Chapter Two IRIS Practice Management · 1.3 IRIS Practice Management Overview In the first chapter we said “on average a recent survey shows that an IRIS Practice Management user

Chapter Two

IRIS Practice Management

IRIS Accountancy Solutions

Copyright © 2013 IRIS Software Ltd. All rights reserved. Page 2

www.iris.co.uk/accountants

Contents

1 Introduction ................................................................................................................................ 4

1.1 A review of the last chapter ...................................................................................................... 4

1.2 This week’s contents ................................................................................................................ 4

1.3 IRIS Practice Management Overview ....................................................................................... 4

1.4 Course Content – what have we done?..................................................................................... 5

1.5 Course Content – what is left to do? .......................................................................................... 5

2 Quiz ........................................................................................................................................... 6

3 Client List ................................................................................................................................... 7

4 Setting up a New Job ................................................................................................................ 10

5 Services ................................................................................................................................... 11

5.1 What is a Service? .................................................................................................................. 11

5.2 How to Setup a Service for Standard Jobs ............................................................................. 12

5.3 How to Setup a Service for a New Job ................................................................................... 13

6 Planning ................................................................................................................................... 17

6.1 Aim of Planning ....................................................................................................................... 17

6.2 Finding the Jobs You Want to Plan For .................................................................................. 17

7 Using the Staff Control Panel .................................................................................................... 20

7.1 My to-do List (Job Stages) ...................................................................................................... 21

7.2 Working Through Your Jobs ................................................................................................... 22

8 On-screen Monitoring ............................................................................................................... 24

8.1 Posting a Task ........................................................................................................................ 26

8.2 Reviewing the Client ............................................................................................................... 27

8.3 Dealing with Problems ............................................................................................................ 28

9 Reporting monitoring ................................................................................................................ 30

9.1 Options ................................................................................................................................... 30

9.2 Order ....................................................................................................................................... 31

9.3 Selection ................................................................................................................................. 32

9.4 Columns .................................................................................................................................. 33

9.5 Report Output ......................................................................................................................... 34

10 Communication Tracking – Introduction .................................................................................. 35

11 Homework ............................................................................................................................ 37

11.1 AutoMail users ................................................................................................................... 37



11.2 Set up the Services ........................................................................................................... 37

11.3 Start Planning .................................................................................................................... 37

11.4 Post Tasks ......................................................................................................................... 37

11.5 Communications Tab ........................................................................................................ 37

12 Quiz ...................................................................................................................................... 38



1 Introduction This document is to be used in conjunction with the IRIS Practice Management webinar programme

and includes the contents for chapter 2 out of 4. It is recommended that you have worked through

chapter 1 first.

In this second chapter we will cover:

1.1 A review of the last chapter

F1 – on-screen help

Quick client look up (documented in chapter 1)

Data Mining Search (documented in chapter 1)

Workflow getting started (documented in chapter 1)

Homework (reviewed in the webinar)

Setting up the jobs (documented in chapter 1), setting up a non-system standard job, such

as VAT is covered below.

Having a go with Job Planning (documented in chapter 1)

Posting timesheets (with Time & Fees) (reviewed in the webinar)

Quiz answers

1.2 This week’s contents

Services – the services that you provide for your clients and how to set them up

Planning – now the jobs are set up, we will look at how these are practically used and how they

will filter through to the staff members to-do list

Monitoring – use the on-screen enquiries to monitor progress, spot any problems and how you

can query staff using the tasks

Reporting – use the reporting capability to track progress and see what percentage of jobs are

complete

Communication Tracking – a quick look at what documents are tracked within IRIS

Homework & Quiz

1.3 IRIS Practice Management Overview

In the first chapter we said “on average a recent survey shows that an IRIS Practice Management

user saves an extra 5 hours per staff member per month (Survey, May 2012).”

As you are setting up Practice Management it is early days to see this fully, but hopefully you are

beginning to see some gain.

We also reviewed the key functions and benefits of using IRIS Practice Management to:

Know what jobs are coming up – don’t miss anything

Plan your jobs – make sure you have the right staff to do the work in the time frame

Monitor your jobs – make sure no deadlines are missed

Deal with unexpected problems – if staff are off sick know you can manage their workload



Use communication tracking – file away all the documents and phone calls automatically

Use data mining – know your clients for marketing purposes and enhanced services

Use staff planning – graphical view of what your staff are doing and when

So in the sessions so far, where have we got to?

In the last chapter we laid the groundwork for the first four marked in bold. In this chapter we will put

this into action and at the end of this session you should be able to plan your jobs, all staff should

have their to-do list, and the managers shall have the tools to monitor their work and act when there

are any problems.

1.4 Course Content – what have we done?

1.) Chapter 1 - Done

Course Goals

What is Practice Management – an overview

Course content

Starting point – quick client lookup and data mining search

Workflow – getting started

Homework and quiz before next chapter

1.5 Course Content – what is left to do?

2.) Chapter 2 – this session

Review of Workflow getting started, homework, quiz

Workflow – planning, monitoring and reporting (Personal Tax MASTER list and using this for the

other products)

Communication tracking – getting started

Homework and quiz before next chapter

3.) Week 4 - Chapter 3

Communication Tracking – logging and filing documents

Data Mining – saving searches, profiling your clients, categories, attributes and marketing

Homework and quiz

4.) Chapter 4

Review of Communication Tracking, Data Mining, saving searches, profiling your clients,

categories, attributes, marketing, homework, quiz and any feedback received since the last

session

Staff Planning

Summary of Practice Management – bringing it altogether

Homework and quiz



2 Quiz Have a look at the following and determine if they are true or false:

1.) VAT is a standard IRIS Job

This is false,

VAT is not a standard job it has to be set up manually within the IRIS Software. A standard job

within IRIS is one that exists in Set Up | Standard Job Types and communicates with an IRIS

product directly. For example; Personal Tax and printing a Tax Return updates the Personal

Tax job type.

2.) It is possible to link a letter to a job stage

This is true.

With an IRIS AutoMail licence you can attach a letter to a job stage within a job profile. A good

example of this is the Year End Reminder letter within the Accounts job profile.

3.) The system will automatically calculate the due dates for VAT returns

This is true.

If you set the job up to have a recurring period of quarterly, then the next period ends are

automatically calculated. If you select the due date to be X days after the period end, then this

will automatically be calculated for you.

4.) If you have a right handed mouse left click on the PM icon to bring up the client browser

This is true.

If you do this it gives you quick access to the client browser enabling you to access the client

information quickly.

5.) The year-end reminder letters can automatically have the client’s year end populated

This is true.

With an IRIS AutoMail licence you can use the Accounting period end within the letter and have

this automatically populated when the letter is generated.

6.) It is possible to assign a client partner in bulk to a selected group of clients

This is true.

You can automatically assign a partner or manager to a group of clients in bulk.

7.) You need to set up every single job against each client within IRIS as a manual task

This is false.

For the standard jobs within IRIS including Accounts, Corporation Tax, Personal Tax, Trust

Tax, New client take on, these are automatically created within IRIS for you.

8.) On the Job Planning screen it is possible to group the jobs together by the statutory year end

This is true.

This is one of the columns on the Job Planning screen so you can right click on the column

heading and group together all the period ends that are the same. This can be useful and make

it easier to view the data on the screen.

9.) If I change a job profile, it will only change the new jobs that are created

This is false.



A change to the job profile will be made to all the jobs that exist in the system as well as the

new ones created. This ensures all the reporting is consistent and in line.

3 Client List Everyone who uses any part of the IRIS Accountancy Solutions Software has the generic client

report, so if you want a list of your clients this is a good report.

To get this:

Left click on your PM icon in the bottom right hand corner of your screen and get the client

browser

Select Print | Client List to display:

If you are already a Time & Fees user then this report layout is familiar to you.

The Options tab will give you some details specific to the report. In this case there is a tick to

show the details of the current jobs, and add the firm name at the beginning of the address

The Order tab will determine the order in which you want the report to appear:



In this example there is a tick in Partner first and then Client id

On the right hand side enter a tick in Client Partner this will give a total showing the number of

clients each partner has

Click on the Selection tab to determine what you want to report on:



For example; if you wanted to report on only certain partners you could select the partner

identifiers.

Select the Columns tab to choose the columns you would like to see on the report:

Entering a tick on the columns listed on the left will insert the column on the right

Once you have the selection you want select OK and print the report to the screen, PDF, out to

a Word Processor file or a combination of the above

In this example it has been printed to screen and the output shown below



You can modify the selection over and over again to get the information, order and display the way

that you want. We will look at other reporting options later, and how to save reports with the settings

you want.

4 Setting up a New Job If you need to set up jobs that are not already in the default job list then use the following steps:

Log into Practice Management as MASTER

From within the Staff Control Panel select Setup | Job Types

From the Job Type list click New to display the screen below

In this example we are going to set up the VAT job:

Enter the Job type code, in this case VAT

Enter a Job Description in the field to the right, in this case VAT

If you have Time & Fees you need to make a decision about how you want to log the time.

For example do you want to post to VAT or VAT/Feb2013 relating to the quarter end?

In this example we are going to post time to the code VAT so have taken the tick out of

Record WIP at individual job level (otherwise is by job type)



Next decide how often does this job repeat? In this instance we have selected quarterly so that

the job repeats quarterly intervals.

If it was the Accounts it would repeat Once per accounting period

If it was the Payroll, you might have different jobs for Weekly intervals and Monthly intervals

Once you have set the job up select OK

If you want this job to have a profile, then set up the profile for the job as described in Chapter 1

of this course.

5 Services Once all the jobs are set up within the system, the next step is to look at the services you provide for

your client and you will see how services and jobs connect.

5.1 What is a Service?

A service is exactly what you would expect, it is the work that you do for your client. For example; you

may provide the following services to a client:

Accounts

Corporation Tax

VAT

Payroll

You need to ensure the services are set up for each client so the system knows what jobs to create

automatically for you.

So for example the Accounts services will have a job for each year you do the accounts such as

Accounts 31/3/2012, Accounts 31/3/2011, Accounts 31/3/2010 and so on.



This is a once only operation for the system as a whole, and any new clients you create you will add

the services as part of the client set up procedure.

Setting up the services is not only for an effective workflow process, but you can use this information

to help profile your clients within Data Mining. For example; show me all the clients I do the Accounts

for, with over 50 staff and I am not currently providing their payroll.

Once you have the service set up, for example Accounts, then each year the system will set up a job

for you. The software knows what you need to do, so you can have peace of mind that you will not

miss anything.

5.2 How to Setup a Service for Standard Jobs

For those services that relate to the standard jobs, then these will be set up automatically by the

system.

To do this:

Select Launch | Job Planning

Click on the magnifying glass next to Services and this will give you a list of job types

Highlight say the Accounts job and click Select to populate the Accounts job in the services field

Select Bridge Services button:



This will display the following message saying that it will automatically create an Accounts

service for every client that is currently registered within IRIS Accounts Production.

Select Yes followed by Ok

If you select Find in the top left hand corner you will now see all the jobs that are coming up in

the next 3 months.

Note – newly set up services will require you to go through and add a Next Job Period end date.

5.3 How to Setup a Service for a New Job

For those jobs that are not in the standard system list such as Payroll and VAT you will need to set

these up manually. This is a once only process.

The best way to do this is to use Data Mining to identify your clients and then go through and set

them up manually one each client.

You may wish to get the workflow working for the IRIS Standard System jobs and come back to this

later, in which case go on to section 6, and come back to this later.

To do this:

Select Launch | Data Mining

Only you will know how to find the clients you want to change, but one method might be to use the

client partner or manager.

You can use the fields within Data Mining to filter the list down.

For example; to show only those clients for a particular partner select Forms | Partner



Select the magnifying glass, highlight the partner and click Select | OK | Add to List and Find to

display the list of clients

Add any other filter that may help identify your clients you wish to apply services to

Add any other columns that help identify the clients you wish to apply services to

Highlight the clients, right click and select Client Maintenance and then the Services tab

You will find the standard jobs are already set up



To set up a new Service click New to display:



On this screen:

Drill down to the job list by selecting the magnifying glass and select the Job so in the example

above we have selected Payroll

Enter the Date Started for the date the service started

This is really useful as later you will be using this in Data Mining to identify how many clients

you have taken on, how your services are growing and / or declining. In the latter case this

comes from entering the Date Terminated when the client leaves, or terminates a particular

service.

Enter the Next job p/e this is the period end date on the next job you are going to do for this

client.

Check you are happy with the Recurrence, depending on the type of job it may have been

automatically populated, or you may need to select the down arrow. In the above example this

is set to Monthly intervals

The Notes are free form text if you wish to add in anything specific for this service that may help

at a later stage

To save the details select Add to take you back to the client browser

To move onto the next client select Next Client or Previous Client as appropriate.

Once all your services are set up you are now in a position to start planning the work and allocating it

to the staff within the business.

Hint: set up only one manual service type intially to make sure you are happy with the process. You

can come back and add the others later.



6 Planning You are now ready to start planning the work. It might be a good idea to start with a team for example

the Accounts team or the tax team and see how they get on. This way you can refine the process

before you roll it out to all the staff.

Staff buy in is so important, and will make the process run smoothly with maximum benefit to you all if

they are on board.

6.1 Aim of Planning

The aim of this section is to plan the work so that:

The staff members have a clear to do list

The partners and managers can review the work

6.2 Finding the Jobs You Want to Plan For

To plan the jobs go through the following steps:

To open the Planning Screen select Launch | Job Planning

Use the magnifying glass next to service in the top left hand corner and drill down to the job list



Select the job you wish to plan for, in this example we have selected the Accounts and choose

Select

The p/e on or before will default to 3 whole months in advance, but you can change this

depending how far in advance you wish to plan

Select the Find button to bring up all the jobs that are ready for planning

If you only want to look at your jobs as a partner or manager then at the top of the screen where

it says Include clients use the drop down box and select By Partner or By Manager.

If you do select this then use the box to the right to select the partner or managers identifier.

You do this by drilling down, highlighting the identifier and clicking Select

Select the Find button again to refresh the screen

To order the clients on the screen into the order you would like them to appear, right click on the

column heading. So in the above example the screen is ordered by the Job p/e showing the oldest

periods first.

The Planning Status column shows us where we are with the job so it shows one of the following:

Not yet created

Pending

In planning stage

Scheduled

Completed

We want to plan the jobs and schedule them so they disappear off the list, so for now let’s focus on

getting the jobs In planning stage and Scheduled

Take the first job you want to plan and right click and select Job followed by Assignments to take you

to the following screen (if it asks you to Create the job say Yes):



This is the engine of where is all happens, so take a few moments to make sure you are happy with

the infromation on this screen:

Enter the Manager for the job

Enter the Job Assignee for the job

This is optional but if you know the scheduled start date, put this in. It depends how your job

profile is set up as to how important this is. For example; do your job stages due date flow from

this date?

Each stage should now automatically have a staff member assigned to it and a due date. Where a due

date is reliant on something else happening you will see this clearly in the due date basis column.

If you want to tweak the staff member or the due date double click on a job stage:



Here you can change the staff member assigned and the due date and select OK to go back to the

Job Assignments screen

The last step is to change the job to Scheduled

Where it says Planning Status select the drop down and choose Scheduled

If however, you are not quite sure who will be working on the job and you need to clarify a few

things, leave the job in the In Planning. This will show you that you have started working on

planning the job but may have some outstanding queries.

To save the job select Save, Close and Close to return to the planning screen

That’s it congratulations; the job is now planned and will appear on the staff members Staff Control

Panel.

You can now go onto the next job and plan the rest of them. It may take a bit of time on the first

few, but you will soon speed up and get the jobs planned in no time.

7 Using the Staff Control Panel Having planned the jobs, let’s now move on to how the staff member see’s the to-do list, and how they

will work their way through the list in their day.

The key thing here is that the priorities are all worked out by how you have set up the profile for your

jobs, so there are no arguments as to what is important.



7.1 My to-do List (Job Stages)

As a staff member when they log into Practice Management, the first screen they will see is their Staff

Control Panel:

This screen is set so that it opens onto the Job Stages tab by default at login, yours may default to the

Tasks tab if no changes have already been made.

The Job Stages tab is a sensible option as this is the key focus of the work that needs to be done.

Note: Another way of looking at job stages is these are the work items that will cost you rmoney if they

have not been done. For example; filing a set of Accounts at Companies House.

If you want to do the same thing and set yours to open up on the Job Stages tab then select Setup |

Options and where it says Open use the drop down menu to select the tab and choose Save followed

by Close



Once again the Job stages screen can be configured to show the data in the way that each staff

member wants to see it. On the screen above it is grouped by Job Type.

To group by a column right click on the column header and select Group

To ungroup, do the same and select Ungroup

To order the screen by say the due date, left click on the column header

To move the columns around left click and drag the columns to where you want them to appear

Note: each staff member can have their screen as they like. It is important for each staff member to be

comfortable with their layout.

7.2 Working Through Your Jobs

The next step is to work your way through the jobs stages on the screen, your to-do list:



If the job is connected to an automatic job stage, that is one that is connected to a function within the

IRIS compliance module, then you can highlight the job and select the Workflow link button.

In the above example it is the Final CT600 so selecting the Workflow link button will go as close as it

can into the correct application and function.

Once the job stage has been done, it needs to be marked as complete either automatically or

manually:

If it is an automatic stage it will complete ths job automatically moving the staff onto the next

stage

If it is not, then you will need to right click and select Mark as Completed

If you have Time & Fees, move to the Timesheet tab and post the time entry

You are now ready to move onto the next job stage and repeat the process

This will make sure when you are reporting on jobs, and reviewing a job you know exactly where the

job is at.



8 On-screen Monitoring Each staff member within the business will be working their way through their to-do lists on the staff

control panel. At the same time the partners and managers need a way to keep track on how things

are progressing.

There are several ways in which this can be done. This section looks at the on-screen enquiries for a

summary of the jobs, and then shows how to drill down into the client and job detail.

To monitor and review the jobs:

From the Staff Control Panel select the Jobs tab to display:

Once again the screen can be configured to show the data in the way that each staff member wants to

see it. On the screen above it is grouped by Job Type.

To group by a column right click on the column header and select Group

To ungroup, do the same and select Ungroup

To order the screen by say the status, left click on the column header

To move the columns around left click and drag the columns to where you want them to appear

Note: each staff member can have their screen as they like, it is important for each staff member to be

comfortable with their layout.



Change the filter at the top of the screen to see the jobs you are interested in, For example; select the

drop down and show:

So to see the jobs that you manage, select show jobs managed by and then in the field to the right

enter the staff identifier.

If you do not know the identifier use the magnifying glass and drill down to the staff list, highlight the

staff member and click Select

This shows all the jobs the manager is responsible for.

You can review each job at the high level to ensure it is on track. For example; you can look at

the Status column vs the Statutory Deadline

If you need to drill down into the job you can right click and select Profile to see the details of

how the job is progressing:

In this example you can see that the job is with the staff member RP querying the accounts. At

this point you can make a decision about what to do:



Is it just finding out information?

Or do you need to query with the staff member what is going on?

If it is the latter you can send the staff member a task to find out more information. To so this

right click on the job stage and select Post Task

8.1 Posting a Task

If you do want to post a task this will apear on the staff members task list. Tasks are a good way

of communicating with the staff about ad-hoc query’s and / or to-do’s.

Note: a task does not have to relate to a client, it can be as simple as, “Could you make me a

cup of tea? Thank you.”

In this example we have sent the task to the staff member asking, “Why are the queries on this

account still outstanding?”

To do this the key fields to enter information into are:

The Assigned to this is who the task going to.

The Due date you would like the task completed by

The Subject saying what information you want or describing what the task is

Any further information can go into the Notes section at the bottom of the screen

Note: the client and jobs screen will automatically be populated from the job profile

Select OK to send the task

Once the task has been completed, you can select the task off the tasks tab within the Staff Control

Panel and click on the Complete task tick box. The task will disappear off the list. (Note you can see it

again if you look got completed tasks).



8.2 Reviewing the Client

Whilst you are on the Jobs tab, you may also like to look at further information about the client. To do

this highlight the job, right click and select Client

Once you are on the client file you can look all the client information including:

The A/P Figures button on the Basic tab will show you the figures for the last three years sets of

Accounts

The Jobs tab will show you the progress on all the jobs for the client

The WIP tab will show you the detailed WIP for the client, plus you can drill down into the Fees

information, and raise a bill

The Communications tab will show you all the recent correspondence you have had with the

client

This is all important information to help you to make plans and judgements about where the job is

at and any action you may need to take.



8.3 Dealing with Problems

There are all sorts of problems that can arise as jobs are progressing. For example;

In recent years we have had bad weather so we need to make sure our staff can work remotely.

Staff sickness is a typical problem. If this arises, we need to identify what work they were doing,

how urgent it is and does it need to be re-allocated. This section shows how this can be done

quickly and easily.

Looking at the staff sickness issue it is possible to identify very quickly what that staff member is

working on.

To do this:

Go to the Job Stages tab on the Staff Control Panel, choose to Show stages assigned to

If you are not sure of the staff member’s identifier, select the magnifying glass to see the staff

list, highlight the staff member and choose Select

Click Find to display all the job stages that staff member is responsible for

At this point you could order the screen by due date by clicking on the column, or group them by

due date.



Anything that is urgent and needs to be assigned to another staff member, highlight the job

stage and double click to show the detail of it:

Change the staff member in the Assigned field (it is possible to drill down to see a list of staff at

this point if needed and select the staff member)

You can also modify the Date the job is to be completed

Repeat this process for each job stage you want to move to someone else whilst the staff member

is off sick. This will ensure nothing will be missed.



9 Reporting monitoring As well as the on-screen enquiries there are the reports that can be used for reporting on the

workflow.

This can help for example; if you want to see what percentage of jobs are complete.

To use these select Reports | Management Reports | Workflow report to see:

If you are a Time & Fees user, or use the client list that exists in all the IRIS products then you will be

familiar with this report layout0.It also follows the same Options, Order, Selection and Columns

standard that the client list did that we looked at on page 7 above.

9.1 Options

The Options tab has specific information to the report. Initially keep it simple, once you are

comfortable you can start building it up and putting more information in and changing the shape of

the information coming out.

One thing to note is the reporting is very flexible. For now try:

Select the job to be reported on



Enter a tick in the key stages you want to show on the report, remember the more stages you

tick the text will shrink to accommodate the information

If you want to see what the turnaround time that it took to do the job then enter the key stages

that you want to monitor

Move onto the Orders tab

9.2 Order

The Order tab determines the order in which the information will be reported on.

In this case select the Job recurrence P/E date to group the years together, and enter a tick on

the right hand side to total these

Then select the Progress Status along with a tick on the right hand side to see what percentage

of clients have reached this stage (see the report output)

Next select the Client id to show the information in client order

Move onto the Selection tab



9.3 Selection

The Selection tab gives you the opportunity to only show those clients who are interested in. For

example, it might be you only want to see particular partner’s clients in which case you could enter

the partner identifier in the Partner field

In this example, ensure that the only client type selected is Personal clients and enter a tick in

all the fields under Include jobs

It is possible to come back and refine this at a later stage. For example; you may wish to only

shown certain Period Ends, or jobs that are not Completed

Next move onto the Columns tab



9.4 Columns

Use the Columns tab to determine the columns you would like to appear on the report. You can pick

as many as you want. The more information you want on the report, the font size will automatically

adjust to accommodate it.

You can choose Landscape or Portrait to accommodate the number of columns.

Entering a tick on the left will populate the columns displayed on the right

Select OK when you have chosen all the columns you want to appear

Note: if the report does not look quite how you want it to run it again and change the chosen

settings on any of the tabs, fewer columns are usually better.

We will look how to save the reports at a later stage. (If you want to have a go now select the

Memorise button, give it a name and make it public, then use Reports | Memorised Reports to

access the report later.)



9.5 Report Output

The report output screen looks like;’

At this stage you can select to run the report to Printer, PDF, Word Processor or Screen. In this

case the Screen has been selected and this is the format of the output:



As you can see it shows a percentage of how many jobs have reached each stage. This can be

useful for monitoring the on-going jobs and also help me plan for next year.

If it is possible to identifiy the strengths and weaknesses in the job turnaround, then improvements

can be made on this for the next year.

10 Communication Tracking – Introduction The majority of documents that are generated in IRIS are tracked and logged in the

Communications tab within the client maintenance screen,

The list of reports can be seen from within the Staff Control Panel by selecting Setup | Report

logging



Have a look at this list, but we will look at how this works in detail in Chapter 3.

Close to exit this screen

To review the documents once they have been saved to the client files, left click on the PM icon

in the bottom right hand corner of the screen; highlight a client and select View, then select the

Communications Tab.

If you have run any reports recently you may see them listed here.



11 Homework

11.1 AutoMail users

Set up an AutoMail letter and link it to a jobs stage

11.2 Set up the Services

Use the instructions above and set up all the services for your clients. Remember this is only a once

only operation and will ensure that no jobs get missed in your business.

11.3 Start Planning

For a group of clients, staff, department or a service plan a series of jobs. Watch this flow through to

your Staff Control Panel, and see how the staff get on. From this process:

Is your profile working for you? Is it too long or short?

Do the staff see the benefits? If not what are their concerns. It is really important they see this

as a benefit so during the trial any concerns need to be taken into consideration and used to

refine the job profiles.

11.4 Post Tasks

Post a task that relates to a client and see it filter through to the staff members to do list.

Post a task that does not relate to a client and it filter through to the staff members to do list.

In both cases complete the task

11.5 Communications Tab

Have a look at the Communications tab on the staff control panel and see how the documents

are being stored.

Take a look at the Communications tab within client maintenance and see how the documents

are being stored.

Try right clicking on a document and sending an email.

Try the Send Email button on the bottom of the Communications screen.



12 Quiz Go through the following and mark whether they are true or false?

1.) It is not possible to create a job that will automatically recur and have the period end date

calculated by the system unless it is a system standard job.

2.) The generic client list off client maintenance is only available to Practice Management users.

3.) As a partner or manager it is possible to look at work that is assigned to someone else.

4.) If I wanted to post a task that does not relate to a client you need to set up a dummy client in

IRIS and use this.

5.) I can enter a due date on a task.

6.) I cannot enter a priority on a task.

7.) Automatic job stages within IRIS such as generating the Personal Tax return will automatically

complete the job stage within IRIS.

8.) As I have completed a job stage I can post the time into my timesheet if I have a Time & Fees

licence from within the Staff Control Panel.

9.) As a partner or manager I can see those jobs that I am responsible for from within the Staff

Control Panel.

10.) It is possible to see all the jobs I am working on for a client within the client maintenance file.

11.) I cannot save the report once I have configured it within IRIS; I have to set it up from scratch

each time.

12.) Each staff member has to manually complete job stages for every single job.

The answers are in chapter 3’s notes.

Documents

Chapter Two IRIS Practice Management · 1.3 IRIS Practice Management Overview In the first chapter we said “on average a recent survey shows that an IRIS Practice Management user