How Engager and TaxCalc work together at AppleLeaf

Before Engager, Matthew describes practice management at Apple Leaf as "a bit of a checkered history." The firm moved between a number of mainstream options - never quite finding a system built for how a small firm actually works. "Everyone says changing your practice management software is the one thing you really have to do, it's the big upheaval," he says. "We seemed to change it every year."

The turning point was a YouTube video. Matthew came across Engager co-founder Johann demonstrating the product, specifically its handling of client onboarding, professional clearance requests to a client's previous accountant, and disengagement when a client leaves. It was a workflow none of the other systems he'd looked at had properly solved.

Apple Leaf signed up within a week, well before Engager and TaxCalc merged, Matthew estimates it was 2021 or 2022, when Engager was "just starting to get a little bit of momentum."

TaxCalc's role at AppleLeaf predates Engager by several years. Matthew started the firm with a cloud-based competitor, drawn in by the promise of a fully cloud product. The relationship soured quickly: figures on a corporation tax return began changing unpredictably, and when he called the helpline on a Friday afternoon with a large client's return on the line, nobody picked up. "I thought, this can't go on. I need a software company that's going to support me through this journey."

TaxCalc's pricing and functionality, accounts production, tax returns and  company secretarial won him over, and the reliability has held. "You can safely say TaxCalc is a staple of AppleLeaf. It's something I would never change."

Before the merger, running TaxCalc and Engager side by side meant maintaining two separate databases, updating client details in Engager for practice management, then doing it all again in TaxCalc for accounts and tax. It worked, but it cost time. "So when I heard about the merger between Engager and TaxCalc, it was music to my ears."

When we heard that the two software companies were merging, it was music to our ears.

With the integration live, updates made in one system now flow through to the other automatically. Matthew is clear-eyed that this is just the foundation, TaxCalc plans to extend it further, pushing tax information prepared in TaxCalc through to Engager to keep clients better informed. Even at this stage, he says the effect on the firm's internal processes has been significant: cleaner, more consistent, with fewer friction points day to day. Crucially, nothing has been lost in the process, if anything, AppleLeaf has gained functionality it didn't have before, which matters for a firm without a dedicated admin team to pick up the slack.