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Understand why your practice software isn't working

26th May 2020
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Caseware financial reporting and audit solutions.

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The accounting practice is facing a number of challenges today, whether it be managing numerous customer projects, growing customer expectations, managing their own employees, increase their fees and resources all alongside trying to adopt new working methods.

Practice management software is an essential tool and is predicted to become more popular within the industry over the next few years.

Although spend is increasing on practice management software, businesses and firms are still finding it difficult to choose the right software.

Most manage to do this well, while some don’t.

Our blog outlines why your practice management software isn’t working for you and looking at whether you’re using the software you’re spending money on to its full potential.

Secure by design

It goes without saying that practice management software must be secure, accountants are trusted with clients’ most sensitive information. If you’re finding it difficult to keep your clients’ data and documents safe, then your software isn’t doing its job as it should.

Your teams can’t track anything

Teams want to be able to work collaboratively, allowing them to access and work on projects simultaneously, from anywhere.

Your current practice management software should promote this way of working, by enabling teams to track activities and projects, allowing data to be produced quickly whilst delegating and allowing the tracking of progress for tasks.

Actively tracking activity and projects just isn’t possible with manual processes, but also many firms are not able to do this with their current software.

This is particularly true for companies who are relying on non-cloud-based systems.

If this is something you’re not able to do with your current software, you need to be changing your software.

The Software doesn’t promote collaboration

Research conducted by Randstad Financial & Professional shows that three quarters of accountancy vacancies expect candidates to demonstrate key skills including communication, listening and willingness to collaborate.

Although candidates are expected to show their openness to collaboration, the same can’t be said for the software being used by firms and companies, this is especially true when it comes to pairing collaboration with flexible or remote working.

Legacy systems are well known for creating silos amongst teams (more so for those relying on manual processes) therefore, making it difficult for two different people to work on the same project at the same time.

This involves one person working on a document, saving their latest version, and the other person then (hopefully) going to work on the most recent document to make further changes.

This is just not feasible for accounts and finance teams who want to work flexibly as this is not a reliable or efficient method of working.

New cloud-based practice software comes with collaboration built in as standard, offering teams the flexibility to work on the same document from anywhere with internet connection, to view tasks assigned to them as well as viewing the full workflow.

Does your software allow this? If the answer is no, then it’s time for a change!

Is your financial reporting getting easier?

It can be time consuming to produce and review statutory accounts for clients, however, this is something practice management software could help with.

Software can make a positive impact to the production of financial reports, offering a much quicker, simpler process to allow finance teams to utilise their time elsewhere, undertaking valuable projects to assist with growing your practice.

A problem that many teams face is that statutory reports are stored in multiple locations, your software should make this process easier by allowing information to be pulled and cross-referenced from programs such as Excel and Word into one single location. This will reduce the time taken by teams to compile accounts and reports.

Does your financial software require you to manually search for information from one place to key into another? If so, it’s clearly not making your life easier or working as it should.

Similarly, if you are having to send and receive documents from different sources (email or post) this again, isn’t assisting in making your job easier.

Your software should enable crucial data to be sent and received from one secure portal, so all documents are stored in one place, where engagement deadlines can be tracked and prioritised within one single dashboard.

Needless to say, if your current software doesn’t allow you to do this, then it’s time for you to review your software.

To find out more on how your accounting practice management software can improve your practice and reporting, click here