few years away for most other providers.

I use Digita and very happy with it.

allow Iris are good products you won't hear many on here praise them for their contracts, price increases and how difficult they become when you want to jump ship.

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By marks
10th Mar 2016 22:42

think you have to trial both

We moved from Taxcalc to IRIS last year and although happy to pay for IRIS fees we dont feel it is justified in the time savings it is making although may be our problem in that we arent using fully the time and fees, automail and openspace modules.

We are looking to move back to Taxcalc from end of June when our first period ends.  Just gave our 90 day notice today incase we do decide to jump ship.

Although Taxcalc isnt great from a PM viewpoint we prefer it for preparing the accounts and tax returns compared to IRIS as it much more user friendly and faster.  Plus you can combine a personal tax return, comp and schedules in one PDF which you cant do in IRIS.

We would need to find some PM software to bolt onto IRIS but isnt a big problem as we use Inform Direct to keep a track of companies house accounts and annual return filings and outsource all payroll so just really something to keep a track on VAT returns and personal tax returns and something like glide would be fine we think.  For timesheets we might use something like TBookman.  

We did look at the combination of Taxcalc, Gilde and TBookman before switching to IRIS but decided to go with IRIS given everything was on the same platform.

The cost of using Taxcalc, Gilde and TBookman based on client numbers and users would be about £2k + VAT per year compared to about £10k + VAT per year which we pay for IRIS.

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Elliott Chandler Picture
By elliottchandler
11th Mar 2016 13:18

Technical

From a technical perspective which should be considered. Digita requires Microsoft SQL and if you have over five users then you are going to need to consider the hardware requirements to run SQL Standard. TaxCalc is using PostgreSQL which has much lower hardware requirements. Backing up PostgreSQL needs a little more effort than SQL. You might be thinking you need to keep your server or purchase a new one but the other option is to move the server to the cloud. Any questions on the technical aspects let me know.

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By Mr_awol
11th Mar 2016 13:45

Digita integration

Is nothing like IRIS.  Digita very much reminds you that it is a whole bunch of separate products importing from each other or from a central database.

Update accounts?  Manually import into the tax module.  Then for sole traders you'll have t put all your add backs in again.

Change an address?  It will warn you of an 'integration' requirement and prompt you to import the changes into accounts pro next time you open that client.  I used to review the changes each time but you get so used to seeing the yellow box that you end up just clicking ok every time.

Chang a disclosure?  The front page of the accounts now says 'update required' so you go back and click that button.  It never changes anything other than removing the warning (as ive never found a single update that hadn't already been pulled through to the accounts) but does need doing.  Thankfully you can set it to automatically do this, although I cant remember how.

Generally Digita is useable, but not as slick or polished as IRIS.  It's the Galaxy tab/S5 compared to the iPad/iPhone.  Theres a fair bit of money to be saved and they both do the same thing on the surface, but you end up a little bit disappointed because its not quite as good and still costs a lot of money, and now youre kinda stuck with/committed to it.

The only areas where I think Digita 'wins' in a direct comparison with IRIS are on price and the iXBRL tagging..............

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By jasonholden
11th Mar 2016 17:10

Is any of this helping norstar?

I can comment on the backup in TaxCalc, it is very easy and having used it once to restore from it works :-)

Jason

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By norstar
11th Mar 2016 17:21

Thanks

H Jason, yes I think so. We looked at Digita when we first went to IRIS, and Mr Awol's findings were what put me off at the time. I recall the integration being less "polished" (good description). I'll have a close look at this functionality. However I read that Digita are buddying up with Xero, which I prefer to the IRIS/Kashflow option so that's another +1.

We may be acquiring a firm in the next few years and they use/rave about taxcalc, but again, the integration of the PM suite concerns me so I'll be looking to trial it first. It would be good to align our software now however.

Elliott's technical post is useful and backs up my findings with the SQL based approach. We've just had a new server put in to handle the requirements.

It's a tough one. If IRIS didn't seem intent on extorting ridiculous increases and supplying a terrible Automail function, I'd stay, but my plans revolve around using automail and I can't be working with a flaky module at sky high prices. If they carry on increasing my costs like this, I'll be paying £40k to IRIS before long - for a small practice!

Thanks to all for their input.

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Elliott Chandler Picture
By elliottchandler
12th Mar 2016 14:05

Further Thoughts
Digita do have a module called Practice Advanced which for a growing practice is likely to be a good fit but it needs some work to get right.

I have helped people move from IRIS to Digita and technically it is simple process. It does need managing but very achievable.

Also have helped growing practices integrate relevant technologies.

If norstar needs a technical sound board happy to do that.

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By colinx
19th Apr 2017 11:46

We have just left Taxcalc on the basis that their fees increased by 26% this year and 13% the previous year. Following a discussion with an account manager, no discounts and no guarantees on future price increases either

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Red Leader
By Red Leader
19th Apr 2017 12:06

The IRIS price rises are insane. Despite my very vociferous complaints, they refused to freeze my price. I switched to Taxcalc and my fees dropped by 75%. When IRIS got my cancellation notice, they started to offer discounts. Too late chum!

If only they had been more flexible to start with, inertia would have prevented me looking around to move.

Taxcalc give 15 months for the price of 12 months to start with, so this may explain their apparent price rise thereafter. Data conversion cost £50 though this only covered standing data, not annual stuff like TB, etc.

I have about 150 TRs and 50 ltd cos.

No real issues yet, I'm happy I moved. There are bound to be +/- differences in the software, but I think it evens out.

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