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February 2007 - Robert
and Mary Smith run a tax practice. They have 10 employees,
and usually hire up to three part time tax professionals
during tax season. Their office will process about 1300
tax returns a year. While some of their clients are individual
tax payers and they only see them once a year many of their
clients are small businesses and the Smiths provide other
business services for them, including accounting, payroll
and sales tax services.
Although most government correspondence
is handle directly by the Smiths, clients who are not seen
regularly receive government correspondence
in the mail. They will typically contact the Smiths office
seeking assistance after receiving a notice. Per the
Smiths instructions, they will fax the notice their office.
Multiple
times a day their office receives faxed Internal Revenue
Service notices for their clients.
One day Mary asked Thomas, one of their
employees, to look into a particular notice. Their client,
Charlene Jones, had received an
IRS notice that her 1040 Tax return was filed after April
15th
and no Extension had been filed. Thomas called the
client to assure them he would take care of the issue.
Then
he began researching the issue, pulling the client file
and
finding out that the returns in question had been filed
on time. Next he called the IRS to reconcile the issue.
After a long time on hold he discussed the issue with
the IRS and found out that the issue had been resolved
several
months earlier. He then called the client to assure
them that it had been taken care of. When reviewing the
client
file further he found the original faxed notice and
notes from William, a former employee, who had taken care
of
the first issue. William had inadvertently misfiled
the information.
Thomas decided that it was time to discuss
this situation with the Smiths. Too often he had spent
hours attempting to resolve a client
issue only to find out that the issue had been resolved
earlier. In addition clients would re fax notices
two or three times and could have different staff trying to resolve
the same issue. When the Smiths heard Thomas’ complaint
they quickly realized that it was time for a solution.
It was determined that the firm was losing an estimated
5 hours a week costing the firm almost $300 a week.
With
key staff, they discussed the issues and determined
that having to review the clients paper file was time consuming
and thing being filed incorrectly were difficult
to manage.
They quickly found that new policies or procedures
would not be sufficient and decided a paperless solution
would
make more sense. New technologies were needed.
They began looking into Scanners and
Document management software
solutions. They determined five specific parameters
for selecting software. One, It must be simple and easy
to
use. As a small office they did not have the
resources to spend months implementing new software. Also,
learning the software must be easy process. Two, to manage
their
time a scanner with a speed of 45ppm or faster
would be necessary. Three, they did not want to invest
in a solution
that would limit their future choices. Thus,
they
wanted the data stored in PDF or Tiff and not in a proprietary
format or database. This would allow them native
access
and not lock them out of their data if they choose
to change software vendors. Four, the office wanted software
that
was integrated into other software or functions
of the office. Having the documents a part the daily
work flow
and contact management of the office could be
a helpful time saver for the staff. In addition since they
bill for
time spent on special projects integration into
the time and billing system could be a plus. Five, it
must
be affordable.
The Smiths asked Thomas to search and
review the market for software and hardware options that
meet
their
needs.
Thomas found many choices which he narrowed
down to the best group and present them to the Smiths.
Thomas
found
many document management packages which offered
similar functionality. However, he found that systems
which filed
images and documents in a folder/tree structures
seemed cumbersome to use. Exploring for files in
deep rooted tree
structures seemed to take a lot of time.
Even with a search feature you could find your self hunting
for files
after
each search. Most systems required the user
to setup a folder structure which proved fatal when errors
where later
found out after data had been stored wrong.
Thomas
did find one system that not only meet their needs
but exceeded
them. He found a product called Office Tools
Pro by North40 Systems a software company in Lancaster
California.
Here
is how Office Tools Pro met and exceeded
the
Smiths needs.
Office Tools Pro is simple to use. They
offer On-site,
Web training as well as training CD’s.
They work with any twain scanner and can
be configured to use network scanners/copiers.
All files are accessible thru Windows Explorer
as well
as thru the Document Management interface
in either PDF or TIFF file formats. Office
Tools Pro offers a completely
integrated Contact Manager which includes
Notes, To-Do, Scheduling, Call Tracking
and Instant Messaging. It also
offers a Project, Due Date management system
and a complete Time and Billing system.
Imagine all that information in
one place. As an added bonus, Office Tools
Pro stores all data in system created folders.
No more typo and filing
errors. It uses the same name you filed
your client under as the folder name and
it can create additional folders
by Project and Category if desired. Simply
type in a client name and you have all
Office Tools Pro features at your
finger tips including every client document.
The 10 user Professional Suite from Office
Tools Pro was affordable
costing $1700 with an annual renewal of
$595 which includes unlimited tech support
and all upgrades. This is what became
the Smiths’ solution for managing IRS notices
and they ended up with other benefits too.
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