Before Engager, Harrison's Accountancy managed its practice through spreadsheets, after an earlier practice management system failed to deliver and then raised its price. The firm discovered Engager through recommendations on social media, trialled it with a handful of clients, and rolled it out firmwide once the admin team had uploaded the client database.
What started as a simple need, a central place to hold client contact details, has grown into the operational backbone of the practice, covering onboarding, workflow, job tracking and checklists.
Onboarding: from Excel re-entry to a same-day process
Previously the firm used a separate onboarding tool but still had to key data into Excel by hand. With Engager, proposals and forms go straight to the client, who fills in their own details for the firm to check and approve.
"I would say at least a day, just on onboarding new clients, that you can save a day just by onboarding clients through the month. And then probably another half a day or a day for somebody to upload all the spreadsheets or updating the spreadsheets that we would have been doing before."
That's up to two days a month recovered from admin-heavy manual data entry alone.
Visibility and workflow across the practice
Jobs are now allocated to a client manager, who can oversee staff and see at a glance where any job stands.
"We can see where the jobs are getting held up and what jobs are in, and if we've got any problem areas. Then we know where to put some resource if needed. So the visibility is really good."
Staff benefit too, starting each day with a clear view of reviewed jobs, manager notes and what's ready to go out.
"They've always got a track of what jobs are their responsibilities... they've got a bit more autonomy to manage their own workload. They know the deadlines and they can ask for help if they need it."
Standardised, auditable checklists
Where the firm's old Excel checklist got overwritten with each use, Engager keeps a running history.
"Before, the checklist would get overwritten. Whereas now for VAT, we've got maybe the last 12 VAT return checklists on there. You can see if someone did it, what they wrote as notes, and refer back to them, which is very good for us."
Every client now works from the same standard checklist, whether sole trader or limited company.
"It standardised the work. It's made it so that we don't miss anything, really, which is quite good."
Value for money and support
Dan was clear that the cost of Engager is easily outweighed by the time it saves.
"The amount of time that we'd spend updating something else, so lost revenue time, is easily outweighed by the cost that we're paying for the software."
He also praised the pace of product development and the responsiveness of support.
"It's always updating. Things always get added, like the timesheets - we don't use those yet, but things like that always get added and improved. The support is really, really good. If you need to email, the responses are normally within an hour or so."
Advice to other firms
Asked what he'd tell a similar firm not yet using Engager, Dan's answer was simple:
"If it was me like five, six years ago, I'd say go for it. Try it out, do a demo, put a few clients on there, and you'll see how much time you'll save over the year. It's a really good product, really good product."
