We sat down with one of our accounting partners, Tony Dhanjal from Aidhan Accountancy, to ask him about his experiences with online accounting, Clear Books and why he chose to implement us throughout his practice.
Hi I’m Tony Dhanjal of Aidhan Accountancy – I’m the managing partner here. We’re a small accountancy firm based here in the City of London.
Who would you describe as your ideal client?
Our ideal client, who we call our avatar, is a professional contractor, consultant or freelancer geographically based in London or the City of London, although we do have a client bank outside of the region as well.
How much did you know about cloud accounting before signing up with Clear Books?
I had absolutely no understanding of cloud accounting before I set up. When I was doing my research in terms of software I was very much focused on the typical products out there in the market, which were desktop based products, and I stumbled across cloud accounting to which I then started to further investigate and very quickly realised the benefits and advantages of cloud accounting.
What made you choose Clear Books?
Clear Books was selected amongst a period of research I did. That period of research was quite extensive it took about two months, and about five or six different products and providers which I thoroughly went through. Obviously I had a criteria as to what I needed and in the end, Clear Books came out top.
How has Clear Books helped you and your practice?
Clear Books has helped immensely. We obviously need a platform whereby we had the flexibility, transparency with our clients, and the ability for the system to integrate into our wider operational model, and that’s what Clear Books has done very very nicely. It interfaces with our front end systems and our back end systems to provide a seamless flow.
How would you describe the level of service you receive from Clear Books?
We receive a very good level of support from Clear Books. We receive telephone support, email support, and we find that the technical help desk is very astute, very knowledgeable and very responsive to our queries.
What do you think is the best thing about Clear Books?
Feature wise for us, the Yodlee feature is a fantastic feature. Also the uploading of bank transactions via an excel file – it’s a fantastic way of getting data into the system. The invoice function and the ability for clients to actually send the invoices directly through the portal, that’s another great feature as well.
How do you sell Clear Books to your clients?
I think what we don’t necessarily do is try and explain the benefits of cloud accounting as opposed to any other system up front. What we do is just give them access to Clear Books so they actually just get into cloud accounting and I do believe once they get into cloud accounting they would not go to, or be satisfied by any other system thereafter.
Would you recommend Clear Books to other accountants?
I certainly would recommend Clear Books to another accountant practice, if they want to grow their client bank. Not just if they want to grow their client bank, but also provide and offer better quality information to their clients more responsively. Clear Books will allow them to do that.
For more information about Clear Books, why not take a free trial and see how we can help you run your business – no card details required.
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