2008 Review of Practice Management Systems

Others may look to their clients and ask, “What more can we do for you?”
Some firms may base raises on capture rates for new clients or new engagement
services. These may all be true measures of success, depending on the firm and
clientele. However, this year’s four practice management products are
designed for firms that have a true willingness to succeed. What’s the
difference?

This year’s products are loaded with management features, tracking tools,
dashboards and data mining reports. There are many ways to get lost in the setup,
and delegating the implementation to the IT department or to a few staff or
interns who need a project to meet their 50-hour requirement just won’t
work. Everyone in the firm has to be willing to move toward a successful implementation,
which requires understanding the intent of the software package, providing adequate
system support, modifying business processes if necessary, and using it.

If you’re buying it for the management features, then the setup should
certainly involve management. In the past, after these reviews have been published,
I’ve received calls and e-mails from people who say, “I want to
buy new practice management software. Can you tell me which one has the most
features? That’s the one I want to buy.” There’s a certain
level of commitment required to doing things right.

While I’m honored to be consulted (and it helps with the reviews), it’s
best to try a few packages first or have an idea of what you really want. Assigning
the IT guy to select the firm’s software probably isn’t the best
move. I know this because I tried.

As we all know, every firm is unique. Some have specific engagements or departments
with overriding needs for billing or reporting. Perhaps management is looking
for status reports that staff members don’t have time to create. Not all
firms have the personnel resources to handle custom report creation. Find out
where administration and staff have problems with the existing software. In
some cases, firms are migrating because of operating system support problems,
database corruption issues, or other technical concerns.

Having the willingness to succeed means knowing your boundaries, understanding
your needs, and providing adequate resources (time, money, AND people) to support
a planned installation and cut-over. And don’t forget to consider where
you want to be two years from now.

The reviews presented here highlight specific features that firms may have
an interest in using. While the four products have each received high ratings,
each software application works very differently from the next. The tools are
not the same between products; the reporting functionality having the greatest
set of differences. Time required to support each product is not the same. Lastly,
firms may find the final cost to adopt any one of the applications to vary considerably
from the list price once training, setup, and report and dashboard development
costs are considered.

While writing this review, I commented to myself that there appeared to be
a lack of ingenuity to new developments within the tax and accounting software
community. Having given that further thought after completing this review, it
appears that each vendor has found constructive details to add to their product
that separate each from the competition and make each application uniquely useful
to tax and accounting firms. The use of dashboards helps support firms that
have paperless initiatives, while those that have complex detail and historical
reporting support firms with growth initiatives. New methods to identify competition
are born, and firms can take an interest in monitoring their capture performance.
Firms willing to try new processes and explore practice management software
packages could be rewarded with better methods, new reporting and ways to better
serve clients.

To help support the changing needs of tax and accounting firms, I offer a few
development suggestions for all current and past participants of the Practice
Management review.

First, a tool to help administer and incorporate Google Apps would be beneficial.
The incorporation of their chat tool, documents and the administration of home
pages could align an application with “firms of the future.”

Second, tools to help administer agenda creation and distribution would be
a good move. It’s always nice to be organized, and even more appreciated
by management when it can be tracked and billed.

Third, it would be nice to see a CPE monitoring and aggregating service that
pulls schedules, content and pricing from selected CPE vendors and provides
reporting of available courses. If your firm has other software needs that have
gone unresolved, or that have recently been identified, take the opportunity
to contact your software vendor and make a recommendation. Recent developments
and modifications have largely come about from user submissions. Firms can help
shape the success of their adopted platform by providing input, if they are
willing.

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