Investing in accounting software

Any software investment is quite an undertaking for a company and can easily be a resource consuming process. However, with good planning and a clear evaluation process, finding the right software for your company’s needs can be smooth sailing.

Many company’s see non business critical software as an unnecessary investment when the truth is that the better choice made in support function software, the more time and resources can be focused on business essential work. If you’re not an accounting agency (in Finnish: tilitoimisto) and even if you use an external agency, it’s a smart move to invest in a robust, comprehensive financial administration software (in Finnish: taloushallinto ohjelma). Choosing the right software will help your company manage its people, processes and operations. For smaller companies, it will also free up people’s time to work on billable projects and for bigger companies it will minimize clutter and confusion. For this reason, it’s important not to go for generic products, but rather a solution that answers your company’s specific needs.

With mainstream products you’ll often end up paying more for the customized solutions that your company is looking for. By evaluating carefully what a software provider is offering with its licence fee, you can quickly cut down on unnecessary costs. The fee should include maintenance, support, training and version updates. This might sound simple enough, but many providers have made it an art to hide these costs only to surprise you with them when you least expect it.

For many companies, scalability might be a long term requirement that should be highly prioritized. How many users does the licence fee include? How many sites can the software be integrated to? What technology has the software been built with and is there a risk of it becoming obsolete? It’s also worth looking at the software provider itself: is the product proprietary and is it the provider’s main product or just a by-product? And importantly, what business models does the provider offer?

Choosing the right accounting software

Accounting can be a time consuming and often quite overwhelming. However, by choosing the right accounting software for you, the process can be made that much easier. Even if your company uses an accounting agency (in Finnish: tilitoimisto), you’ll need a financial administration software (in Finnish: taloushallinto ohjelma) yourself. Of course, there are a few questions you’ll go through when deciding whether to invest in one or not, just like you would with any investment. And at the end of the day, the question is how much you want to focus your time on your core business rather than non business related support functions.

There are a few good guidelines to keep in mind when choosing your software, which will help you find the right one for your needs. First of all, list your needs in priority order. This might sound simple enough, but many find this rather difficult to do especially if you involve more than one person in deciding on the priorities. Each point of priority should only have one item, which will make your evaluation process much easier. With a comprehensive priority list, you can put a comparative weight to each point. For some, the cost might be the most important whereas for some it might be scalability or reporting capabilities. The comparative weight that you have assigned each priority point can then be used to directly put alternative software in order according to how well they answer your company’s needs.

When evaluating your options, consider also what else you are getting with the software itself, e.g. does the software provider include training in the licence fee? It’s important to communicate clearly to providers what specifically your company is looking for and what its budget is. Remember, however, to also ask about maintenance and update fees. The best providers include these in the licence fee, but these are also the easiest place to stash hidden costs that you won’t find about until it’s too late.

Financial administration software (in Finnish: taloushallinto ohjelma) and its advantages

ProCountor’s software is a digital financial administration software (in Finnish: taloushallinto ohjelma) that covers all the different areas of financial administration and enables comprehensive management of corporate financial tasks. The web-based software allows the real-time tracking of a company’s finances regardless of the time of day or place efficiently, economically and easily. It simplifies financial administration processes both internally and with co-operating accountants. With one contract you have access to all the financial tools you need as well as a comprehensive partnership network.

With this financial administration software you can manage, among others, all sales invoicing, salaries, bookkeeping (in Finnish: kirjanpito), and the tracking of your company’s financials. The comprehensive solution also includes digital bank connections, online billing services both for sending and receiving, posting and scanning services, and the required connections for digitally notifying authorities.

Starting to use ProCountor is supported with a number of services, as is the entire experience with the software. The complimentary Helpdesk service answers all questions by phone or email, and it has received accolades from ProCountor users. Training is also offered to learn to use the software and to gain to best possible benefits from it. The training is designed specifically according the company’s and users’ needs and lever of experience. The ProCountor training is arranged for both client companies and accounting agencies. Additionally, financial administration (in Finnish: taloushallinto) consulting is offered to help develop processes and possible technical integrations.

ProCountor also includes many tools for transferring data from other systems. This makes starting to use the software fast and easy as bringing data from other financial management software can be done quickly. The data transfer capabilities can be used also between your company’s data systems within which you want to keep your data up to date with. It’s possible to transfer to ProCountor partner and product registries, invoices, receipts, salary and dimension data with the pre-defined CSV format data transfer.

ProCountor products and accounting agencies (in Finnish: tilitoimisto)

ProCountor International Oy is a Finnish company, part of Pretax corporation’s software business unit, founded in 2001. The company is owned by Pretax, the ProCountor management and partial staff, and is a leading digital financial management software and service agency. The company is fast-growing with about 1500 professional customers made up of companies and organisations with 1 to over 150 employees. ProCountor services its customers in close co-operation with over 100 accounting agencies (in Finnish: tilitoimisto) around Finland.

Tools and partnership

The ProCountor software comprises of an abundance of tools including all the basics you’ll need for your financial administration additional to a number of advanced tools. These include all tools to manage your accounting from mapping all your accounts to writing up all receipts, to managing your bookkeeping and archiving. The software also includes a comprehensive set of bank connections to take care of all you payment needs such as paying travel and expense claims, paying salaries and foreign transactions as well as receiving, managing and bookkeeping all your electronic bank statements.

The software is the market’s most comprehensive accompanied with a wide-spread network of professionals and co-operating partners. Managing financial administration (in Finnish: taloushallinto) is a team game: ProCountor works in close co-operation with leading professionals, supports its clients and helps develop the relationship between its clients and their accountants. The software offers companies the best possible outcome from a partnership with a skilled accounting agency. By using the same software, a company and accounting agency can better their co-operation and ease the distribution of work. Communication between parties is also better and the accounting agency can offer its client the best possible service.

The ProCountor Partner Programme enables accounting agencies to complete their service offering with ProCountor products and develop their electronic financial administration skills. The transition to a financial administration software (in Finnish: taloushallinto ohjelma) is both a major benefit and a challenge, and the ProCountor Partner Programme is aimed to ease that transition and help its user in getting the most out of the software.

Know about ProCountor International Oy

Founded in 2001, ProCountor International Oy is now part of the Pretax Corporation as an integral part of its software business unit. ProCountor is a Finnish company that has developed the market’s most comprehensive financial administration software (in Finnish: taloushallinto ohjelma) along with a wide-spread network of professional accounting agencies (in Finnish: tilitoimisto) and co-operating partners with over 100 member agencies.

The ProCountor software is a web-based financial administration software that is available anytime, anywhere by whomever the admin user gives rights to. The software is easy to use and set up, all version updates are automatically included, as are all back-ups and safe-keeping of all data. The licence fee also contains a Helpdesk service and a comprehensive online manual where you can find everything you need to use the software, from steps to get you started to more in-depth features.

ProCountor is and can be integrated with digital billing services such as DataCenter Finland, Opuscapita, Itella and Xerox Global Service, with Finnish banks such as Aktia Säästöpankki, Handelsbanken, Nordea, OP-Pohjola and Sampo, and with payment services such as Eurocard, Nextime Solutions, Planmill, Smilehouse and ValueFrame. Clients include Artemis Finland, Digium, Psycon, Doctagon, Tesnet Group and Ultimate Market.

The software is a robust tool for anyone who manages a company’s financial administration. For example, when using ProCountor, bookkeeping is created automatically. Each receipt from all sales invoice statements is automatically transferred to bookkeeping (in Finnish: kirjanpito) when saving changes and thanks to a clever automation bookkeeping is always up to date. ProCountor’s default account mapping, default accounting and internal account cost tracking can be modified according to your company’s specific needs.

ProCountor – Partner Accounting agencies (in Finnish: tilitoimisto)

ProCountor is a web-based financial administration software (in Finnish: taloushallinto ohjelma) that is available for use anytime and any place. Starting to use the software is easy and fast, and you automatically receive all version updates, back-ups and the safe-keeping of all of your data. Adding new users is quick and free so the software can be taken into use for the entire company. Additionally, you receive a complimentary Helpdesk service and a comprehensive online manual.

ProCountor Partner Programme

The ProCountor software offers companies the best possible outcome from a partnership with a skilled accounting agency. By using the same software, a company and accounting agency can better their co-operation and ease the distribution of work. Communication between parties is also better and the accounting agency can offer its client the best possible service.

Partner accounting agencies are important in building up ProCountor’s partnership network. They are independent agencies that offer their own services to their clients and want to complete that service with the ProCountor products developing their digital financial administration (in Finnish: taloushallinto) skills with them. ProCountor offers its partners efficient tools and support to help them offer the best solutions to their clients. Previous experience in digital financial administration isn’t required from partners, simply an interest in developing such skills is enough. Partners can further deepen their know-how and skills by becoming certified partners.

For certified partners, offering digital financial administration services is an active and central part of their business. They recommend ProCountor products to interested clients, can use the products robustly and can also give training for ProCountor software. Certified partners and ProCountor also collaborate in sales and marketing efforts.

Authorised partners are pioneers that offer ProCountor products in close collaboration with ProCountor. The products form a closely knit entity along with the accounting agencies (in Finnish: tilitoimisto) own services that ensure clients’ success. Authorised partners master ProCountor products, can manage clients’ projects to take the software into use independently and can train clients in the software.