Speaker: Roshan Patel, Tax Senior, Lawrence Grant LLP
Roshan Patel: So my name is Roshan Patel and I'm a tax senior here at Lawrence Grant. My role includes managing my team, which is at the moment four people, and we ensure that all of our clients tax returns are submitted to HMRC within the filing deadline.
Before using Glasscubes, how did you request information from clients, and what problems or frustrations did that cause?
Roshan Patel: So before Glasscubes, our tax filing software had a mail merge function in there. So what we used to do is come around May time we used to send out a mailer to all of our clients with a blanket information request proforma and ask our clients to fill that in and amply return that schedule of information with their tax return information for that year. Issues that used to be caused with this is a lot of the times clients felt that these information requests were quite spammy and tend to disregard the information and in other situations you used to have clients that send information in dribs and drabs. So, one email they'll send one month and another email they'll send another month. But this often made it hard to keep track of what information a client's given.
Did you have any concerns about moving to a new solution like Glasscubes, and were any of these subsequently realised?
Roshan Patel: Well, I think one of the biggest concerns was that our current software might not be the best, but it's one of those, if it's not broken don't fix it situations. So, we are always a bit worried about moving on to a new software when effectively, our current software does do the job, albeit not to a great extent. One of the issues that we were a bit worried about is that clients might complain, saying that, you know, we are constantly emailing them with too many request reminders for information. Now, although that has somewhat filtered into the new Glasscubes software. I think amending this issue has been a lot easier with Glasscubes than with our client software, with our previous software. Excuse me. What this now allows us to do is, if a client is complaining, saying that you're sending me too many reminders, we can just click one button and that's it. The reminders are stopped completely. It's a lot easier than the one that we used to deal with.
Please describe working with us. How has Glasscubes helped you, your firm, and/or your clients?
Roshan Patel: Your firm and your clients? Well, I'd say it's been a massive step in the right direction. Glasscubes has allowed us to contact our clients in a much more smoother and efficient way. For example, if our client wants to give us information now, instead of sending it in an email in dribs and drabs where it might get lost, and you know one email might be sent to a certain individual and another will be sent to another one of my colleagues, and then amalgamating that information becomes a lot more difficult, and a lot more of a tedious task. Here each client has their own portal, where they can upload information as much as they want. So, collating that information, at least when it comes to doing tax returns, has become much, much more straightforward.
Roshan Patel: I mean Glasscubes I would definitely rate a 10 out of 10. I'd highly recommend it to people in the same industry as me. So, especially tax advisors and accountants. It's a great, great software. It helps with document management. It helps with clear and safe communication with your clients, and it also allows for prompt messages, and a safe and secure messaging service to your clients when you need it. Within our industry, we've only got a couple of months left until our most important deadline, the 31st of January. A software like this being implemented into small and medium practises will greatly help them push themselves towards that 31st of January deadline.
