The Beginner’s Guide to Practice Management Software

Managing your firm is a balancing act. With so many tasks to get done like VAT returns or capital gains tax it’s easy to spread yourself too thin. Sure, we all encounter bumps in the road, but when you’re constantly feeling flustered and fighting to the finish line alarm bells should be going off.

Some key questions to reflect on:

• Why does this keep happening?

• What systems are dragging you down?

• Are your processes as efficient as they could be?

If you don’t make changes, your team can get disgruntled, leading to breakdowns in communication, disorganisation, stagnation, and a steep decline in productivity. It’s not exactly ideal.

That’s why smart accountants use smart software to make it simpler.

What is practice management software?

Practice management helps you organise your team, clients and operations more efficiently by automating your day-to-day admin. It gives you more visibility over your profits and workload, and creates a more streamlined service for your clients. No matter how big or small your firm is, practice management software is a no-brainer – especially as it’s completely customisable to the needs of your practice.

1. Organised onboarding (for once!)

Who said onboarding had to be so tedious? Bright’s practice management software, BrightManager, is integrated so it can populate all details and deadlines about your new client automatically. No more chasing up clients.

2. All your client data, in one location

Consider this your internal filing system, holding all of your clients’ records and details in the one place, securely on the cloud. All you need is your login credentials and some decent WiFi and everything you’ll ever need is at your fingertips.

This way, if a client calls looking for a file, you don’t need to put them on hold for 15 minutes while you’re emptying out the filing cabinets. Just pop it up in the software and it’s there in seconds. Clients can access their files through the portal too and they can sign them online.

All of this revolutionises your firm’s productivity; your workflow’s a lot less scattered, you can allocate time to more accounting appropriate’ tasks and have an efficient system to handle all the admin work for you.

3. Whistle through your workflow

Who said you can’t whistle while you work? You don’t have to micromanage every little task your team carries out. Simply create workflows tailored for each task they need to get done.

Break tasks down into subtasks and assign them to individual team members, and check out a task’s progress to get an overview of what everyone’s working on. This way, even the tiniest of tasks won’t be left behind.

You can easily identify any areas for improvement you wouldn’t have been able to see otherwise. Maybe less tasks get completed on Mondays and Fridays, or maybe a select few employees are carrying most of the workload. The visibility is especially handy during peak times of year when you’re juggling different projects at once.

This content may have been developed with the assistance of AI tools. Content is reviewed by a member of the Bright team before publication. Guidance on legislation can be obtained from your industry body.