PKF Francis Clark is a firm of chartered accountants and business advisers based in the South West of England. Starting off with a single office in Newton Abbot in 1919, the firm has now grown to 60 partners and over 900 staff across nine offices. Amongst the Tolley solutions utilised by the firm to help provide the most up to date and comprehensive advice for their clients is Tolley Tax Tools, a software suite comprising six unique tax tools, each with their own particular applications.
We spoke to Lisa Macpherson, Head of Tax Technical at PKF Francis Clark, who supports the firm’s teams on tax policy, standards and technical issues and is in charge of all tax libraries, to find out how Tolley Tax Tools is optimising her workflow and boosting the productivity of her colleagues.
Valuable time savings
Lisa explains that Tax Case Analytics - one of the Tolley Tax Tools which highlights key arguments used in specific taxpayer situations - has created important efficiencies, saving time and generally making her life easier:
“I think it's absolutely brilliant and in one case recently it saved me around 3 - 4 hours. I was drafting an email about a complex principal private residence relief issue. Instead of writing extensively about a range of relevant cases, I was able to simply link to specific search results in Tax Case Analytics. The ability to use case outcomes which include case notes saves me further time, as I don’t have to write explanations about why relief in a certain case was allowed or disallowed.”
Another example of time savings afforded by Tax Case Analytics relates to a case involving HMRC:
“It was a case that had been dragging on for about five years. I used the reasonable excuse, reasonable care and discovery case results when I was conducting research to feed into our response to HMRC. We benefited from a substantial time saving due to the powerful search features, compared to searching through, picking out and analysing the relevant cases individually.”
Quickly getting to the crux of the matter
Another feature of Tolley Tax Tools which helps to supercharge Lisa’s workflow is SmartLists. This super quick and clever tool allows users to use everyday language to find the treatment they’re looking for and get the answers right there in the search results. Delivering the right tax treatment for any specific compliance task quickly - a boon for new entrants to the profession and seasoned tax professionals alike.
“SmartLists is great, especially for our new trainees, but even for old hands like me. If you want to look something up quickly, I think it’s a wonderful tool. It's incredibly useful and so much quicker than asking a trainee to go and dive through something like the Business Income Manual themselves.”
Levelling the playing field
Tax Tools enables firms to streamline processes, mitigate risk, and operate more efficiently. These improvements give firms the framework to consistently deliver high-value tax services profitably whilst strategically competing with firms operating at a much larger scale.
As Lisa explains, Tolley Tax Tools helps empower independent chartered accountants and tax advisors to deliver exceptional service that rivals larger firms:
“We can't actually be expected to do top level tax without the resources provided by Tolley. I don't think it's possible to provide a level of advice which genuinely competes with the Big Four unless you've got access to the in depth resources Tolley provides, including Tax Tools as an important component.”
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