The services that Accounting Firms offer are mostly process-heavy, people intensive, and data-laden with exacting standards, and often changing tax changes. And for every job, the accounting professional must be 100% accurate. 

When internal procedures are not streamlined, firms are burdened with additional non-billable work. Add in the challenges of remote working, legacy systems, and unforeseen change – this can result in a significant decrease in each fee-earning employee’s potential billable hours. Client and staff turnover are also put at risk.

Every forward-looking Practice Owner or Partner benefits from a single source of truth for resource allocation, jobs, time, billing, and communications. For firms, the right practice management solution helps everyone work smarter, communicate better, and boosts the firm’s bottom line.

“Choosing the right practice management solution is critical to increasing productivity and gaining a competitive edge,” says Rakesh Naidu, Head of Product for Professional Software at Wolters Kluwer Tax & Accounting Asia Pacific. “With firms dealing with hundreds, even thousands of tasks across the business, a practice management system keeps everything organised and everyone on the same page.”‍

Connect and collaborate‍

In recent years practice management software has adapted rapidly in response to the growing focus on the digital transformation of businesses worldwide.  The pandemic lockdowns, and remote working, are accelerating its benefit globally. “Firms need to be nimble and have the ability to connect and collaborate seamlessly with clients online,” says Rakesh Naidu. 

With a cloud-based practice management solution, everyone with permission to access the platform can do so at any time, from anywhere, providing a single source of truth and a central repository of mission-critical information. It acts as a hub around which a firm can organise and integrate essential workflows efficiently while maintaining transparency and accountability.‍

Automation‍

Through practice management automation you save time, be more accurate and reduce stress. Some of the benefits to partners and firms are:

•  Increasing billable hours by managing capacity, jobs, and workflows 
• Capturing the time spent on every job
• Streamlined client billing and managing debtors
• Storing up-to-date details of clients 
• Intelligent and customisable reporting of firm metrics
  

Practice owners can also create reports on cash flow, revenue, profitability, individual employee productivity, billing, receivables, and more. For Partners and Practice Managers, an integrated solution delivers on core objectives:

• Cost control — removing costs to increase margins and profitability
• Productivity — Increases billable hours by streamlining processes 
• Automation — Automate transactional and repetitive tasks, a must to stay competitive
• Client satisfaction — If clients are happy, they’ll stay loyal.

Flexibility and convenience

More advanced and dedicated platforms, such as CCH iFirm Practice Manager, enable better use of intelligent automation. Users can automatically allocate jobs evenly across team members, highlighting potential problems before they become an issue, and making life easier for everyone.

Managers can assign jobs and tasks and view the progress, optimising team utilisation is critical to reducing non-billable hours. The system anticipates all the administrative tasks associated with regular jobs and allocates resources to ensure work is not forgotten. Integration of all l core jobs and tasks allows a practice manager to seamlessly send an invoice.

CCH iFirm also offers you a menu of tools to travel from whatever screen you’re working on to other workspaces within the platform. It allows you to use existing workpapers and procedures or add your own to any job.

Security and service

Any software dealing with sensitive financial data has to be secure. To enable your firm to work confidently with clients, online CCH iFirm safely shares documents, data, and reports, including: 

• Multi-factor authentication
• Digital signatures
• Collaboration portals
• Automatic back-ups- physical barriers
• Complex identity verification steps. 
  

Modern accounting firms need vendors that have their backs when it comes to cybersecurity and risk and incident reporting. As a global company working across more than 50 countries in critical areas of the economy, security is a core concern for Wolters Kluwer.

We pride ourselves on seamless implementation and configuration. When you buy CCH iFirm Practice Manager, we’ll help configure the platform to your needs

Another advantage is that a cloud-based platform automatically updates with new features and versions, saving time and money.

Working with experienced solution providers whose core business is partnered with global-level capabilities to address security, as well as deliver training and up-to-date content, ensures your firm is set up for success. 

New markets

One of the key considerations for a high-growth professional services firm these days is breaking out of conventional, geographically defined markets. 

For accountants to reach new markets, they need technology, automated workflows, secure data, and a way to share information with staff and clients. That means a cloud-based platform that allows seamless collaboration virtually from anywhere at any time.

The firms of the future are also tapping into a global workforce because work can be completed remotely and delivered entirely online.

Integrating all, or as much as possible, of the software in your business around one platform and a standardised series of processes, puts your firm on the best footing for growth

Your team has more time to focus on higher-value work, such as business advisory or other specialist opportunities. The instant access to accurate data and reporting that CCH iFirm Practice Manager enables makes for faster, better decision-making.

Deep impact when it matters

Our vision is to provide tax and accounting professionals with the best information and software they need to get their work done and make a deep impact. 

Getting things right is critical. In an ever-changing world, it’s vital to have access to the best expert solutions to organise and automate complex processes. Customers depend on software to seamlessly integrate data and deliver important and rapid insights into their business and the wider world.

Every day, we seek to better understand our customers’ challenges using the deep domain knowledge we’ve acquired over 40 years of experience. 

The true value of practice management software is its ability to help you grow, control costs, save time, increase billable hours — and know exactly where everything is at all times.