Hello,

I’ve hijacked Alison’s message this month to talk to you about recommendations, to say thank you, and to ask for help.

I was delighted this week to see the following thread on AccountingWeb, where four of you replied to a question about which tax software to use with a positive endorsement of Keytime.  We really, really appreciate this kind of recommendation, and we've had a number of accountants contact us on the back of that thread alone.

Thanks

Thank you Stewart, Bernard, Dave and the mystery accountant known as Time for change.  You really are fantastic.

A request for help

So, I'd like to ask for your help.  Recommendations from you in public forums like AccountingWeb are incredibly effective at bringing us new customers; especially when they are honest and written naturally.  The world is full of marketing guff*, and I'm positive that it would be better with more "happy happy happy Keytime client" (Stewart, I'm your biggest fan), and less "…and you'll see why so many users are very happy to use Brand X".  We'd love more of you to take the time to show your support.

*They'll take away my badge if I keep saying things like that, but it's true!

While it is always nice to be nice, making these recommendations benefits you directly.  By showing your support for us, you help us to sign up more customers.  The extra revenue allows us to spend more on developing and supporting the software, making it better for you.  Whether you do it to be nice, or in enlightened self-interest, or for some other reason, we'd love to see more.

If you don't use AccountingWeb and want to help out by giving us a testimonial, mention it to any of the team next time we speak, or email me.  And, if you don't feel that you could recommend us yet, I would love to hear your reasons, so we can work on it.

Thank you for reading, and all the team would like to wish you a happy, stress-free and profitable tax return season, and a great Christmas and New Year. 

Jim

As always, we'll have members of the team available to help over the festive period:

We've had a number of queries recently about hosting your Keytime software.  We've taken a good look at the options, and we're pleased to announce that we can now offer this to you as an optional extra to your licence.

If you would like your software hosted, so that you can access it from anywhere with an internet connection, we can arrange this for you, for £25 per month, per user (plus the cost of the software).  Call your account manager if you'd like to know more.

We thoroughly enjoyed the entries to the Win a Kindle competition last month, and combining the best of the entries with some of our own tips and tricks, we've made Surviving January: A helpful guide to a happier tax season

Download the guide from the link above - we hope you enjoy it, and find it useful.

We're delighted to announce that the winner of the Kindle competition is Roger Lewis, from Davies & Lewis.

Roger's tip combined sensible advice with humour, and a Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy reference - a worthy winner:

Make a plan early on and set aside time to discuss it with staff and then implement it, regularly review progress and allow time for problems that are bound to arise, and above all DON'T PANIC. Alternatively, emigrate to the Cayman Islands.