Advisory

The facilitation of advisory services offers a new set of unique requirements for accounting practices. Depending on the maturity of the advisory service and requirements, the following tools are useful:

• Office 365 Planner – simple project and task management tools
• SharePoint Online – simple Gantt charts and project planning
• Project Online – Comprehensive project management platform

Corporate Secretarial

The management of companies, trusts and members thereof.

The following tools and technologies are supported to deliver the corporate secretarial function:

• Australia Only
• ASIC Portal
• BGL CAS * Additional Charge
• MYOB AE * Additional Charge
• New Zealand Only
• Companies Office Website

Super Fund Management

The Management of retirement funds.

Integration and provision of common SMSF products are supported with only light integration at version 1.0. The following products are supported:

• Class Super * Additional Charge to Class Super
• BGL SFund 360 * Additional Charge to BGL
• BGL SFund (On-Premises and Hosted) * Additional Charge to BGL

Tax

Accounting Firms commonly have the following interactions with national statutory taxation departments:

• Lodgement of Returns
• Lodgement of Statutory Accounts
• Audit
• Assessment

Interaction with national taxation departments is not only different for each country but also ranges from technically trivial to a purely manual process. The connected practice architecture is designed to deliver cloud-based solutions to the full range of interactions with statutory bodies. The ASI Kairos platform supports the following solutions for Tax Lodgement:

• Australia Specific
  • ATO Tax Agent Portal
• NZ Specific
  • IRD Portal
• General
  • GovReports
  • General
  • Xero Practice Manager
  • Reckon Elite
  • MYOB AO
  • MYOB AE
  • Handisoft Practice Manager

Ledger / Accounting

The core line of business application enabling a firm to manage their clients accounting data.

TCP supports a wide variety of accounting formats including a variety of standard desktop and cloud accounting software including:

• Reckon Elite * Additional Charge
• Reckon Accounts
• MYOB Premier
• MYOB AccountRight
• Intuit QuickBooks
• Intuit QuickBooks Online
• Xero
• Excel

Practice Management

The ability to manage practice clients, leads, jobs and billing.

• Data Model - Connected Practice delivers a consistent data model across individual members’ chosen practice management tools, lighting up the opportunities for data analytics, machine learning and PowerBI.
• Legacy Hosting – Using tools and processes in the connected practice, legacy practice management tools can be provided to members in the cloud through Windows Azure, allowing practices to remove their servers if they wish.

Supported Practice Management Tools at Version 1.0:

• Reckon APS (On-Premises and Hosted) * Additional Charge
• HandiSoft Practice Manager (On-Premises and Hosted) * Additional Charge – Only Handisoft SQL Supported
• MYOB AE (On-Premises) * Additional Charge
• MYOB AO (On-Premises) * Additional Charge – Note This is now called MYOB AE Classic
• Reckon Elite (On-Premises and Hosted) * Additional Charge – Only SQL Server version supported
• Xero Practice Manager (SaaS) * No Additional Charge for Xero Partners
• Practice Ignition (SaaS) * No Additional Charge. Practice Ignition requires another practice management tool
• Excel – (On-Premises and SaaS)

Document Management

The ability to create, store and retrieve documents.

• SharePoint Online – SharePoint online document libraries (an analogy to a traditional accounting practice file room) can be extended to maximize information value in the practice management suite including clients, contacts, jobs and more.
• Template Manager – enhances SharePoint Document Libraries by offering a range of auto-populating templates (from Practice in a Box), allowing Members to create standard accounting practice documents, file them securely and send them directly to clients. Template manager can be customised to further enhance the benefits of Practice in a Box.
• Scanned Document Management – refines the filing experience by taking scanned OCR (searchable PDF) documents, analysing their precise client data and automatically naming and filing the document. SharePoint Online notifies the relevant partner and manager when a new document is generated. Scanned Document Manager operates on Windows PCs, Servers or via the cloud.
• Migrator – anticipates potential problems presented by migrating documents from existing document management platforms to the cloud. The Connected Practice Migrator streamlines the process of migrating files and folders to the new document management platform.

Real Time Communication

As part of Office 365 E5 , Skype for Business offers real time communication between the member, their staff, ASI Kairos ANZ and customers.

This enables:

• presence which shows when people are signed in, busy, away or on a call.
• voice, video and screen sharing
• recording of sessions
• instant messaging

Cloud PABX services will become available in the near future replacing traditional voice services.

End User Computing

Includes the management of end user computing devices including Macs, PCs, Phones and more.

Leveraging the Microsoft Enterprise Mobility Suite enables:

• Single Identity - Azure Active Directory provides secure access with single sign-on to practice applications, CA ANZ data tools and thousands of third party applications including Xero and Dropbox.
• Central Management - Centralised management of iOS, Android and Windows ensuring consistent and secure policy, configuration and the ability to remotely manage devices.
• Apps - Access to 'legacy' applications that are not yet available as a cloud service are available through simple RemoteApp access on any device
• Security - Enterprise grade rights management for protection of data ingress and egress and advanced cloud-aligned threat analytics to ensure security across the platform.

Website / Marketing

Includes a responsive, highly available website integrated with practice systems to ensure effective data flow in the practice.

Provisioning of a cloud-based, member-ready website including lead generation, SEO and a secure client portal making use of SharePoint Online.

Collaboration

Includes at the least email, shared calendar, shared contacts and shared tasks.

• Microsoft Exchange Online environment securely configured for accounting firm requirements
• Office 365 Planner provides task and project management capability across the practice
• Office Graph API provides rich data modelling enabling the realisation of predictive accountant scenarios
• Connected Practice Mail Manager enables smart email and attachment management based on client or contact metadata

Communication

Includes Internet, Voice and Fax services and enables a basic level of communication between your practice and the outside world.

Guidance is available to optimise the network requirements for your business.

The savings calculator allows you to estimate the type of internet connection required to provide users a quality experience.