With rising costs affecting the bottom line of most accountancy firms, is it time to check what you’re really getting for your accountancy software subscription?
Accounting and tax compliance software is a daily essential of most accountancy practices. It helps them to support their clients efficiently, and in turn impacts the practice’s profitability.
Like all businesses, accounting and tax advisory firms are facing rising costs as inflation makes eye-watering jumps and suppliers increase their prices. It’s led many accounting practices to review their outgoings at all levels.
Naturally, firms want to ensure they’re paying for a good product to deliver high quality work to their clients. But in talking to some of our competitors’ former clients, they felt they were paying over the odds for software features which they didn’t need, or the developer’s time spent on writing software that wasn’t relevant to their practice. One described it as the equivalent of paying steak prices for daily bread.
Why you may be paying over the odds for your software
There are many reasons why firms can end up paying over the odds for software they don’t fully use, or question the value for money they’re getting. While talking to many tax and advisory professionals, our team have seen a few common frustrations:
- The software’s functionality has been updated to become too complex for their needs (in some cases people said they felt around 50% of the features were underutilised by their practice and weren’t required).
- Their software provider works across many sectors and the subscription price reflects its large staffing costs in non-accountancy areas.
- There is a 3 month notice period to end the contract, which ties you in for another year if missed.
- The legacy pricing model they were on automatically bumps up with inflation and, given the current rates, will rise significantly.
- Add-ons purchased for the software renew at different times, which mean its difficult to extract yourself from price hikes at different times of the year.
- The technical support teams rotate across different products (and sometimes sectors). This can lead to an unfamiliarity in supporting particular products.
- The time it takes to install the latest update requires significant down-time to the practice. One accountancy firm told us they lost almost a day each time they had to apply a software update from their provider.
- The software provider has been losing customers but still has hefty overheads, so forces existing customers to pay more.
How BTCSoftware is helping accountancy firms in the challenging economy
At BTCSoftware we’ve always believed in delivering exceptional value for money, and the loyalty of our customers pays testament to this. Our accountancy and tax software products are designed and tested closely with accountants. It means the new features we introduce are completely relevant to customers’ businesses. Our products remain practical, integrate seamlessly with other elements of their practice systems and are robust and reliable.
Dedicated, knowledgeable and responsive support
We don’t have massive support teams who look after customers across multiple industries. Our focus is purely accountancy and tax software for practitioners and those in business. It means our UK-based support teams are all experts in our products and deliver helpful, relevant and quick solutions to any technical question. Their expertise isn’t charged as an add-on either. You have responsive, complimentary access to them with any of our products.
Transparency so there’s no unwelcome surprises
We’ve always recognised the importance of transparency to our customers. It’s why we limit annual price increases and let our customers purchase add-ons and pay on a pro-rata basis. This is so they only face one product renewal bill a year. Also, we don’t tie people into a 3 month notice period for termination – ours is just 30 days.
Transparency is also evident in our software development roadmap. Customers appreciate being able to see the relevant and helpful software improvements we have lined up in a given period. These improvements are largely a mixture of innovation in response to customer feedback, as well as any updates from legislative changes from HMRC.
Efficient
We know time is money for accountants and tax advisers. Our software updates are quick to install, taking just minutes on most computers and applied instantly behind the scenes in the 100% online apps.
We also give flexibility in how people interact with our products, with a single database option that connects desktop, online or a hybrid of both. Our products keep up with the latest developments and our customers appreciate it.
In fact, more and more customers are switching to BTCSoftware to obtain a practical, robust and good quality product at a more affordable price to some of our rivals. This volume of new customers means we’re able to keep price rises to a minimum.
Factors to consider in your budgeting this Autumn
It is important to have the right products at the heart of your practice, and you need to know you’re getting value for money. That means having the right tools for the right task, a responsive and good quality support team and a provider with a strong heritage in supporting the accountancy profession. In the current economic climate you don’t want to pay for elements you don’t need, or feel are sub-standard.
This Autumn, many accountancy firms will no doubt be reviewing their budgets and costs as prices continue to rise. We’d love to help.
