Case Study - Accounting Worx
The Firm
Based in Reading, Accounting Worx was established in mid-2005 after principal Graham Arnott moved from South Africa where he spent 12 years as senior partner in a medium-sized firm.
The rapidly expanding practice now has around 100 clients consisting of: micro sole traders, personal property-tax clients, and limited companies with turnover levels ranging from a few thousand pounds to £3-million and 2 international groups.
The Software
Accounting Worx utilises Digita Contact Manager Plus, Personal Tax, Business Tax, Corporation Tax Plus, Accounts Production and Company Secretarial.
The Respondent
Graham Arnott holds a degree in Company Law and an Honours Degree in Accountancy and has been in the profession all of his working life. He has been a qualified accountant since 1992 and is qualified to practice in England, South Africa, Australia and America.
He said: "We opted for Digita over the other products we viewed for a number of reasons. The ‘deal clincher’ was the modular (yet integrated) suite of products that met all of our needs but was also flexible enough to tailor each product within the suite to match our volume needs."
"It was also easy to install and get going, we didn’t need any training at all – it does ‘what it says on the box’ and all the functionality is right in front of you and easy to navigate through."
"Being a small firm, we wanted a quality product that we could afford within a reasonable budget. Cost wasn’t the ‘be all and end all' but compared to all the other products we saw Digita was not only the best but much cheaper than we expected it to be. What appealed to us on the cost was the migration in volume was fair – it wasn’t huge jumps in price for added client volume."
"The products we use cater for everything we need: accounts production, tax, company secretarial, document creation and tracking. It’s easy to customise and everything we need is drawing from one set of data. Each programme is obviously different with varying functionality but finding the functions you need is so simple."
"We knew Digita had a long history of product development. Although we joined their customer base recently we know the software will develop, it will have updates available as the profession changes and that’s what we’re buying into: product history and product future. Those two give us a future with a reliable set of software controlling our client data and activities."
"We took the bold move of taking on all of the Digita products without any training. Although we could easily migrate to Digita because we knew what functions to look for, we still needed some help. The support provided by telephone and email was excellent with clear directions. They took the time and effort to go through our problem step-by-step and never failed to deliver a result.
"We spent nearly 3 months weighing-up all the software options. Digita was the last one we looked at but within the first 10 minutes of seeing the software work, we knew it was the software for us. We ordered all the software immediately – no debate, no further demo or thinking over it."
"In terms of what we’ve done in the last 3 years, acquiring Digita was the best decision we’ve ever made."
"On the first day we had the software:"
- "We generated a set of accounts from our working paper file, a split-period CT600, 2 personal returns, generated the minutes for the approval of the accounts and a combined register to supplement our working papers file in Company Secretarial. From the time we started loading the client into Contact Manager to emailing drafts to the client was 6 hours – not bad considering we’d never used the software before and had no data when we started."
- "We generated a set of dormant accounts and that took us all of 15 minutes."
- "To load a new client company and director took less than an hour and we emailed the CG41G and 64-8’s a few minutes later."
"This just wasn’t even conceivable to us before we took on the Digita software."
"Using the Digita products we know that our disclosures will be correct, the accounts and the tax returns will use the same data so figures will match once you update the data set, the client’s details are kept up to date – it all adds piece of mind. As an accountant, we can’t put a monetary value on peace of mind but without good software helping you, all it takes is one mistake and it can be expensive."