A little sad with Reckon- disappointed.

Leigh

Hi Crew,
I have been with Reckon for nearly 7 years. Being a small business ourselves, I like to have been a customer of the smaller company- I have battled through some ups and many downs. I have compromised on so many things. Such as:

not being able to cc in a second email address on Recurring transactions-

emailing invoices can take 5 or 6 attempts,

the constant timing out throughout the day is driving me crazy,

not being able to have seperate dates on payroll for each employee ( for example if one staff is paid week preceding) -

now to be told that I am being charged extra for having exceeded the plan by one employee is a slap in the face. The final straw.
I will be looking at Xero as this has had many good comments by our customers-
I do not want to leave, but feel that to be charged extra (over double) for a not great service is insulting.

Rav

Hi @Leigh

Really sorry to hear you're considering moving away from Reckon One and also that you've been encountering a range of issues of late 😔.

In regard to some of the points you've raised, can I just check whether you've had a chat with our technical support team in regard to the performance-related aspects around emailing and timeouts? If so, can I grab the case number for that report so I can follow up to see how things are unfolding in regard to investigating that for you?

not being able to have seperate dates on payroll for each employee ( for example if one staff is paid week preceding)

I'm not quite following the above so would love to get a bit more detail around this. A pay run and its corresponding STP submission needs to be created and sent on the specific employee's pay date (or before) as mandated by the ATO. Would be keen to get a better understanding of your requirements and whether there's a gap in functionality that exists around this.

now to be told that I am being charged extra for having exceeded the plan by one employee is a slap in the face. The final straw.

Reckon One's plan offerings were revamped earlier this year in an effort to provide more value. When it comes to payroll specifically, we've made some very big shifts in recent times when it comes to enhancing the overall experience such as the seamless transition to STP Phase 2, a comprehensive overhaul of Reckon One's payroll functionality to Reckon Payroll, the introduction of the Reckon Payroll companion mobile app and there's a lot more right around the corner.

This new functionality and platform has allowed us to revisit our unlimited employee pricing and introduce plan pricing based on employee count and functionality required. This approach aligns the cost of servicing businesses with their size, providing larger clients access to advanced functionality, while still offering affordability for smaller employers with less complex needs.

Leigh

Hi Rav,

I too am sad with the way it seems to be going.
SO to elaborate- Payroll. I have 2 lots of staff. 1 lot are paid for the week they have done, and 1 lot paid for a week in advance. In a single payrun, despite entering dates relevant to the pay in each employee- the paysheet only give the date of the payrun.. not itemising/reflecting the specific pay period.
As for the increase in cost… I have 5 staff, so to more than double the fee for a single employee is a bit harsh. It is quite a jump. In honesty we are not talking sheep stations, but with the other frustrations it "just another thing".

The timing out has me signing in 6 or 7 times a day- just another frustration.

Then there is the recurring transactions. My billing is predominantly the same every month- many of my clients want a copy of their invoice sent to accounts and a site- there is no way to add a second email address to recurring invoices- so I then have to go through the list and manually resend to the second address, which defeats the simplicity of an auto invoice.

As for the sending of invoices, I have an issue where I am needing to resend up to 5 or 6 times for an invoice to actually send. The failure to send is huge. I have called maybe 7 times about it and am told, this can not be fixed.
Again, I went with Reckon because I like to support smaller business and am terribly loyal - but the love is dwindling and the relationship is souring…
I would love to stay- but am frustrated. What can we do?

Rav

Hi @Leigh

Thanks for getting back to me and I'll try and address as many of these points as I can.

SO to elaborate- Payroll. I have 2 lots of staff. 1 lot are paid for the week they have done, and 1 lot paid for a week in advance. In a single payrun, despite entering dates relevant to the pay in each employee- the paysheet only give the date of the payrun.. not itemising/reflecting the specific pay period.

Firstly, in regard to the differing pay periods for your employees.

My first recommendation around this would be to check out the period field when adding an earning item to a pay run.

For example, as you'll see in my screenshot example you can designate particular dates that pertain to the earning item and this is separate from the pay period set for the overall pay run.

You could potentially look at adding the relevant week period for the earnings for a specific employee when creating the pay run.

⚠️ Just a note, if you have casual employees, adding dates to the period field for earnings will use the ATO's daily and casual worker tax table for calculating PAYG.

The second thing that came to mind around this is creating dedicated pay schedules for each group of employees ie. pay schedule for employees who are paid for work actioned last week with their relevant pay period and another pay schedule for employees paid in advance with their relevant pay period. You can then create pay runs directly using these pay schedules. Granted, this means there would be two pay runs rather than a single one however it might be something to consider in case it makes things easier. There's some more info on pay schedules here.

The timing out has me signing in 6 or 7 times a day- just another frustration.

In regard to the timing out situation, are you actually being disconnected while you're actively working in your book? Or are you having to sign-in because your book has been left idle and not used for over 30 minutes? If its the latter, while I know that can be a tad frustrating at times, we have to implement a timeout on idle books as part of our data security mandate.

If you're being disconnected while you're actively working in your book however, that is a different matter and something our technical support team can troubleshoot and work through to determine what the underlying cause is there.

Then there is the recurring transactions. My billing is predominantly the same every month- many of my clients want a copy of their invoice sent to accounts and a site- there is no way to add a second email address to recurring invoices- so I then have to go through the list and manually resend to the second address, which defeats the simplicity of an auto invoice.

When it comes to having multiple recipients for invoices, we do have the option to add contacts to customers and suppliers which allows you to add additional points of contact to an overall customer/supplier. You can then send invoices to the contact as well as the main customer email address, more info here - https://help.reckon.com/article/riqx7cy3ru-contacts

With all that said when it comes to recurring transaction templates, at this stage it supports sending a recurring invoice to the main customer email address only but certainly something for us to look at improving in future.

As for the sending of invoices, I have an issue where I am needing to resend up to 5 or 6 times for an invoice to actually send. The failure to send is huge. I have called maybe 7 times about it and am told, this can not be fixed.

I'd be interested in getting a bit more info around this. Do you have the case number for this that I could follow up on?

Also, one of our more recent updates to Reckon One (info here) has introduced an email bounceback feature where you'll be notified if an email sent from Reckon One could not be delivered and why. If this is happening consistently, perhaps the bounceback might provide some additional context around any specific email failures.

As for the increase in cost… I have 5 staff, so to more than double the fee for a single employee is a bit harsh. It is quite a jump. In honesty we are not talking sheep stations, but with the other frustrations it "just another thing".

I can totally understand where you're coming from, changes in price are never fun and its not something we take lightly. I'm not sure if there are any changes we can offer around this but what I can say is, our customer service team is always open for a chat around options and your requirements. If you'd like to discuss your pricing plan a bit more then I'd suggest giving the team a buzz and a team member will be more than happy to discuss.

Rav

Hi again @Leigh

Was thinking about this a little more and something I overlooked mentioning above is, you do have the option of adding a CC or even BCC to an outbound email like an invoice without the need to add a contact.

See example below showing the CC and BCC fields 👇

To enable CC and BCC on specific emails, head over to Settings ➡️ Email Settings ➡️ Select an option eg. Invoices ➡️ Tick the respective option to enable ➡️ Save

Leigh

Hi Rav, again, thank you.

So with the payroll, I do currently create 2 payruns- deleting 2 employees 1 and the 3 others form the second.
The recurring invoices- I can not auto send, so once generated I manually have to add the second email address-

and the actual email failure rate ..this is outrageous…. clicking send 4, 5, 6, 7 or more times to send an email.

None of these are "life or death"… but the fact is they should not be happening and it is frustrating having to improvise with workarounds.

The system generates an invoice form recurring transactions- I then manually add the second email address, click send and check..it hasnt gone, I then have to open it again, add teh cc, and try again. Do that numerous times for each invoice and you are downing coffee at a dangerous rate.
What can be done?