Practice Management Software

[Justin98]

Can anyone give advice regarding what they use for practice management software.  I was hoping for a all in one solution (Billing, Time, document management, calendar, contact manager, workflow, etc.).  There is only two that I am aware of that does all of this in one program which is Canopy and Mango Billing.  I love what I see from the Intuit practice management but it does not include some of the features like billing and document management.  I am primarily tired of having some many different programs.  I love Lacerte and have no plan on making any change in tax software but I am sort of jealous regarding how thomson reuters and  CCH Axcess suite all works together to provide one solution for all aspects of the firm.

Just to say it again - I have no plan on moving from Lacerte because I love this tax program

Thanks

Justin

[Lord Happy]

Happy day...I recommend NOT using AbacusNext's product, Office Tools. 

[Justin98]

Thanks for letting me know.  Was there any reason like the integration was not good or just not a good software?  What do you use?

[Lord Happy]

Happy day....wow...where to start. The business problem I was trying to solve was that we have client data in multiple databases. Thinking of just demographic data, we had it in Outlook, PS, QB, CFS (Taxtools.com) and some in other single-use software. Officetools said they could integrate with QB and Outlook, but to do this, we would have to come up with a data structure to fit how they view the world. We spent 3 months making our data in QB and Outlook match...first, middle initial with no period, last name, street abbreviations...the whole thing. It was brutal. But the promise of OT managing customer data and billing was too good to pass up.

Every element of our network was brand new and industry-standard vanilla when we made the choice...from firewall to server to switches and workstations. We did not squeeze it into something old, or try to retrofit anything to accommodate it.

And then the integration failed. I don't know why. During the months of trying to figure it out (cost me $125 an hour for our tech guy), it came to pass that OT uses MS Office 32-bit, and not 64-bit, because the API for 64-bit is unstable. After messing around in our server, their solution was for us to uninstall 64-bit and go back to 32-bit. That wasn't going to happen, nor were we told that this was an issue prior to purchasing it. During the first six...maybe nine months...of trying to get it to work, they deleted six months of calendar data (which exposed a flaw in our own backup systems), trashed our Outlook customer database (exposing another flaw in our systems), and generally OT has sucked and I feel confident in saying that it will continue to suck until the contract is done.

Clients continue to report problems accessing the portal and the e-signature tool on some devices and platforms. If you have an MFJ client, you would think that the taxpayer and spouse could access the portal, but alas, this is not possible. We had data disappear in the software and their technical team, when reviewing the logs and actually watching us re-create the problem, have never provided a solution. Goodness, the list just goes on and on. And so with 18 months or whatever is left, I look forward to finding some other tool to flee to because I am quite confident that getting our data out of OT and into any usable format is going to be brutal. I have no idea how this is going to work, but I know it will be expensive unless I just want to trash all the data, which would be irresponsible.

Here's a fun one...you purchase a certain number of e-signatures. You receive no notification that you've run out, or are running low. Instead the tool simply stops working until you buy more. But we've had so many problems that the idea we've run out doesn't ever pop to the top of our list of solutions.  Or you run a report to show who has been sent docs to e-sig, but that report doesn't seem to fit reality as I don't recall ever seeing the report show that docs were signed, even though we have copies of the signed docs. 

The software continues to crash on any number of our staff computers on an almost-daily basis. I personally don't even bother keeping it open throughout the day any more as it will just collapse. We stopped submitting trouble tickets because we have no faith in their ability to solve anything.

I will say one positive thing. I was attracted to them for their workflow engine. I liked that a lot and it works. If I only wanted a workflow tool, it would be fine.  You can probably get cheaper from Jetpack or others.  But the abuses we suffered, and continue to suffer from, are brutal, and every month that I see that charge hit our books, I wince. I started using computers in 1980 as a kid. This has been the worst software experience of my life.  In a way I am grateful to have made it this long.

What could have made it better for me?

1. Having a dedicated staff member be responsible for operating this thing. At the time we were just five people, now we are nine. Just couldn't afford it then and really can't afford it now, but am doing it any way to get the most out of the next chunk of time.

2. Knowing in advance that we would have to downgrade Office from 64-bit to 32-bit. I would not have bought it had I known.

3. The moment the data integration failed, I should have stopped everything and sued to get out of the contract. I would have spent less in legal fees than I have spent in IT support, downtime, staff frustration and everything else.

In conclusion, I am quite certain that they have many happy customers. From discussions with various OT staff over the years, we seem to be the only installation with weird stuff happening. We seem to be the only abject failure they've ever had. Maybe what I perceive as a basic Windows network is truly something rare and exotic. I have no clue. Everyone at OT means well. They are very polite. They try their best. Unfortunately, their best isn't even close enough to being good enough for us, because its still just broken.

I spent a long time compiling this response. Companies sue people who post negative comments and while I hope not to be sued as a result of this post, I felt it was the right thing to do.

[Justin98]

Wow, that sounds horrible.  Thank you for taking the time to let me know.  Canopy and Mango look good but they do not integrate with Lacerte.  the Lacerte practice management looks good but does not handle document management or billing which just means I am adding another independent software rather than consolidating.

[Lord Happy]

Happy day....In 2011 a 30+ year old company called Taxworks had a failed launch of their 2012 software.  We had been using their full suite.  When they collapsed, they gave us back the data with zero structure.  Here's what this means. 

In their system, we had a folder for the client, and inside that were years, and each year had sub folders for client docs, signature/transmittal docs, tax return, filing instructions and a few others.  In each client's tax return folder would be a few docs named something like "2010 tax return" or "2010 2 Year Comp."  When Taxworks gave us our data back, we had a drive with hundreds of files with those same names, and no client reference.  Thousands upon thousands of documents called "Form W2 - Taxpayer"  So imagine clicking through each file, figuring out the client and renaming everything.  So yeah...they gave us our data back, but with no structure. 

Now that we are coming apart from OT, I am so very thankful that I don't use their DMS. 

For TY 2023, I'd like to be in a new system, and migrating from PS to Lacerte is one of the things I will be researching as it just seems to be given more support than PS.