chat How to boss 5 big decisions when choosing a new accounting app

How to boss 5 big decisions when choosing a new accounting app

Author: Paul Shipway / April 18, 2023

Get the best app for your practice and clients

The choice of business finance apps can be overwhelming. Where to start? In this article for accountants, I’ve rounded up five key considerations and offered tips on making the big decisions around product fit, realising value, data security, app vendors, and pricing.

What to ask to ensure a product fits your needs

Product fit is crucial. A new app must meet your clients’ needs, so ask what the criteria for any new app are:

  • The challenge at hand – what’s the challenge an app must solve? Write it down and what you think you might require.
  • Key functionality – what must an app do to make the relationship with your clients more efficient and effective?
  • Suitability – when assessing different apps, do they simplify and solve your challenge, or are they overly complex and over-delivering?

Our Joiin app solves the difficult task of producing consolidated reports. It does what it says on the tin and helps over 32,000 companies with their group reporting needs.

Use this one thing to realise the value early on

You’ve identified some apps, but do they deliver what they say and the added value your clients require? What you’re looking for is an aha moment. And essential to achieving one is the ability to dive in with a free trial – your one early chance to see and experience an app’s added value for yourself; the aha moment is when an app’s capabilities shine brightly (aha!).

With our Joiin app, the average time to realise its value is around 7 minutes from connecting to running a first consolidated group report.

Why not try Joiin and experience it for yourself? Sign up for a free trial ›

Image of a man happy with the big decisions surrounding a new accounting app for his practice and clients

Check against these data security diligence tips

  • Oauth2 – trusted platforms like Xero use Oauth2 to establish a highly secure link between their software and you – an industry standard you can trust.
  • Read-only – once connected, an app should only request ‘read only’ access, meaning it takes just the required amount of data to perform its task and cannot change your data at its source.
  • 2FA – a two-factor authentication (2FA) process is a very reassuring addition and the kind of sign-in you likely trust elsewhere.
  • AWS or similar – also is knowing that an app lives on highly secure servers such as Amazon Web Services is a must.

You’re off to a good start if you can tick all those. Our Joiin app ticks each one.

“You’ve identified some apps, but do they deliver what they say and what your clients need? What you’re looking for is an aha moment. And essential to achieving one is the ability to dive in with a free trial – your one early chance to see and experience an app’s added value for yourself”

Run this quick fitness test for app vendors

When assessing apps at Joiin, as well as Fit, Value and Security (as above), we also use these factors to determine the fitness of vendors:

  • Ethos – is their ethos one of partnership working?
  • Collaboration – will they proactively ask us about features we might need? At Joiin, we’ve delivered nearly 300+ product updates driven purely by customer requests. Our mutual gain is a better product.
  • Support – what support is available? We offer a range of support at Joiin – from our customer success team to on-demand videos and webinars. Like you, we’d expect the same.
  • Sustainability – do they value corporate and environmental sustainability? The environment and sustainability mean a huge deal to us at Joiin. We’re on our way to becoming a B Corp-certified company.
  • Pricing – is it good value?….

Get pricing that’s easier on the pocket

Thinking innovatively, many of today’s app vendors realise they can do without complex pre-sales, sales, and onboarding layers. Therefore, they offer much lower pricing, making purchasing far more accessible. And because their primary focus is on an app being easy to use and intuitive, they have found they can operate successfully with much smaller teams (with fewer overheads to cover in the price). That’s something to be aware of as you shop around.

With Joiin, for as little as £4.50 each per month, our starter package includes two entities you can consolidate. Why not give it a go by signing up below for a free trial?