XCM is expanding functionality with the addition of a scheduling module with calendaring to be added in the spring. And in line with the demand for mobile features, iPad and phone applications are scheduled to hit the market before year's end. The full-fledged XCM product is described as providing personal workload management, process control and standardization, project management and firm-wide resource management. The company has also tailored its application for different size firms. XCMessential is designed for one to five and XCMessential Plus for five to 10 users and are both designed for firms with little or no IT infrastructure. There is also XCM for Corporations that provides workflow and project management.
There are a lot of different approaches to workflow and some do not involve separate applications. With Thomson Reuters CS Professional, there is not one product that is labeled as a workflow application. The company, however, says that workflow is built-in to the ability of modules in the Professional suite. For example, the UltraTax CS tax preparation package interfaces with Practice CS which includes project, client and staff management modules. Thomson does, however, have the separate FirmFlow application for users of the GoSystem RS tax application.
Similarly, CCH does not have a single product for workflow. Its System fx Workstream monitors due dates, manages all projects and maps processes into pre-defined steps. Worfklow features are also built into the SaaS versions of ProSystem fx Tax and Practice with Pracitce embedded throughout the suite.
Available in the cloud or one premise, Cabinet's Safe software is a document management system can be integrated with most tax and accounting packages. And besides offering workflow processes that move documents from employees to supervisors, the system can also be utilized between users or groups of users, True says.
A project can be scheduled and put on a user's Outlook calendar and it can be sent along the appropriate chain of personnel without user intervention. "A workflow will automatically kick off and send the appropriate people a set of documents," he says. True says Safe has recently been set up to enable users to share sensitive documents via a portal, and that includes sharing them with those who are not Safe users outside of the firm. The firm can decide which for which users it will purchase licenses to enable them to share and which can use the product but will not be able to share.
SurePrep has been known for scanning applications such as 1040Scan Organize which bookmarks and organizes standard tax documents and can integrate with tax preparation applications to identify missing source documents. But CEO David Wyle says that what sets the company's product apart from other workflow applications is SPbinder, an electronic binder and workflow system.
"It comes down to the depth of the document coverage and the breadth of document coverage," says Wyle.
A major advantage of SPBinder is that it enables firms to integrate Excel and PDF documents. Wyle says other applications cannot perform that task and they are left with different tools for tick marking the output of the different applications and lacking the ability to cross reference pages. SPBinder, he says, can accomplish those steps since it does not utilize the Adobe PDF format, SurePrep utilizes its own file format which can be printed to PDF.
SurePrep's product is also becoming part of the workflow process for Thomson's GoFileRoom document management system and Firmflow workflow application which will be released this year. "We have a lot of clients that use those systems. They want one way of taking all documents and scanning them into the document management system," Wyle says.
Firms currently need to scan documents into both the Thomson products and SurePrep. The original images sit in the document management system while and then when the engagement is completed in the SurePrep product, the documents are printed from the SPBinder and uploaded into the Thomson products. With the new integration, users will not have to move from application to application. Utilizing Web Services, the servers in the SurePrep and Thomson applications will automatically make calls to the other products so that users do not need tell the system what steps to take next.
Wyle says that the Firmflow currently as a button called "GoSystem Launch" for launching the tax application. There will now also be a "Workpapers" button that will launch SPBinder and all documentation.
Of the CCH products, Workstream is the closest to being a workflow application in the sense that it is also a project management package.
"Worksteam helps you manage the tasks that need to be done and the projects that need to be done," says Mark Ryburn, product line manager for workflow solutions. "Think of it as more being than project management and documents, practice tax, and engagement," he says. "It's bringing all of those pieces together and helping manage the process.Workstream has the classic routing tools needed for managing workflow. There are templates for setting up new projects, while the system can notify managers when a task is complete and move the project along the work chain, automatically notifying the next person who is to be involved. Meanwhile, all documents in CCH's ProSystem fx Document that are associated with a project are linked to it.
Besides Workstream, there is Knowledge Coach, described by Mike Ritchie, director of product management, as the workflow application for audit. It is utilized in planning audits, "collecting documents via the Portal directly into Engagement," he says. But when it comes to "who is doing what" that is the task of Workstream, he notes. Knowledge Coach, however, determines what needs to be done. "it guides a user through that process - what do you do next, what are the questions you need to answer, have you missed something?" he says.
But overall, Ritchie says, workflow is about much more than routing documents through an office. "It's ‘How do we handle data? How do we reduce double entry?'" he says, and determining that tax, audits and any other tasks are all done in the same way.
