Features
The modern age of the practice management solution is here, and it’s offering accounting firms more efficiencies than they have ever had in the past. IRIS Practice Engine goes beyond time entry into managing the complete life cycle that is your client relationship.
IRIS Practice Engine is a practice management system created specifically for professional service firms and their client relationships. Created by and for accountants, it is built with insights into your key metrics, which give you the clarity and confidence to make better business decisions.
IRIS Practice Engine is a single system that can replace up to six applications a firm may be using. It’s comprised of Time and Expense Entry, Billing, CRM, Project Management (Workflow), Scheduling, Collections and Reporting functionalities.
Plus, it’s Cloud-based and can be run on any device, at any time, from anywhere in the world – as long as you have internet connection. It is a completely mobile application, not limited to any technology other than having a compliant browser. No more downloading apps or waiting for upgrades. The system is completely responsive to mobile, tablet or desktop viewing.
Finally, IRIS Practice Engine is a full featured system that enables your firm to effectively service your clients while maintaining efficient processes. Each aspect of your client’s life is carefully considered as we implement the system for your firm. While our team can guide you through each phase in detail, we’ve done the research for you when it comes to the best practices in the industry. Our goal is to help you hit the ground running!
Time entry
Timesheets within IRIS Practice Engine are easy to use and simple to set up. You can view your timesheets weekly or daily and complete them individually as you go, to get the time billed faster.
Timesheets have an interactive grid allowing you to go back and edit existing entries from the grid panel view. They also load suggestions and favorites based on regular entries scheduled and entries favored by the user when entering their timesheets.
To approve timesheets, there are four options available: by Staff, by Week, by Job or by the Classic Approval method. This allows you, as the user, a very flexible approval system, controlled through permissions and security to fine tune the user experience and allow greater control for Administration users.
Plus, since IRIS Practice Engine is completely mobile, you get greater flexibility and can save time by entering time directly from your mobile phone. Enter as much or as little information as you like and finish up when you get back to the office. Or, complete the entire entry so it’s ready for processing.
Billing
Billing within IRIS Practice Engine is intuitive and designed to shorten the time and distance needed to get that bill out of the door. Our aim is to reduce time wasted on billing and to save you the costs incurred in terms of billable time from partners and managers.
Our billing process can be completely automated if you choose; we’ve added Billing Schedules to specify jobs billed over a selection of bills and added triggers to move the process along. Make it simple and automated or take control and dictate exactly how you want to bill, adding security checks and smoothing our your billing process as you go.
Regardless of if you hold your billing responsibility to the client, service, or job level, IRIS Practice Engine can accommodate any scenario! And whether you’re on a monthly billing cycle or more of a continuous billing cycle, the system is flexible to cater to either one.
Jobs within IRIS Practice Engine can be applied at various levels from the very simple to the very complex. The Jobs section handles the management of your jobs, from Staffing Roles and Individual Tasks giving you greater granularity and control, through to the Budget forecasted for the work done on the Client.
You can enter your time from your Jobs, bill from your Jobs, store documents on your Jobs and keep an eye on the audit trail with the handy Notes and History tab. Plus, with the Bulk Job Administration feature, you can make changes to more than one job and avoid making changes individually. Once batched, the selected jobs can be edited at once.
Scheduling Jobs in your firm can be a hassle and conflicts may arise – with IRIS Practice Engine’s scheduling application, you can avoid overbooking, staff-to-staff conflicts, or staff-to-client conflicts with our easy-to-use and fully integrated scheduling tool.
The IRIS Practice Engine Scheduling application, although a separate component, is very flexible, browser-based, and built-in and integrated with IRIS Practice Engine. It syncs in all of your Client, Job and Staff information – every five minutes!
The scheduling application allows you to self-schedule, manage other employee schedules, or manage everyone.
One of IRIS Practice Engine’s biggest strengths is its data structure and reporting capabilities, enabling you to make critical data-driven business decisions.
Our differentiators
Unlimited reporting capabilities
Any piece of data in IRIS Practice Engine can be reported on.
There are two types of reports, Static and Portfolio. Static reports are typically in PDF or Excel formats and can be run as is or with specific parameters such as Dates, Staff, Offices, Cost Centers, etc. Static reports can be programmed to run at specific times and be sent to specific people automatically. All reports in the system can be exported to a clean .CSV file. Portfolio reports are updated in real-time. They have a drill-down capability down to the time entry level and allow users to get detailed insights without running multiple reports.
Both Static reports and Portfolios can be customized to include any data in the system. Regardless of what types of reports you need, our Data Scientists are capable of providing such reports.
IRIS Practice Engine contains a useful collection of standard reports and the ability to export data to numerous other reporting tools, whichever you like.
Easy to access data with the Data Warehouse
The Practice Engine Data Warehouse (PEDW) is a simplified version of the main IRIS Practice Engine production database that has been optimized for creating and running larger and more complex reports with business intelligence software.
The data warehouse will help you explore data, design hypotheses, and come up with answers to your business-critical questions. Plus, it streamlines the preparation of data for analysts, making it easier to build reports and keep track of important business metrics.
The structure of the Data Warehouse has been created to work well with Microsoft Power BI. Although Power BI is not required for reporting out of the Practice Engine Data Warehouse, it is recommended.
KEY BENEFITS OF THE DATA WAREHOUSE
- IN-HOUSE REPORTING
Enables you to achieve in-house reporting demands through implementing Microsoft Power BI reports or another type of business intelligence and data visualization software, based off the IRIS Practice Engine database.
- INTEGRATED DATA
Provides a means to combine your Practice Engine data with your CRM, sales, IT, and other data sources within the environment of the major data visualization tools.
- FAST ACCESS TO DATA
Allows you and your staff to quickly access your data for reporting in Microsoft Power BI or another business intelligence software without impacting the performance of the main database and PE portal.
- EASY TO UNDERSTAND
Built-in industry standard database design rules make the data accessible to any data/IT professional with no prior knowledge of PEDW. This gives you a low bar of entry to skills needed to make the most of your data.
- WORKS WITH MULTIPLE DATA VISUALIZATION TOOLS
PEDW fits to the requirements of multiple data visualization tools and technologies like Tableau, QlikView, Excel, and the Microsoft Power Suite (Automate, Power Apps, Power BI).
- SIMPLIFIED DATA ORGANIZATION
The PEDW provides a wide range of Data Table types. Access to these tables, which relate back to the main Practice Engine production database, brings together many pieces of information into a more simplified organization of your data.
- SPECIALIZED TRAINING
Customers have access to specialized training including a Power BI Orientation session providing guidance on the use of the PE Data Warehouse and Standardized Power BI Reports.
Integration with business intelligence tools
Business intelligence (BI) tools such as Microsoft’s Power BI help you understand the state of your firm, investigate data sets and communicate insights through charts, graphs, maps, reports and dashboards. Power BI integrates with the Practice Engine Data Warehouse to enable you to answer your business-critical questions.
The challenge
Power BI’s capabilities are extensive, making it difficult to set up and administer based on your firm’s needs. Power BI can quickly become the “Excel hell” you have experienced without a cohesive data governance strategy.
Our solution
IRIS Practice Engine has partnered with CSG Pro, a data analytics team of consultants, to help kick start and leverage the Power BI platform and develop your full data infostructure in Power BI. CSG Pro has a wealth of experience working with IRIS Practice Engine clients, the IRIS Practice Engine main database, and the PEDW. Learn more at CSGPro.com.
IRIS Practice Engine manages all of the contacts at your firm. All client entry will begin at the contact level – as in Practice Management all clients are formed via a contact. Once an engagement is started with a contact in an organization, then the contact will become a client. Therefore, all clients are contacts, but not all contacts will be clients. All of the client details are held together in one section. The details that can be found here include, but are not limited to: Partners & Staffing, A/R collection, Connections and Custom Attributes.
IRIS Practice Engine is about helping accounting firms work more effectively and efficiently. It’s designed to simplify sending a bill, improve accountants’ financial reporting, and includes great user-friendly features that help to make your business even more effective by cutting administrative costs, remote working and proper project control.
Expenses in IRIS Practice Engine store your receipts and process claims with ease. You can filter your list of receipts to find what you need – fast!
A simple yet intuitive Claims grid lists your expense claims with actions available at the click of the button.
Plus, if you’re on the move, you can take a picture of your receipt with your mobile device and upload it to your claim when you’re back at your desk.
As firms build practices and add a variety of software programs and apps, we often duplicate efforts when client information has to be input repeatedly across the applications. Furthermore, we need connectivity among the solutions in order to produce a cohesive project from start to finish.
IRIS Practice Engine solves this problem by offering an open API (application programming interface) which allows for a rich integration of external applications so that data is shared across platforms and management of projects can occur within IRIS Practice Engine from start to finish.
