Updates to Orbit – Software for Accountants
We’ve just released a number of improvements to Orbit Accounts, our product for accountants in practice. These improvements are available immediately (and at no extra charge) for existing customers, and are also available in the free demonstration and trialfor potential new customers.
MailChimp Integration for Orbit
We recently integrated the core KashFlow accounting software with a service called MailChimp. This is an email marketing system. You can read more about the integration in an earlier blog post. This is available for all of your clients to use right now, and at no extra cost. The feedback on this has been overwhelmingly positive and a number of Orbit users have said they’d like to have the same functionality within Orbit so as to be able to email all of their clients with updates and newsletters. So we did it. Log in to your Orbit account, click the Settings tab and scroll down to the MailChimp Integration section, The on-screen guidance should guide you through the set up process. As well as their email addresses, the integration can also copy across a range of other information such as their VAT Number, number of logins, type of account (Free trial, paid, etc). So as well as newsletters, you can also send emails to just clients that are VAT registered or just those that are currently taking a free trial of KashFlow. MailChimpis an incredibly powerful system, we highly recommend you take a look.
Contact Records
This was a change necessitated by the Mailchimp Integration. We didn’t want to force you to use the clients “[email protected]” email address for your emails to them, and we wanted to be able to give you the option to include more than one email address per client. So now when you view a client record in Orbit, you’ll see new buttons showing for Contacts. You can add new contacts and edit existing ones. A contact can also belong to more than one company. Give it a go and let us know if you have any questions.
New Bank Reconciliation Routine
This has been a bone of contention with a few accountants for a while now, but we think we finally have it all sorted out. The problem with web-based software is that any changes affect all users. Thousands of business owners are happy with the bank reconciliation process we’ve had for years. So the new method we’ve developed, as detailed here, is an option you need to set. For existing clients you need to log in to their account, go to Settings -> Advanced Settings and enable it at the bottom of the page. If you want this new method to be enabled as default for your new clients then in Orbit go to Settings -> Client Defaults and tick the box at the bottom of the page. Any new clients you create will automatically use the settings enabled there.
Not Tried It Yet?
We don’t really shout about Orbit Accounts as often as we do KashFlow itself, but it’s a very powerful and useful solution used by hundreds of accountants all over the UK. It’s so much more than just discounted license pricing. If you’d like a free demonstration of the software to see how it could be useful for you, just fill in this form and we’ll get in touch,