We looked hard for a best of breed solution
and found it with APS Advance. If you are serious about driving
your practice forward then our recommendation is to obtain the
best practice management software that you can afford — and
to use it. Since 1999 Jeremy Stone has acted as a reference site
for APS and in 2005 Abacusabs has been appointed a reseller.
In 1999 Jeremy Stone was given the responsibility of sourcing
a practice management (PM) solution, and after months of research
had narrowed the field down to two contenders. APS came out on
top and converted the data from the legacy systems to provide
full history on debtors and WIP from inception.
Using ‘Quick Word’ and templates within a few months
two secretaries out of a total of three were able to retire without
being replaced.
On screen timesheets and billing reduces the administration
time and this provides for real-time assessment of how the practice
is performing. In the majority of occasions it is possible to
carry out the end of month closedown and to release the following
month’s timesheets by midday on the first of the month.
That includes statements for all or selected debtors, aged debtors
and WIP, and indeed any other reports that you require.
The system revolves around a relational database with marketing
and other attributes which could mean that if you wished to write
to all businesses in the medical sector which were interested
in pensions, for instance, that the list would be available for
a mail-merge within seconds.
Elsewhere we describe a situation where the team were driving
the business to a 30% growth in a year. The reliable reporting
from the APS suite was an integral part of that success.
APS Advance is a totally scalable product with some substantial
practices using it across time zones and across currencies. Having
stated that it is equally suitable for smaller practices with
a lower cost option having recently been released for the smaller
still.
Notes and links enable the practice to have what almost amounts
to a document management system, although by partnering with
Interwoven WorkSite a full integrated document management system
is available.
Reporting may be from the software or from a data cube via Practice
IQ. Reports may be exported to Excel which puts the average accountant
in control of ‘dicing and slicing’ the output without
a tremendous learning curve.
APS are a Microsoft Gold Certified Partner and have been finalists
in the Accountancy Age Awards.
The benefits of using a PM tool such as APS Advance include:
- Accurate
and efficient recording of time
- Instant
on-screen billing eliminating the waste of extracting the
data, devising the fee note, having it typed, checking and
correcting and then going back and writing off the time
- Accurate
real-time reporting at varying levels (staff having different
viewing rights from managers and partners if that is what
is required)
- Workflow
planning and monitoring
- Reporting
output to Microsoft Office or PDF
