Speaker: Conor McManus, Private Client Tax Senior Manager, Menzies LLP
Conor McManus: Hi there. My name's Conor McManus. I'm one of the private client tax senior managers here in our Woking office at Menzies. I have a portfolio of close to 200 clients that I look after. It's my responsibility to ensure that all of those individuals' self-assessment tax returns are filed by the relevant deadline. I also look after my clients from an advisory tax perspective. So, my personal specialisation is in inheritance tax and probate work.
Before using Glasscubes, how did you request information from clients, and what problems or frustrations did that cause?
Conor McManus: So, prior to using Glasscubes, we generally used to simply use email mail mergers or even post for clients that maybe didn't have email or preferred hard copy documents. We did also have our own portal for a brief period, using email and post in the past the problems that we ran into were that we would usually send that reminder quite early on in the year and I think there was a tendency for clients to receive the documentation and think it was just the same old annual reminder, and it would maybe kind of go back towards the bottom of the list, especially where we'd be sending out these reminders or requests in sort of May time. The deadline isn't until the end of January and I think just by human nature there was a tendency for people to maybe push it to the bottom of the pile, or push it to later, and then what would normally happen is you would start to reach November, December, even January, and that's when the real bulk of the information would come in. Now obviously, with all of that work coming in at the same time it led to a huge amount of work in a short amount of time. So, that was one of the major difficulties that we found, and then using our own portal for a brief period we just found at times to be a little bit clunky. It didn't exactly deliver all the time on on what it was meant to, and it sometimes was harder to track as and when clients had actually responded and information had come in.
Did you have any concerns about moving to a new solution like Glasscubes, and were any of these subsequently realised?
Conor McManus: I think there were definitely concerns. I among colleagues were definitely apprehensive about taking on, and implementing a new software, mainly for two reasons. The first was that we'd spent time and built our own portal, which maybe didn't go exactly as planned and there was a worry that the new software may be more of the same. The second one, and probably the main one, was really from what our clients would think from a client perspective in that we just implemented our own portal. This had taken time to get used to from the client's side as well as our own learning how to use that portal. So, there was a definite worry there of how that would be received. There was also probably a slight worry in that the reminders would be automated to clients, and obviously we can choose the frequency of those, but I think there was a concern that if there was a problem with the system and it didn't recognise the information coming in, or the information was sent in by post or email and outside Glasscubes that this wouldn't be updated and therefore, these automated reminders may start to frustrate or bother clients. I think in terms of whether any of those were realised, in truth, clients have never really commented on the change of softwares and I think that probably was due to how smoothly Glasscubes worked. That it didn't feel cumbersome or difficult to move on to the new system. It's all very simple from a client's point of view, and they probably welcomed that change as well. In terms of learning the software and system internally, it was all very easy to use, very intuitive. It's not complex and there's loads that you can do on there. You can keep it quite simple. You can probably make it really complicated. We keep things fairly simple our side and we're seeing really good results from it and so we don't see the need to make any sort of complicated changes. And then the final point on the automation, our response times have been hugely, hugely increased as a result of using Glasscubes and I'm not gonna lie there are the very odd occasion that we do get clients who sort of might be bothered by the automated reminders but there's a slight side to that of, given the improvement in numbers and response time that we've seen, I think we're happy that we're getting a response in any case, and with those clients, and once you identify them or they let themselves be known, you can toggle off the reminders and that's part of I guess, just knowing your client in that respect.
Please describe working with us. How has Glasscubes helped you, your firm, and/or your clients?
Conor McManus: So, Glasscubes has made a massive difference to our annual compliance process. The biggest difference, as mentioned earlier, is definitely the responsiveness from clients on receiving Glasscubes link. The automation side, which will send the reminders out to clients, frees up our time. We can dictate when these reminders go out at the start of the year. We can set a deadline. So, for our deadline currently we've got end of September. This gives the clients a target date to hit and to get their information in, and on top of that, when we go past that date the client will get a reminder that the information is now overdue, and although the January deadline hasn't changed, I think our client's perception of when they need to get their information to us has, and we've seen, as I say, hugely increased results. We run monthly statistics to see sort of measuring sort of year-by-year, month-by-month on how the information's coming in, and from 2022 to 2023, 2023 was the year that we really implemented Glasscubes for the first time and started using it to its full capacity and throughout the whole year we were seeing a 40% uptick on information that was being received, which makes a huge difference to the deadlines in sort of December and January. Allows us to really smooth our workload throughout the year, which helps clients as well because we're able to actually focus more closely on the work as and when it comes in, rather than feeling that there's a big rush in December/January to simply turn the job around and maybe miss some key bits of information or advisory points, which really is what we're there for our clients. So, it works both ways. It helps ourselves and it definitely helps our clients too.
Conor McManus: I would hugely recommend Glasscubes. I think the numbers, the stats, and the results are speaking for themselves. It's hugely helped our processes. It's really easy from a client perspective and user-friendly. From an internal side, it's been really easy to pick up and learn to use and as I mentioned before, really intuitive bit software. It's also super flexible. You can choose when your reminders go out. You can choose what those reminders say. You can make them more detailed. You can keep them simple. We're playing with lots of different ideas for future to potentially add sort of customisation and it's great that you can make it really bespoke to exactly how you want it to be and what fits your firm. I think from an internal perspective, especially when there's IT or any of those sort of systems there seems to be very few staff that don't like the software or have raised any issues or complaints about the software, and I often think with IT and and different softwares if you're not hearing anything, then it's usually good news and it's working well. So yeah, I'd recommend anyone to give Glasscubes a chance and to go with it and yeah, as I say I, I couldn't recommend it highly enough.
