With the introduction of GST, schedule of Chartered accountants and tax practitioners have changed very much. Due dates comes with a very close gap. And after lockdown and moving to work from home culture, managing work become more complex and time consuming.

Income tax software is a must for every CA office. Most of them are using software for GST too. But most them of doesn’t use any software to manage their tasks and office work. Excel or google sheets are used to maintain pending tasks and client’s data. But excel is not created for managing tasks. It can be easy till a firm has limited clientage of 40-50 clients. But with increase in number of clients, it becomes cumbersome to maintain it on excel.

There can be other option too like airtable, which is an advanced version of excel but that too is not a great fit for a tax practicing firm.

All other task management or project management software are created keeping in mind the IT industry. They provides some benefits over excel but creating tasks in them may be a burden. CA firms need a software which is created especially for them.

We were also struggling to choose the best software to manage our chartered accountant practice. We keep on researching for a software which can increase our productivity. But we are unable to find such application. Most of the applications are like project management software, they may have hundreds of features but using them is not as productive as we thought.

Then some other CA colleague refer us TaxAdda practice management software (TaxAdda PMS in short). We have find this application much promising then other existing solutions.

It is created specifically for CAs and that you can tell by looking into the features this application has. Most CA firms has GST and Income tax task. These tasks are not big projects which require a project management software.

Let’s look into what problems we are facing in managing in our firm and how TaxAdda PMS help in solving these.

  1. Task management – Task management is the backbone of the application. We can create task for all clients in on go. For example, if we select GSTR-3B for September 2020, then application list all the clients for which we files GST returns, clients who are registered under regular scheme and also filters out the clients who does not required to file this return like clients who have registration date after Sep 20 or cancellation date before Sep 20. This way we get a complete and clean list of all clients for which we have to file GSTR-3B. Select all clients and click on button to create tasks. If you do not want to create tasks for all clients to keep the task list clear, on the client page option comes to add task for that client in one click.

    You can allot as many users as you want to a tasks, mark high priority tasks as star, add comments. Each change in tasks in notified to other users to whom that tasks are allocated. So no need of separate communication for each activity. Also, it shows activity done by each user in each tasks. So, if an user changes status to completed and later on it is discovered that task is not actually completed then such user cannot deny the fact that he has not mark the task as completed.

    They have also given snooze option just some days back. This allows to hide a task up to a specified date. This lets you keep you task list clean.

    And the feature I loved most is the return task overview. This page is somewhat similar to excel sheet, we used to maintain for tasks. Month, quarter or year is listed in columns and client names are in rows and in between there are status of each tasks. If a task is not created then plus icon shows and you have to just click on plus icon to create a task. This page gives complete overview of all pending tasks for a period. You can also filter the task on basis of status.

    You can also create custom tasks as per your need for tasks like professional tax, ROC filings, TDS returns etc.
  2. Time Tracking – You can track time on a task. There are two methods given to track a time. In first method, user have to start the time and then stop the time. In second method, users can enter the start and stop time manually. Admin can select whether he wants to allow the manual time for all users or not. He can then see the reports, both user-wise and client-wise. User-wise reports help in assessing which user is working how many time and on which client. Client-wise reports help in assessing how much time is given for a client and to bill them accordingly.
  3. User rights – In this application, there is no limit on number of users according to plan. In most other applications, users are limited on basis of plan. Also, TaxAdda PMS allows admins to select each right which he wants to give or not want to give to a specific user. For example, admin wants that a specific user should not be allowed to add new clients, so admin should uncheck the option of Add Client and then such user will not be able to add a new client.
  4. GST return status from GSTN server – GSTR-1, GSTR-3B etc. tasks are marked as completed only after confirmation from GSTN server. If return actually not filed, then error comes and status doesn’t changes. Also, you can check return status for all years.
  5. Bulk SMS and whatsapp–You can send sms and whatsapp messages to individual clients or in bulk. Their bulk functionality is very good. You can select for which task and for which period, you are sending tasks. For example, GSTR-3B August 2020 is selected and it will show only those clients which are required to file GSTR-3B for August 2020. And then you can select some or all of the clients, and also filter on basis of status. For example, you want to send messages to only those clients who have status of pending, then you can filter such clients. This way you can send super targeted messages to relevant clients only.

There are many other features which can help you in saving time and efforts for you and your team. They give a 30 days free trial and also gives a live demo account. So you can try before subscribing to a paid plan.

Author: The article is sponsored post by Taxadda Private Limited.