Accountancy practice management software has come a long way. Today, features like automated billing and reconciliations are easily integrated into the day-to-day practice workflow of Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting UK customers.

Our employees work side by side with our customers to create and manage these solutions – driven by a deep understanding of their needs and addressing the rapid changes in their environment.

However, it’s often hard to look beyond improving performance in day-to-day operations. Amid Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic and other disruptions, accountancy practices and their clients are dealing with an unpredictable economic landscape. Future business planning can appear daunting.

However, technology can support accountancy practices (and their clients) in making informed business decisions, and planning for the future. In the first part of our Accountancy Practice Management for Future-Fit Growth series, we’ll explore how they can use technology to define and easily track Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). Doing so gives practices closer control of performance tracking, and deeper insights that will inform strategic growth plans.
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Saving Time

For several decades, business technology platforms have enabled practices to track performance metrics that they have customised. This highlights areas that qualify for improvement and underpins strategic planning.

Contemporary technology, such as CCH KPI Monitoring, makes setting up KPIs faster and easier for accountancy practices than ever before. This is vital today. The current business landscape demands that firms assess and amend KPIs more frequently, based on fresh market variables. KPIs such as client retention rate and business time-to-recovery have become increasingly prominent performance indicators in the past year. If clunky technology makes KPI management difficult, practices have less time and insight to plan future growth.

Reducing Risk
CCH KPI Monitoring makes it far easier to track KPIs and report on them. This is fundamental in minimising risk. For example, if a KPI is set to track and escalate debt filtered by overdue dates, the ability to easily set alerts and automatically generate reports is critical to practice performance management.

Some practices are manually running monthly reports to measure KPIs. Others are running real-time reporting engines, a key feature of CCH KPI Monitoring. This latter solution allows practices to review essential data at any time – covering both performance management and compliance requirements. They can do so remotely or on-premise.

This means that firms can assess issues before they become problems, and thus act proactively. Real-time reporting is a true asset in building a future-fit practice.

The Proof is in the Practice
A number of Wolters Kluwer customers have been using CCH KPI Monitoring for several years now. Our customers look to us when they need to be right. Ryecroft Glenton has successfully integrated CCH KPI Monitoring with its own system. This consolidates information from several sources, including CCH Central and CCH Practice Management.

“We can use the year end date to trigger a sequence of reminders. Have we asked for the books? Have they been received? If a request to a client has been outstanding for a certain period, the partner will receive an alert via email. For limited companies, we can monitor the corporation tax and Companies House filing deadlines – as well as the different deadlines for pension schemes”

– Ian Smith, partner at Ryecroft Glenton

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

“Apogee are not just aprinting company, theyconsult with us and go onto deliver a full end to endservice from concept toinstallation. They go aboveand beyond and we lookforward to continuing ourjourney with them”

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

With Net Zero 2030 just around the corner, sustainability should be a top priority for any modern business strategy. A crucial area to consider is your policy on business print equipment – especially since sustainable printing is much easier to achieve than you might expect.

For instance, e-waste – a term referring to old devices that are disposed of in landfills - is fast-becoming a leading environmental concern. As well as representing a complete waste of precious resources; these abandoned devices also release toxic waste into the environment, if given enough time.

Businesses can help to prevent E-waste by investing in refurbished devices. Ensuring perfectly functional devices are kept out of landfills, and in circulation – and at the end of their lifecycle, either recycled and used in other devices, or disposed of responsibly. But besides making up a valuable component of your ESG strategy, what else can the refurbished print devices bring to your business?

Guaranteed quality, reduced cost
While there may be a stigma surrounding refurbished devices, quality device performance can be assured through rigorous appraisal processes and age checks to qualify for inclusion to refurbishment schemes such as Apogee’s ACE (Apogee’s Circular Economy) line. This means that your business benefits from a machine that effectively functions like new, but for a reduced price and lease length.

As well as giving you a significant head-start when saving for your next upgrade, the cost-efficiencies of leasing your devices has another advantage over buying new ones outright – since a lease agreement lets you manage the cost in predictable instalments, rather than one capital expenditure.

Additional features, already included
Your ESG strategy is further aided by the inclusion of PrintReleaf, a software platform that reforests trees around the world equivalent for every page you print. By enrolling, you gain access to a running counter of how many trees your organisation has reforested – an excellent tool to raise awareness of this vital company – and is included as standard with the Apogee ACE line.

Disposal plan, already covered
When your purchased devices reach their end-of-life, it is common for businesses to seek out the help of a third-party company to dispose of them. However, there is no telling where these machines will eventually end up – and if hard drives are not sanitised properly, they could actually pose a threat to your company’s data security if they wind up as e-waste.

However, the end-of-life of your devices is already accounted for – since, as with anything else in the circular economy, their parts will either be recycled back into new ACE devices, or disposed of responsibly.

As well as saving you the hassle of organising assistance from a third-party disposal company, this also completely prevents the chances of any e-waste related security breaches occurring, with certified data wiping and nothing to landfill.

For more information on refurbished print devices to accelerate your ESG performance, visit: https://apogeecorp.info/3nx1K8q

Apr 2023

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Be the king of customer care this spring

This spring is more than just a sea of tulips and daffodils and longer evenings, it’s also awash with five public holidays as Easter, the May bank holidays and the King’s Coronation herald welcome time-off for much of the nation. But these extra holidays, especially when savvy employees tag them onto longer breaks, can cause serious operational challenges.

Introduce business print into your sustainability strategy

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

Corporate events agency who benefited from greener graphics initiative

Better together: 3 reasons automation is reviving not replacing your resource managers

Why Auditors Should Care About Security and What Is The Gold Standard?

How is AI driving the progress of the accountancy industry?

Be the king of customer care this spring

Accountants in IT stimulating collaboration

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