Company
Taxplan Consulting Limited
Headquarters
Nairobi, Kenya
Industry
Accounting & Finance
In Kenya, the demand growth for qualified accountants reached its peak around 2005, as public and private sectors gained significance in shaping the economy. The time was aptly set for Taxplan Consulting Limited to kickstart its operations, with a bunch of highly skilled accountants at key positions.
Pinned among the top-tier accounting services in Kenya, Taxplan currently offers a wide range of services including tax consultancy & compliance, tax health checks, company secretarial services, information systems audit, corporate recovery & restructuring and risk management.
Unlike the saga of other new businesses, Taxplan had no trouble spotting its clients – primarily small businesses that had constraints in terms of affording and accommodating an in-house accounting department. The opportunity was considerably large with Small and Micro Enterprises (SMEs) creating as much as 50% of entire job opportunities in Kenya. A lot of these SMEs were on the verge of shutting their operations due to poor management techniques – bad bookkeeping being the worst monster.
Despite the vast market, Taxplan faced several hurdles immensely hindering their operations. The most striking strain was that Taxplan employees found the client servicing extensively time-consuming. It took them long hours and sometimes days together to manage the bookkeeping of a single client. The human error aspect made it worse – A slight and simple error made the process tedious than ever! In turn, they were challenged pertaining to the number of clients they could serve in a specific time frame.
A firm that was born with the vision of being the most sought-after taxation solution provider, Taxplan could not fall prey to being confined to limited clients. The quality of service could not suffer either as Taxplan was strictly synonymous with supreme quality, ensuring that each client got the best out of their service. Holding the best workforce could no longer address the hiccups. Automation became inevitable!
As automation became the star on the surface, the scout for the best accounting software progressed. Soon the master solution was met – Tally.ERP 9.
The first rendezvous between Taxplan and Tally was at a product demo presentation that highlighted all the prominent features of the software. The product features proved impressive and precisely touched all the woes that Taxplan was encountering in terms of client service.
The staff had all the apprehension while switching to technology and specifically using accounting software for services that were done manually till then. Learning to use an entirely new software for day-to-day operations instilled a major fear factor in them. The fear, however, saw a flee soon as Tally.ERP 9 was simplicity at its best! The highly user-friendly software could be mastered in a jiffy and soon became Taxplan’s indispensable growth companion. “Automation using Tally is very useful for business people because Tally is very user friendly. Anybody who can use a computer, if they are shown once how to input data, they can easily use Tally,” says CPA Felix Kimoli, Managing Partner/Director, Taxplan.
Starting with Tally.ERP9 and gradually upgrading to TallyPrime, Taxplan could manage multiple clients at the same time. With TallyPrime, Taxplan manages their clients’ books effortlessly. TallyPrime’s error-free reporting in the most seamless manner has made Taxlpan employees’ lives a lot better and easier. “Tally is helping us in managing our clients’ books (when we send our people to go to clients to do bookkeeping, it becomes very easy.) They can do the same work they used to take too long before in very short time now,” reinforces Mr. Kimoli.
Taxplan empowers their clients and enhances their decision making capabilities with the help of the advanced reports that TallyPrime offers. Taxplan vouches on TallyPrime as a growth enabler, as they expand their client base on an ongoing basis.
Business is about decision making. Tally helps in making decisions by giving the data necessary to make decisions on what to do in their businesses.
A monthly service offered to all clients of Taxplan, i-Tax VAT Compliance was among the most time-consuming processes before setting off the journey with Tally. The initial practice of VAT filing involved the entire process being done in Excel. The manual process was highly error-prone. Errors can never be tolerated as the VAT monthly returns serve as the basis for tax assessment and payment for businesses. In turn, the VAT compliance process extended in terms of duration as multiple rounds of checking and re-checking had to be integrated for VAT filings that were 100% error-free.
Automation using TallyPrime made the VAT compliance process painless. It not only diminished the scope of errors, but also fastened the entire process. “Since we started using Tally, by the time we close the month, we will be able to file the returns because everything is done automatically by Tally,” mentions Mr. Kimoli.
The integration of technology into our daily operations indeed foresees some phases of confusions and clarifications. The process of learning a new software entails a lot of new queries that can be addressed only by the makers of the software.
Calling for the greater gravity of customer support from software providers, Tally has never failed to amaze Taxplan. The onboarding to Tally.ERP 9 and the transition to TallyPrime were smooth and easy at Taxplan’s end. “They are very supportive. Whenever we are stuck or we need a clarification, they are always available through their toll free number. They even come to our premises whenever we need them to do, within our issued time,” explains Mr. Kimoli.
What I can tell my fellow colleagues in profession (CPAs), is that Tally is a system that they can use in their practice as it saves a lot of time, keeping in mind that our revenue comes from time.
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