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Overview and Features
DRIVE contains eleven primary modules:
Client &
Contact Database
FACT: Over 74% of practices don't know how many clients they have!
In fact most practices cannot say to within ten how many clients they have. One
of the most important things for a modern practice to succeed is to have a good
central client and contact database. The database must be built to last and be based
upon sound and robust technology. DRIVE is built on the Microsoft SQL Database which
is used by some of the biggest companies in the world to run their businesses. In
recent years most software providers are switching to this technology whereas P2P
has built their software on this foundation since the beginning
DRIVE allows firms to add all their clients, client contacts, prospects/leads and
general contacts into one database. Multi user and user access levels allows a firm
to decide which way they want to control the adding and amending of records. Full
standing data can be added per client along with billing information. Firms can
also define extra information fields to build a major source of information on their
clients.
Communications Management
 FACT: 94% of
the paper in a practice is printed by the practice themselves!
DRIVE provides a centralised solution to capture all your client interactions electronically
at source thereby reducing the need to print and store information in a paper based
client file. Within weeks of using DRIVE the client communication file will become
electronic.
Client Relationship Management (CRM) is rapidly becoming a must have element for
every business. Accountants have a confidential and fiduciary relationship with
their clients and it is vital that accountants have a system of recording contact
with their clients should any difficulty arise in matters of tax or other compliance
areas. A good communications recording system will improve client service enormously.
DRIVE provides practices with the ability to respond quickly and efficiently to
client queries. DRIVE gives the ability to quickly view any recent communications,
relevant documentation, Bills or WIP balances while providing an invaluable tool
for building and maintaining client relationships.
DRIVE manages the flow of communications into and out of the practice, including
emails, Word documents, scanned documents, phone logs, faxes, SMS text messages,
memoranda, tasks, events and meetings, grouped or filtered by topics or issues,
for particular clients, jobs, prospects, contacts, suppliers or staff. All client
communications are centralised and can be viewed at the touch of a button by authorized
users.
Clients, Prospects, Contacts, Suppliers and staff with their own individual contacts
can be mail merged individually or using data mining and records kept of the documents
in the communications module
- Diary, Tasks, Events and Reminders
- Exchange Server Integration
- Call and Fax Logging
- SMS Messaging
- Centralised Email
- Document Logging
- Global Communication View
- Communication Statistics
- Contact Memoranda
- Review staff email through administrative rights
- Review all communications to ensure accuracy of recording by staff
- Record Messenger Conversations with clients as memo file
- Assign Communications to other staff for action
Time & Expense Management
FACT: In 81%
of practices a partner or manager was named as being the worse for filling in their
timesheet.
Time recording is essential for every successful practice. Accurate timesheet information
ensures better recovery and the ability to future plan. Partners & Managers
have the highest charge out rates and must therefore have the best capture rates.
P2P DRIVE offers a complete and highly customizable time and expense management
facility. DRIVE captures and processes time and costs submitted by staff members
based on selected frequencies and different charge out rates. The system also caters
for write offs, accrued WIP, profits & losses, etc. Expense monitoring is done
automatically and can be applied globally through the use of alerts.
Unlike other Time Recording applications, the time process is integral to DRIVE
making time recording more precise and easier to use. For example, staff members
can add timesheets directly while writing an email, sending a letter, logging a
phone call or while creating any communication eliminating the need to open the
Timesheet module.
The sophisticated timesheet monitoring system can be turned on to help enforce compliance
through a series of warnings and functionality locking. Managers can then review
all timesheets on one screen, quickly seeing the percentage of chargeable versus
non-chargeable hours.
- Staff Grades, Budgets and Accountable Hours
- Staff Qualifications
- Staff Job Allocation
- Multiple Charge-Out and Cost Rates
- Expense/Outlay Management
- WIP Ledger (with cost centres)
- User/Data Access Control
- Control over variances with WIP budgets and WIP limits
- Timesheets timer for timing calls
- Time Control – review all staff on one screen
- Drilldown into individual timesheets
- Review Full Years Timesheets on one screen
- Review Non Chargeable Time
- Email or SMS a staff member who is late or missing time entries
- Time Sheet Monitoring
- Automatic warnings issued to staff
- Tolerance & Frequency of staff warnings can be set by administrator
- User Friendly Weekly Input screen
- Fast keys for quick entry
- Inter-Department Transfer Rates
- WIP Surcharge & Discount %
- Set accountable hours and part-time working
- Record time in hours and minutes, decimal hours or unit values
- Extensive Notes input per time line
- Web Timesheet allow 24/7 Input
Deadline Management
With litigation
an increasing concern for firms not on top of client affairs, it is vital that controls
are put in place to track important deadlines. DRIVE’s unique deadline management
module gives visibility of both statutory and non-statutory dates and tracks these
dates from start to completion. All deadlines can be viewed at any time on a dashboard
and filtered by client or staff member responsible. The alerting system highlights
upcoming and overdue dates to ensure important deadlines are no longer missed.
Deadline Management allows you to define a client’s compliance date calendar
and maintain multiple deadline dates across the year. It allows reminder dates to
be set for an approaching deadline for assigned staff members and clients. Individual
staff members can be reminded of deadlines of which they are in charge. Deadlines
can also be viewed by client on a calendar and also in a detailed list. Each deadline
can have a number of user definable statuses.
- Multi Country Deadline Definition
- 1st Payment On Account Re: Current Year
- Final Payment (including CGT) Re: Previous Tax Year
- Tax Return completion and signing
- Filing Tax Return
- Submission of Forms such as Corporate Secretarial lodgements
- Set Status on Deadline Assign Deadlines to staff for work scheduling
- Setup User Defined Dates for tracking
- Setup Types as Fixed, Variable or Recurring
- Setup Dates by Entity Type
- Drilldown into Client Deadline Diary
- Drilldown into Staff Deadline Diary
Document Management
FACT: Most
practices don’t need a Document Management system but instead need to capture
their communications at source!
DRIVE Document management is a comprehensive scanning, indexing and retrieval system.
Correspondence is automatically loaded into a client repository and DRIVE users
can click to see the scanned correspondence to get a full progress picture of what
is happening with the client. Each day correspondence will automatically appear
on screen and internal email is used to forward relevant items to other members
of staff. The index scanned documents are viewed in the communications module alongside
other related communications. Documents can be filled with a user-definable structure
and file name.
- Scanned Inbox
- Individual Staff Inbox
- Assign Scanned Documents to Staff
- Thumbnail View
- Preview Pain
- Multipage Scanning
- Use external software viewer such as Invu, Adest
- Define Auto Folder Structures
- Indexed History
- File Format PDF, BMP, JPEG, TIF
- Client & Job Update Status
- Priority listing
- Campaign tracking
- Twain Compatibility
Marketing
Management
FACT: The average
practice takes 1.6 days to compile their Christmas Card list!
DRIVE’s Marketing Management module provides firms with the ability to produce
controlled and targeted marketing campaigns and communications to existing or new
clients. Suitable for the occasional user and marketing professionals, communications
such as mailshots, letters and newswires can be cost effective and simple to produce.
The data mining feature ensures that only targeted lists of clients or prospects
are contacted. The system will produce reports on leads generated and resulting
success. The segmentation routine allows a firm to perform data mining on a section
of the client base with similar profiles and assess one client’s performance
against another.
Standard letter templates can be loaded on to the letter template directory to be
used within the relevant modules.
- Create your own data queries through Query Builder
- Year End Books Requests
- Year End Bank Letters
- Monthly Newswires & Ezines
- Label Runs
- Full List of Merge Fields
- Microsoft Word Integration
- Group SMS Option
- User Defined Treeview Structure
- User Defined Data Source
- Field Selection
- Preview List
- Adjust/Delete/Cleanup List
- Filter List
- Regenerate List
- Export to Text, Excel, CSV File
Billing Management
FACT: Only
13% of practices use their Time & Billing system fully!
DRIVE’s Billing Management Module is a vital part of the program. Allowing
staff to raise bills on the system will increase recovery of chargeable work. Bills
will be issued quicker and cash collection cycles will greatly improve. Integration
allows for the efficient billing of time, expenses and outlay. Billing information
will automatically be displayed on the client’s account; the job ledger, age
debtors and the general ledger will be updated in real time.
Bills are produced through Microsoft Word using multiple billing templates. Whether
you want to use summary or detailed text bills, the system controls the process
automatically. The system will manage linked client billing, proforma, recurring
bills, fixed amount billing, Non-WIP Bills and Multi-Job Billing. Full credit control
functionality is included.
Recovery records can be generated by WIP code or staff code. These include accrued
WIP, Profit and Loss. The module comes with a fully integrated Fees Ledger.
- Linked Client Billing
- Multi-Job Billing
- Pro-Forma Billing
- Non-WIP Billing
- Billing on Account
- Multi User Billing
- Multi Currency Billing
- Multiple Recurring Billing Methods
- Credit Notes with WIP Reinstatement
- Lodgements/Receipts
- Recurring Receipts
- Settlement Discounts
- Fees Journals
- WIP Allocation
- Fees Allocation
- Nominal Ledger Update
- Control over variances with Fees Budgets and Fees Limit
- Letterhead Templates for Bills and Statements
- Default Billing Paragraphs
- WIP Recovery Analysis Tab
- Accrued WIP for later allocation
- Staff Profit Allocations for bonus allocations
- Allocate Profits/Losses by WIP Code
- Self Defined Auto Generate Bill Number Sequence
- Automatic Email Bills from Billing Screen
- Bill Backing Report
Financial Management
FACT: Almost
9 in 10 practices use a separate system for practice financials – duplicating
work and wasting time!
DRIVE’s Financial Module is at the heart of the back office. Transactions
are updated to the general ledger in real-time. General ledger accounts are live,
allowing authorised staff to review billing during the month, check cumulative balances
and make comparisons. Managers do not need to wait until month end to see how their
department or section is running against budget.
DRIVE contains full bank and cash account management. You can define any number
of bank/cash accounts. Flexible posting routines with comprehensive reconciliations
allow the practice to integrate all banking needs into a central system. This will
ensure that all ancillary ledgers are kept up to date so that when partners/managers
are chasing cash all the information they need is available.
The general ledger routine has a number of standard financial reports. The system
produces a trial balance report by date of period as well as a set of financial
statements based on user-definable templates.
A full cost centre based nominal ledger forms part of the main financial package.
The integrated nominal ledger has data, screen and reporting access restrictions.
Access is also restricted by using PC hard disk or network ID numbers. The system
is multi-currency.
- Nominal Accounts
- Budgets and Comparatives
- Receipts and Payments
- Payment Recovery through the WIP ledger
- Credit Control
- Bank Transfers
- Bank Reconciliation
- Accruals and Prepayments
- Recurring Transactions
- Staff Accounts
- Multi-Currency
- Nominal Ledger
- Sub Codes
- Nominal Drilldown
- Nominal Journals
- Cost Centre Analysis
- Comparatives
- Budgets
- Accruals & Prepayments
- Journals
- Practice Trial Balance
- Practice Profit & Loss Report
- Practice Balance Sheet
Purchase
Ledger
DRIVE offers firms a fully integrated Purchase Ledger Module which handles all supplier
costs. Outlays recorded on purchase invoices can be automatically tagged and sent
to a clients WIP ledger for billing. Aged creditors and controls are standard. The
purchase ledger includes cost centres.
- Suppliers Details
- Invoices
- Credit Notes
- Outlay Recovery
- Payments
- Purchase Journals
- Purchase Allocation
- Recurring Transactions
Jobs Planner
DRIVE Job
and Project Management Module will allow firms to set up clients and jobs in one
central database enabling users to: create standard and recurring jobs on a client;
drill down into a summary of jobs, balances and transaction history by client; automatically
create current year job plans based on previous years; allocate job resources based
on staff grades or to specific staff members over multiple jobs; create job budgets,
and more.
When you create a job you can record WIP and fees budgets and the system will update
the client job file to show actual vs. budgeted comparisons.
- Recurring Jobs
- Client/Job status screens
- Fees and WIP Budgets
- Fees and WIP Limits
- Staff Allocation to Jobs
Client Accounting
Full Client
Accounting module has multiple banks accounts per client to allow for the tracking
of client monies. Cash payments, receipts and transfers. Controls over bank balances
and complete integration with the nominal ledger.
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