Team and Practice Management for CAs and tax consultants

A chartered Accountant increases Efficiency, Accountability & profitability by implementing Enjay CRM for Team and Practice Management for CAs and tax consultants.

A Chartered Accountant firm, who mainly practice Taxation, Business & Accounts consultancy, Project Management, Audit work of their clients. Their team size is roughly 22 people and they operate from 3 locations.

Challenges faced:

• Lack of One point KYC (Know Your Client) for all the clients with their complete details, and proper security implementation. They were using a basis contact management module developed in foxbase (Dos), which could not provide multiuser access or the security.

  • It used to be more and more difficult to find out status of Clients’ compliances to various tax departments.

  • Not all laws are applicable to all clients, so a proper categorisation is required, so that they can send out some information to specific group of clients. (eg: Clients to whom service tax is applicable)

• CAs have to maintain huge amount of documents for their Clients, and those documents have to be stored securely, since they are confidential. Best way would be to digitize them, but that requires a comprehensive document management system, which will provide Easy Access to multiple user from multiple locations, and that too in a secured way.

• There is absolutely no control over what amount of efforts are put into one particular Task or one particular client, it may happen that a client who is paying huge fees, was paid very less attention, and another smaller client was paid huge attention, just because the other one demanded more attention.

• The work being done in a Consultant’s office demands very professional approach and precision, many times it used to happen that some of the employees did not follow all the specified processes or checklists, as a result the firm had to face consequences of a annoyed customer due to penalties being levied on him.

• The dates of submission are extremely important, but at present there is no automated system, which can remind customers or atleast Team members @ CA firm.

Requirement:

Apart from providing solution to above problems, The solution should also meet following other requirements as follows:

• They wanted some solution, which is browser based, so that it can be accessed by them from all their 3 branches, or even when they are not in office.

• The system had to be based on Open source technologies, so that they don’t have to buy Operating System and other licences, which can increase their costs.

Solution Provided:

A Customised version of Enjay CRM (Client Relationship Management), specifically designed and developed for tax consultants was implemented, which proved to be of great use to them, solving all their challenges and providing much more efficiency.

It was imolementec with following modules and functionality:

1. KYC module, including clients tax returns details.

2. This CRM is linked with their website, so if anyone visits their website and makes enquiry it’s automatically recorded in CRM.

3. Document management system with integrated scanning facility, so that document management is now completely digital.

4. Scanned (attched) document can view inside CRM itself.

5. Tasks module with automated time and cost tracking.

6. Majority of the workflows were automated, including alerts and escalations.

7. Client notification is automated, so that clients are automatically informed about their due dates.

8. This system is hosted in HO, with a public IP address and proper security, so that an all branches can access it.

9. Automated reporting system is implemented so that senior people who are outside office also get reports automatically.

   1. Also dashboards configured for every designation, so that they can keep track of their up comings tasks and responsibilities.

10. A support module is also implemented so that, whenever clients have any problem, they are properly recorded and tracked, this is linked with website, so that clients can make queries from web site also.

Also Enjay outlook connector was installed in all the PCs from where the emails are being sent, so that all emails are also archived in to CRM.

Regular EPABX system is enhanced with implementation of enjay synapse, so that all calls are recorded and also entered automatically into CRM system.

Benefits received:

• Increase in Efficiency:

  • Now all the information regarding all the clients is found in one place.

    • Even the documents relating to that client are found in one place.

    • Also all the communications (email and calls) done with that client is also found in one place.

    • Information regarding tax filings of the clients is also found in the same place.

  • Scanning & digitization of documents, has reduced the hassle of finding the documents, now they are available whenever required. Documents are no more stored in office, now they store all the documents in godown at a safe place outside the city.

  • All the tasks are templatized, eg: if the client needs to be audited under sec 44, the system will automatically create checklist of 13 tasks that need to be carried for the same, that becomes very easy to implement and monitor. Also the senior person could allocate the project tasks to individual and track them.

  • Now information is available regarding how much activity was done on each client, and by which team member, and based on the designation of that person the costing is automatically calculated.

  • Since all the work is handled by IT, duplication of work has reduced drastically, and also information is ALWAYS available in real time.

• Increase in Accountability

  • When a senior persons assigns tasks, the concerned person is immediately informed, hence he cannot say that he did not knew that this was to be done.

  • Also system tracks how much time was a taken to complete a tasks. If it is not completed in stipulated time, it is automatically escalated and his seniors are informed about the same.

    • This makes very easy to monitor profitability of the team members, because in Consultant’s office most important resource is human resource.

  • Information is available, on need basis, to the concerned person, due to proper access control on the information. Thus data theft and leakages are avoided.

  • Since all the calls are recorded, who said what is always available, that reduced false or over commitments, from both the sides.

• Increase in Profitability.

  • Now if a client calls and ask for some information, it can be furnished in real time, which was not possible previously.

  • Previously it was not possible to track how much effort was made by whom, on which client, now it’s easily available, which makes it possible to charge the clients more rationally.

  • No laps in customer service, makes customer happy which increases in referrals and also increase in revenue.

Penned by Limesh Parekh, CEO, Enjay IT Solutions