| a. |
When did your firm implement its APS Advance
Practice Management system |
It was about 18 months ago now – we
started in November 2005 and all elements of the suite
were implemented well before 30 June 2006. |
| b. |
How many users do you have? |
We have 35 people in our firm and I think 33 of them
are APS users. |
| c. |
Which APS products have you taken out licences to use?
(PM, Tax etc….) |
Apart from Practice Management, we have just about
everything available to us – including Practice
IQ, Xcede Professional Accounting, Advance Tax, Time
and Fees and we are currently installing Advance CRM. |
| d. |
Who was you previous supplier and how long were you
using that supplier’s software for? |
Our previous supplier was MYOB / Sol6. I actually had
been using Sol6 products since the mid-1980s when Paxus
went under.
For many years we used all the Sol6 products
as they served us well until the software became out-of-date – all
the old cheetah data and dos work became unwieldy.
So we moved over to Viztopia when offered the product
by Sol6. |
| |
How did the firm adapt to Viztopia after the switch
from Sol6’s traditional product suite? |
It was a disaster for us. We couldn’t access
proper service from our account manager and after about
18 months we just gave up trying having researched what
APS could offer us. |
| e. |
From start to finish, how long did the meeting, testing
and decision-making process take that saw you move over
to APS? |
We had actually looked at APS some time previously,
before switching to Viztopia. However, the price seemed
to be too high in comparison at that point.
Down the track
when we did sign the deal with APS, we were satisfied
on all fronts. APS moved on the price
to a degree and the value that we wanted from the product
was there. Also, we thought the product had clearly
improved over the period and this was the real key
to our decision. |
| f. |
Was your decision to move over to APS made on gut-feel,
or was it more scientific than that? Please explain how
you went about making your decision…. (e.g. team
approach: IT manager, IT Partner, Work Group etc…) |
It was most of all about the software meeting our needs – we
wanted to be able to produce Accounts that you could
edit, we wanted interactive tax sheets, we wanted to
be able to manage our WIP and debtors through the system
more efficiently. We wanted to be able to run reports
to help us manage our practice as well as our clients’ affairs.
We
were sure we would get all of this from APS – and
so we went with them. |
| a. |
Functionality |
| |
How does the Advance suite compare to you
previous product in terms of functionality? |
The system just works. I can run the reports
I need to run our business. I can produce clients’ accounts
that look good. What more can you want. Its really that
simple – Viztopia was just hard for us – we
couldn’t get through to anyone, it was horrible.
Licence codes would change un-announced, shutting down
our system.
With APS I get what I want from the people
and the software. I trust them.
The cost of change from
Sol6 was not small in dollar terms – but the benefits
outweigh those costs. |
| b. |
Future Development |
| |
What would you like to see APS add to its product set
in its next releases of Advance that will assist your
business? What does it need to do to stay ahead of its
competitors? |
We’d like to see plenty of improvements delivered – there
is always room for improvement.
For instance, we would
like to see simpler trust distributions, more detailed
standardised reports to access amongst
other things.
We are also really keen to see more integration
with Business Fitness / BOS on standard forms and templates. |
