Wolters Kluwer's flexible licensing helps even the smallest firm benefit from the efficiencies of a fully integrated suite.
AppleMed Tax Consulting offers a range of accountancy services to professionals - including engineers, nurses, doctors and other professionals in the healthcare sector - who provide their services through limited companies. Zwe Ncube, AppleMed's founder and director, describes how Wolters Kluwer's flexible licensing structure helps even the smallest firms to benefit from the efficiencies of computerization.
What do you think are the particular challenges faced by start-up practices?
One of the major challenges is financial - with a small client-base it can be difficult to generate sufficient income at first. I started about six years ago with around 50 clients, but many sole practitioners have fewer than this to begin with. If your software supplier asks you to pay for a minimum of, say, 100 licenses, it can be very difficult to justify the cost.
With the CCH Accountants' Starter Pack you can buy as few as 25 licenses to begin with and increase the numbers as you need them, which helps you to get over this initial hurdle. AppleMed now has four employees and around 250 clients and the software has been able to grown with us so we didn't needed to upgrade or change or re-train.
Why choose the CCH Accountants' Starter Pack?
My initial inquiry was for a document management system - from the outset I wanted to have as little paper as possible on people's desks because it's so inefficient. But then I found that Wolters Kluwer could not only supply document management, but also a whole integrated suite of software covering accounts production, personal and corporation tax and practice management.
The CCH Accountants' Starter Pack offers exactly the same software as the full CCH Central suite, with exactly the same features and functionality, but with a limit on the total number of clients you can create, based on your license.
From the initial demonstration I preferred the way the CCH suite worked compared to, say, Sage, which I was familiar with. It had more functionality and better functionality, for example the billing process was easier and more efficient and that's important for practice, no matter what its size! Also the way that the central database allowed me to manage contacts and associations, like between a company and its director. Companies House submissions are also handled very efficiently with the CCH software.
Overall I'm very happy with the way the software has worked for us and grown with us over the years from our modest beginnings.
