Knowing what
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How to evaluate your firm’s requirements for practice management software

Your practice management solution needs to work for your firm and its priorities. So, you must take a good look at your people and digital systems before speaking to vendors.

What follows are 4 important questions you should ask of your practice before moving to the next stage.

“What is the workflow in my firm?”

You need to chart this, step by step. List tasks, look at the teams and people responsible, and understand how everything links together. This is important for three reasons:

Your team, what it does, and how it works will dictate how elaborate the practice management system needs to be. There are a lot of features you can pay for… but do you need them all?

It’s essential prep. The vendors you speak to will need information about your workflows. The best providers will be honest about their solutions. The only way to have those open conversations, however, is to give them real information to work with.

Buying practice management tech is one thing, implementing it is a whole other challenge. Your vendor can only help with this so much. You will need to map your new software to your processes when the time comes.

“What are my firm’s goals?”

Where you are today as a practice is not necessarily where you’re headed. For example, do you know if you are about to expand your offering, add more staff, or win more clients?

A practice management system needs to support your ambitions when you buy it or scale to meet them when the time comes. Look at your goals and targets, measure timeframes, and understand the likelihood you will grow.

“What software do I already use?”

Take a look through the systems you already have – such as AML and tax – and see how new practice management software might fit into this ecosystem. Are there problems that need to be ironed out before you implement a new solution? Do you know if the other software you currently have has an easily integrated option, such as a module you can add on?

It’s often a good idea to talk to your existing vendors to see what’s possible. For example, we offer an audit service: we assess how you currently operate and identify what can be added.

“What problems do I currently face?”

The issues your firm has play a powerful role in picking practice management tech. They help you scope out the practice management features you will need (more on those features later).

So, what sort of issues does your firm struggle with that practice management software can solve?

Let's look at some common challenges.

Your client communication is done manually. When accountants spend more time writing emails than analysing data, it’s a massive warning sign. There are better, more automated ways to chase clients and bill them.

Everything your firm does runs through one person. If one person (often the owner or practice manager) is the only one who knows what needs doing and when, you've got a single point of failure. What would happen if they were off sick and couldn’t organise everyone?

You've outgrown your spreadsheets. There’s a real messy feeling when the firm is being run on Excel and it has outgrown it. When spreadsheets are causing more stress than relief, it’s time to swap them for something better.

Your clients are slipping through the cracks. Deadlines are being missed and complaints are creeping up, which usually means some work isn't being tracked or chased.

Your staff don't know what to do next. If staff finish a job and then ask their line manager “what’s next” then that’s a lot of stopping and starting for everyone involved. There are solutions that let them log in and see what needs doing, no questions asked.

The wrong people are doing the wrong work. We’ve all seen it: expensive, senior staff spending time on tasks a junior could handle (or work that should be outsourced). Good software should surface this and help to prevent it. Every hour costs money and, for a firm that bills by the hour, every hour reclaimed for high-value (e.g. £300/hour) staff is an hour that can be re-sold. Don’t leave money on the table.

You can't see your own profitability. If you don't know which clients or jobs truly bring you a profit based on time and effort, then you have a serious problem.