Practice Management > What our clients say

Following a detailed review of the market, we opted for Star as a result of its functionality, flexibility, and the profile of the organisation behind it. From a technical perspective, Star was an easy system to install and implement. Day to day management is also simple. We know that many of the support department come from an accountancy background and that can really help when you are discussing complex accounting points – it also meant the initial consultancy and training was first rate.

The new system will help all of Kaufman, Rossin’s people – principals, managers and staff – to do their day to day jobs better. We anticipate benefiting from a more efficient and effective process for client engagement budgeting and staff scheduling, and greater productivity, as well as improved management tools. We are thrilled with Star Computers’ attention and service – which is living up to expectations gained from customer reference calls we made to practices in Canada and Europe – and are very confident that installation will go smoothly.

Partners, managers and staff find the Star Dashboard of particular value. Useful information pops up on screen when people log on and they can call up a wide range of management reports.

The fact that a Kinetic employee can login into the same system, whether they are in the UK, Ireland, Cayman, the US or Switzerland really helps us to service our clients as one company irrespective of location. It also means key staff have access to the same data no matter which office they happen to be in on any given day.

The team felt that the Star solution fitted the way that we were working currently and would also be able to meet the demands of the practice as it grew. The operational flexibility of Star’s systems was illustrated by the variety of firms that were using the software, ranging from sole practitioners through those of a similar size to us, to the big regional and Top 4 firms. The ease of use, responsiveness of the system and flexibility of reporting have all come up to expectations, as did the standard of Star’s implementation support.

Ideally we wanted a multi-office, multi-department solution running across three offices which could be introduced quickly, and with sufficient forward capacity to handle a steadily increasing volume of transactions. The Star system is pretty well future proofed – it is a scaleable and modular business solution that uses the latest .NET and SQL technology from Microsoft, so it is very unlikely that we will ever outgrow the system. We have essential information at our fingertips and everyone can be online simultaneously without any noticeable slow down, which was not the case with our previous system.

Working in conjunction with Star, we were able to have a simple and workable solution that allows us to comply with SIP9 reporting guidelines as regards time and SIP9 Cat2 disbursements. We have also improved our recoverability and reduced the overall time taken to produce reports that comply with SIP9.

For example, we use it to track activities and actions throughout an entire job, from initiation to conclusion - telling us what is in progress, what has got stuck, where there are potential bottlenecks, what deadlines are approaching and so on. This is especially valuable when dealing with time-critical and compliance dependent jobs, such as year-ends, audit and tax planning.

Everyone participates in the profits of our company through a fees-related bonus scheme and this where the Star system comes into the picture. In fact, if it were not for the Star system, we would find it difficult to track the progress and completion of client jobs while making sure that individual contributions are captured and taken into account for bonus calculations. Every single penny that is billed is apportioned back to the bonus fund. No other system that we have looked at is able to do this. The system is very reliable and there is seldom a problem but when we do need help, Star’s support team gives a very fast response.

Star Practice Dashboard is a really useful tool that helps us to manage our practice effectively, as well as monitor resources and give us the capability for checking the progress of client engagements. Clients, contacts, fee analysis, client exposure, efficiency and profitability, and much more, can all be retrieved and displayed instantly.

We are able to call up virtually everything we want to know about time records, job and fee details, work-in-progress, client correspondence and a whole lot of supporting detail. We have also eased the pressure on the administration department by transferring responsibility for completion of timesheets and client billing to fee earners. Because our staff members working with the client are more directly engaged, this has helped to ensure the accuracy of billing and also more billable time is identified, recorded and recovered.

We evaluated a number of alternatives before deciding in favour of the Star solution – and I am glad to say that since the system went live, our experience has shown that we made the right choice! We needed just one day of face-to-face training to get to grips with the system and then any queries were dealt with over the phone, by email or using Webex.

Support and customer services are excellent, and we feel that even as a small firm we are valued as a client. We have been a Star user since 1990 and have never experienced any downtime.