Ask Me Anything (AMA) with Reckon CEO Sam Allert!

Thanks for joining our very first Reckon AMA here on the Reckon Community!

Our CEO Sam Allert is our first AMA participant and is ready to answer your burning questions!

A little bit about Sam

Sam has always been a passionate accounting and business management advocate. Throughout his career, Sam has worked across a variety of disciplines including sales, consulting, support and office management. In 2011, he was appointed Managing Director of the Reckon Accountant Group, and in 2015 his responsibilities expanded as the Managing Director for both the Accounting and Business Groups in Australia & New Zealand.

July 2018 saw Sam appointed to his current role as CEO of Reckon. Since then, he’s accelerated the company’s long-term strategy to offer small businesses and the advisor network a complete suite of cloud solutions to grow and succeed.

Championing the importance and value of small businesses, Sam believes SMBs form the lifeblood of the Australian economy and social landscape. Today, his passion for relationships and vast industry experience leads the way in the fast-moving industry of disruptive and ever-evolving technology.

📢 AMA Ground Rules & Important Info

To keep things running smoothly and ensure a positive experience for everyone, please take note of the following:

✅ What You Can Ask

Anything related to Reckon products and services including features or roadmap.
Insights into our team, culture, or development process
Queries around best practices, tips or workarounds
Questions about Sam's experiences, leadership approach and journey at Reckon
Sam's thoughts and observations on the fintech industry

🚫 What’s off-limits

Sensitive account-specific issues (e.g. billing, support cases).
Personal or inappropriate questions.
Third-party product support unrelated to Reckon.

If you’ve got an account-related or technical issue, please create a new post in your Reckon product category instead so we can help directly.

🕒 AMA Timing

The AMA will run from Monday 8 September to 12 September and Sam will be answering questions throughout the week.
You can post your questions at any time from now until the end of the AMA.
We'll reply to as many questions as possible during the AMA, and any unanswered questions will be addressed within a week after the AMA ends.

✍️ Be Clear and Specific

Provide enough context so we can give you the most helpful response.
One question per comment is preferred - it helps with clarity and keeps things organised.

🏅Exclusive AMA Badge & Rewards

Participate in the AMA to earn an exclusive AMA badge for your Reckon Community profile which will also award 25 bonus points toward this month’s Reckon Community Rewards!

🤝 Respect Each Other

Be respectful and constructive.
Follow our Reckon Community Guidelines & Code of Conduct at all times.

❓ Join in! Drop a post below to ask your question!

Comments

Eric Murphy

This is quite cool, kudos to you.

Why did Reckon Accounts Hosted move to Amazon? Was there anything in particular that drove that decision?

Retreev

It would be great if once we set the column widths the way we need them, that they stay that way and don't go back to the format set by Reckon.

Every time I open Lists or the Employee Centre, just to name a couple, they are all squished up and there's one column that is huge and the detail has four letters in it.

It is really frustrating to have to keep moving the columns to read the information.

You can see by the screenshot that the employee centre has Class as a huge column, but you can't read the employee names. I change these columns regularly, but they keep changing back.

DebW

We have been using Reckon One for around a year now and before that were using Sage BCA and Xero.

Generally speaking, I like Reckon One. The interface is clear and easy to get around. Once you know how it works, it is easy to use and mostly has the features we need.

However, there are some issues that have come up with Reckon One & Reckon Payroll in that time that have caused us problems, as follows:

Navigation: (1) There is no search function in Reckon One. If you need to find something, you pretty much have to know what you are looking for already, as you cannot search, you can only filter on data in a column. (2) The other odd thing it does is that if you need to edit a transaction in the past, you navigate to it and it could be at page 14, say, you make the edit, close it and instead of going back to the page you were on, it will return you to the beginning, ie page 1, or some other location, and you then need to navigate back to where you were. Particularly this happens in Banking transactions and some reports and is time-consuming and frustrating to work with.

Reports: Reports are generated with date, payee, amount only. The Descriptions typed into Bills and Invoices do not display. Our Accountant and Bookkeeper both say this is not normal and there are requests in Community posts going back years from users and accountants asking for this to be fixed. Descriptions should appear in a GL account reports so accountants and bookkeepers can review them without having to open and close each transaction to see what it is. If it is a long report this is not practical. If our Accountant wants to know what a group of transactions are, he emails me and asks me to produce a worksheet with Descriptions for him. I can understand his position. Even if he was prepared to open and close numerous transactions to check their Descriptions, we don't want to be paying him to do so.

Classifications: In Xero and Sage BCA there was a means to split a Bill, Invoice, bank transaction or wages payment into different components and tag each line with their equivalent of Classifications. You could then generate a P&L report on that tag to see the overall position for a category. Businesses use this to track the overall position when that category covers different GL accounts, payments and wages. Reckon has the Classifications feature but it does not work like this. (1) You can only tag a whole Bill, Invoice or pay with a Classification. In practice, multiple Suppliers send us Bills that include items that are across several different sites and staff will work across several sites in a week and there is no means to apply the different Classifications involved within a payment of an invoice or wages. (2) Even if users could split a transaction and tag each line with the applicable Classification, there is no means to generate a single report based on a Classification - in Reckon One, reports on Classifications are separated into one for income and one for expenditure, and there is no way to get a P&L report combining the two. These limitations make the Classifications feature of little use.

Banking transactions: Most banks have a means to do a batch payment in their online banking, ie one debit to multiple payees, but Reckon One has no means to split a single amount that is a batch payment to multiple Suppliers in Banking transactions. Each payment can only be allocated to one Supplier. Many businesses do batch payments so not having this functionality is a limitation. It has meant we either need to not use batch payments and pay every invoice one by one, or do manual entries in a clearing account to split them which is considerable extra work and not ideal.

Documentation: (1) The videos and guides available online to show customers how to operate Reckon One and Reckon Payroll are not complete and some are outdated. It has meant we have had a difficult time finding out how to use it. (2) Tech Support cannot help with a lot of it as they are working from the same videos and guides, so if there is something missing from them, they may not know the answer either. For example, there is a collection of videos and guides on how to operate Reckon Payroll. None of these is a cohesive beginning to end instruction. They are fragmented pieces of the puzzle. For example, instructions on sharing Reckon Payroll with your accountant are missing some steps and instructions on how to allocate payments of wages and super in Banking transactions are not there at all.

Responsiveness: For the issues above, I have spoken to Tech Support and other staff at Reckon to bring them to their attention and little has changed. For Descriptions missing from reports, in Community, there are posts going back years asking for them to be included and it's never been addressed. Where something is identified as missing from instructional materials it needs to be updated as soon as possible, not left as is or users are going to waste time at best, or make mistakes at worst, as they try to work out how to make those entries.

Appreciate there will be different priorities for upgrades for operational reasons, but these are real world things that your customers need. Are there plans to deal with them?

Leanne_7663246

Hi, I have a few questions

Can Reckon increase the number of characters where has Ref no in bills or No in chq numbers. I continually find my suppliers have long invoice numbers and I cant put them in this section and have to put them separately in the memo

Why does Reckon hosted continually log out. I log on in the morning and continually work in Reckon all day. I can be using the file and when I go to the hosted part it has logged out. I can understand if I left it inactive for hours however I am in it all the time.

Why does back up take so long. Every time I back up I get the not responding message. I have to completely log out and log back in and do this a few times before I can get the back up to work

Will Reckon ever introduce an easy way of attaching supplier invoices to the bill entry

thanks

fitro

What is the roadmap for Reckon Personal Plus? When can we expect a decent upgrade and is there ever going to be a mobile app?

SUZANNE_10215707

Agree with your question. It seems Reckon PP has not really had any changes for over a decade…

Ray Hayes

Hi,

I have been using Reckon Personal Plus for years, and before that its predecessor Quicken.

When entering a transaction type in the Num column, there is no option for BPay.

Given that BPay is such a common payment method for many services and businesses, please add that option.

(I have requested this option in the past, but have not received any response or update).

Regards

Ray

GM46

Hi Sam,

As a customer of 33 years starting with Quicken I'm now retired and find the annual subscription of around $200 expensive for what you deliver. No upgrade to interface in years and still clunky reporting features. It continues to be an integral part of my life though assisting with retirement investments, budgeting etc.

What can you do with regards to pricing structure and upgrade to make your product relevant to the many dedicated long term users?

ron5

Will Reckon Accounts (business software versions) ever include Direct Credit as a payment method? If I want to record a pay anyone invoice payment and avoid the Bank Online functionality, I have to record it as a cheque, as that's the closest suitable option. Cheques are being phased out in a few years anyway.

slucas644

We are running Reckon Accounts Desktop and accessing this through VPN when working offsite.

We would like to access Reckon online but just wondering if there are any other benefits than just accessing the program in the Cloud. Are there other features/enhancements/addons with the online version (Hosted) such as attaching and reading invoices into Account Payable, downloading bank transactions into the bank rec, etc? Some of those handy features are included with other software packages or are addons, which we are investigating as an option.

Mark Brookes

Hi everyone,

Like some, I have been with Reckon/Quicken for many years. I have been using Personal Plus the whole time. I pay the annual subscription however there hasn't been any development or changes to the software and the annual subscription seems to be for access only.

My question - Since there is a move to online platforms, is there possibility for having a Personal Plus online platform or web-based Personlal Plus? There is Reckon One but that seems to be more business orientated.

Thanks

Acid_Rip

why do you have 3 postal options there is no need for them all, there should be clients address and shipping address only.. also there should be a box to tick if address is the same so it auto enters the shipping address… it’s too time consuming having to type it all twice..

I have been using Xero before changing to reckon, in Xero when you start typing an address Xero’s drop down box gives every scenario for that address to choose from and adds it automatically. This would also be a great addition if you could add this to your software, it saves so much time…

deconing

We're using Recon Accounts Plus - The Scheduled Bills & Deposits (full list) and Bills and Deposits is not customizable. I need to have visibility on transactions e.g., Transfers, but is very challenging to see the Payee in the list.

We'd like to see options FROM which account the payment is going to be made, but also cannot be customized to view this.

It makes it hard not to see the Account that the payments is going to be made from if one need to update a series of transactions. It results in having to go through the whole list one by one.

When we EDIT a transaction in the Scheduled Bills & Deposits screen, it jumps back to the top of the page and then I have to scroll back to the line I was on. It looses focus.

Upgrades - Re-installs. Really? Is there no easier way to have an .exe to do the upgrade?

As some of the other members have indicated: there doesn't seem to be much change in the application for years. We've been using this application since 2011 and love it, other than these 'glitches' that's just never been addressed or improved.

Milenko

Hi,

I would really really like to have Personal Plus available for Apple/Mac PC computers.

Could we please please! have Personal Plus available for Apple/Mac PC computers too. (I have been using it since 1994)

Greatly Appreciated!

Milenko

Milenko

Hi, it would be very useful if downloading of past share/etf prices could down load the last 20 years rather than just the last (about) five days. Cheers! (on Personal Plus)

Simmos

We have been using Reckon (aka Quick Books) since we commenced trading in 2000. Now that cheques are phased out in NZ, can you please amend the payment methods to remove "Cheque" as a payment and as someone else mentioned, change it to reflect "direct credit" or similar.

We used to use the payroll function but it is too clunky and always stuffed up the annual leave for our staff. We now pay a third party for our payroll but it would have been nice to have a good, functional, easy to use payroll feature.

Also, as per someone else's comment, if we can have the description available on reports as it is time consuming to have to drill down to each individual transaction to find the bill or invoice you are looking for.

Also using the FIND option in the customer/supplier lists is very slow to build, i.e. searching for a customer with the surname SMITH …

Kris_Williams

you can search by more than one criteria in the find window, maybe putting an address or part thereof might help.

Ann_Marie

Hi, is there a possibility of a new employee onboarding platform in the future for Accounts Hosted?

Peter Brown_9194786

Hi Sam

Will one day a user login be able to have two entities open at same time. I have 5 units in my group and would be good to be able to have at least two open under same id. I realise might be additional cost. But if we could specify which units are in the group if would be great to simplify intercoy account reconciliations .

405234

I have been using Personal Plus for many years and now run the latest version v31. I note a number of questions that have already been posted about the future of this product, seemingly with no response. Hopefully this "AMA" might enlighten us users and I look forward to some comment.

CarolynA

Dear AMA,

I am also a long-term Reckon user and paying a significant subscription fee.

I use the desktop version and do not want to change to hosted.

I recently updated my laptop and have discovered that the new processor technology "Snapdragon" is not compatible with Reckon software. What this means is that I now have to create an individual PDF of all outgoing invoices and outgoing payslips because Reckon is unable to send them because of "Snapdragon". This is extremely time consuming when you have several employees to pay.

I'm told that "Snapdragon" is the way of the future for computers and I am wondering if Reckon intends to rectify this technology conflict/incompatibility?

ron5

About those considerable fees, any chance of keeping price rises to below inflation, given that they've been way above inflation for so many years?

Regarding Snapdragon (ARM) computers, non-ARM based Windows programs are supposed to run in ARM versions of Windows using emulation. Will Reckon release its programs for ARM versions of Windows, and if not, will they ensure that their programs run on ARM versions of Windows under emulation?

DebW

I need to add one more thing. On seeing all the responses come through over the past couple of days, there is another issue that needs addressing: Reckon has around 4 or 5 different packages. Reckon Desktop, Reckon Hosted, Reckon One, Reckon Personal and some others in this thread that I have never heard of. Yet, the support for them is all lumped into one.

Finding instructions on how to do something often brings up instructions how to do it in another of the Reckon apps that you do not use and nothing for the one you do. I signed up to a webinar held by Reckon on a topic. I use Reckon One and the webinar was conducted in Reckon Hosted, which bore no resemblence to the interface I use, and was of little use. Windows 11 and Mac do the same things, but you don't sign up to a Windows webinar to learn how to use Mac.

If Reckon is to continue to locate all its support and instructional materials for all its software packages from a single hub, then some rationalisation is sorely needed to take stocktake of what is there and what is not for each one, to add the missing pieces and and to give its customers a simple way to segregate search results so that they call up results for the package they use only. There are tags in Community for this at present, but a single post can be tagged to three or four different things as it may have some relevant

DebW

A follow on to my earlier comment. After seeing the responses so far on a range of different Reckon packages, recalled another issue.

The support for Reckon Desktop, Reckon Hosted, Reckon Accounts, Reckon One, Reckon Personal, Reckon Mobile App etc etc is all combined into one in Community or Reckon Customer Portal. This would be efficient and comprehensive from Reckon's point of view, but can be hard for users to work with.

They are different software packages with different interfaces so it's rarely helpful to type in some key words when looking for instructions and get answers for other packages that do not apply to the one the customer uses. They may do the same things, but you don't go to the Apple website to find out how to operate Windows 11.

When searching on key words to find instructions on the Portal or in Community posts on a topic, would be helpful if there was a means provided to limit results to the package the customer uses.

PCsforKids

Reckon One

There is no Void function for any transactions. It does seem deficient for an accounting package to not have a void function. Only options are to delete (not very audit worthy) or set to zero amount etc.

Quantities entered on items on Invoices do not get transferred to the associated receipts. This means that a receipt created directly through Receive Money retains its quantity as a ledger transaction but a receipt created from an Invoice does not. Another inconsistency within Reckon One but this one is very annoying and prevents us using Invoicing as much as expected.

jodiburley

Hi Sam

Thanks for the opportunity.

We have been using Reckon products for well over a decade and currently use Reckon Hosted.

For the past 6 years at least, we can only use the payroll module in single user mode. I have discussed this numerous times with our local Reckon consultant and they even visited out office once to film the time it takes to tab between fields while doing payroll when it's in multi user mode. The average was just over 40 seconds tabbing between fields while entering payroll and creating new employees, making any changes and running reports legitimately took several minutes between tabs and selections.

So, for the past 6 years, we have to do payroll and any employee related tasks in single user mode which obviously causes productivity issues for the rest of Reckon users.

Are there any plans to change this so payroll runs at normal speed in multi user?

Thanks

1352266

Hi Sam

I was very disappointed when Reckon changed from selling us Personal Plus, to forcing us to rent it annually. Your competitors, and the source of Personal Plus, Quicken, are doing the same thing these days but with an important difference. Their products offer something for the annual rental. Your company, on the other hand, seems to be simply profiting from a dedicated customer base, while spending nothing on maintaining the software.

This is not a good look, Sam, and would incline me not to recommend Reckon to anyone asking me if purchasing Personal Plus was a good idea. Naturally that would apply to any of your other products, as it is your company's behaviour that is in question, not the software.

So this is not a silly threat, I am just leading you down a train of consequences that arise from your actions. I have evaluated other software, but I have been using yours for years and would like to continue to do so.

Please give us something in return for our, now $220, annual payment.

Kind Regards

Geoff Fairless

Rav

Hi everyone

Great to see there's a bunch of questions for Sam already! As mentioned in the AMA info above, Sam will be online next week and will be responding to your questions so please keep sending them through 🙂

Also just a quick reminder, if you have a technical issue that you're contending with currently in your Reckon software, please visit your respective Reckon software category and create a post there so we can have a chat and assist you directly.

Thanks all!

bangalla

I am another Reckon Personal customer for over a decade, also frustrated with development and the Windows Desktop only support. If Reckon isn’t interested developing a Mac or Web based version perhaps sell the rights back to Quicken international and let them develop and Australian Quicken version for us.

Mantorok

I am a Reckon Accounts Personal Plus customer and would like to know the road map for this product. It feels like there has been no significant enhancements made to it for many years.

I believe it still uses the ancient .NET Framework. Are there plans to move it to the more modern .NET Core (such as .NET 8.0)? This would make it easier to port to other operating systems such as Mac and Linux. I primarily use a Mac and would like to see a Mac version of Personal Plus in the not too distant future.

Tilley

Hi Sam,

why haven't Reckon addressed the company file size issue with a simply archive old data like other programs have.

We have been with Reckon since 2006 and our company file is huge.

There are clean ups etc but non of these really make the company file significantly smaller?

Reckon's solution start a new file and export etc old data as just start up figures.

I'm sorry isn't a solution and is time consumable means running 2 sets of books at the same time while you set up the so called new company? But this involves paying for a 2nd licence!

Thanks

Kris_Williams

You don’t need a second licence, you can have 2 company files

Tilley

Hi Kris,

thanks fo the input.

yes you can have 2 accounts but you can run them at the same time? Reckon say no

Kris_Williams

That’s right you can’t run them at the same time

amable1

Hello Sam et al,

As an accredited partner for more years than I care to remember, I would like to ask two questions: the first being will there be any more accredited partner conferences as has happened in past years? They were a great source of being up to date with everything "Reckon", knowing what was planned for the future and most important for networking.

Secondly, being an avid user of "Hosted" and I admit, I still don't know much about Reckon One, it is disappointing to note the number of clients being lost to, and already lost to Xero. Notwithstanding the fact the superior benefits of Hosted over Xero are acknowledged by the clients, they still make the change although in some cases, this is forced on them as they receive NSW government funding, and the government has mandated they must use Xero.

Whereas is years gone by, I regularly soft Reckon products, no opportunity to do so has arisen since Covid caused the pandemic close down, and Elite sold off to Access.

Anyway, you thoughts and comments on the above will be greatly appreciated.

Catherine Sinnott

Hi Sam, thank you for the opportunity!

Being a user of Myob and Xero for other organisations, and also using Reckon One for 4 Books, I am wary of asking for improvements as I know the price differences with the different packages (although Reckon One and Xero are now somewhat comparable price-wise).

Having said that a couple of things would make Reckon One functionally comparable to Xero and Myob:

having a search function, so that you can search by customer/supplier/employee etc (per DebW's comment above); and
being able to customise and save report formats

In my opinion these 2 things are major deficiencies with Reckon One. I know that these things have both been asked for as "ideas", but they have not yet been actioned.

I'd also like to give a huge shout-out to @Rav for his fast and knowledgeable responses when issues arise, he is a major asset to Reckon and his super-fast help and support, as well as his encouragement to create "ideas" for things that are not yet available, make a hugely positive point of difference between the support provided by Reckon One vs the support provided by Myob & Xero.

I am looking forward to reading your responses to all of these fantastic questions, what an opportunity this is! (I can't see Myob or Xero EVER being brave enough to do this!!).

Cheers Cath

Sam Allert

Hi everyone!

Thank you to all of you who have posted your questions in the AMA so far. I really appreciate the time and thought you’ve put into them. I’m going to start working through these now and will be sharing my responses shortly.

For some of the questions, I’ll be speaking with our specialist teams to make sure I provide you with the most accurate and helpful information. That might mean a little extra time on a few, but rest assured every question will be responded to.

Thanks again for your participation — I’m looking forward to the conversations ahead 🙂

Sam Allert

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/comment/20658307#Comment_20658307

Great question Eric!

Reckon Accounts Hosted has been running on Amazon Web Services infrastructure for the last 10 years.

It is made up of 4 major components: Identity and Access control, Session Hosting, File Servers and API. This year we moved the session hosting componentry to an AWS managed service (instead of a Reckon managed service hosted on AWS). The decision to move to this managed service was made because a third party licensing change would have prevented us from running the previous componentry later in the year.

The new platform allows us to deliver better performance, reliability, and scalability for our customers. AWS provides world-class infrastructure with multiple layers of redundancy, security, and compliance, which means your data and access to the service are more robust than ever.

It also gives us the flexibility to adapt and grow with customer needs. For example, during peak times, the platform can scale up seamlessly so performance remains consistent. In short, the change made was about making sure we're set up to continue to provide the best possible experience both now and into the future.

Sam Allert

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/comment/20658313#Comment_20658313

Thanks for sharing this, and in particular providing your context. I can certainly understand having your layout preferences saved would definitely make things smoother.

I see you’ve already created a feature request for this (thank you for doing that), and I'd really encourage other Community members who feel the same way to vote on it as well. We actively review the ideas and feedback that get strong support from our users when prioritising future updates.

Your input helps us shape where we focus improvements, so please keep the feature requests coming.

On the Lists and Employee Centre menus in particular, column resizing is remembered when that specific sub-window is not maximised. A helpful workaround is to resize the window itself to the largest size you need, then adjust your columns. Once you’ve done that, Hosted will remember your preferences the next time you open it.

I know it’s not immediately obvious, so thank you for calling it out.

Sam Allert

https://community.reckon.com/discussion/comment/20658315#Comment_20658315

Thank you for sharing such a thoughtful and detailed post — I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to outline both what you like about Reckon One and the areas you’re looking for a little more value from. Feedback like this is incredibly valuable because it highlights real-world use cases that guide where we focus our efforts.

On a couple of the points you’ve raised, such as reporting improvements and classifications, we know there’s been long-standing demand from customers and I’ll be candid in saying that progress in these areas has been slower than we would have liked. We are currently reviewing enhancements to reporting, and we’ve made some shifts on this recently with the introduction of new reports such as the Leave Taken Report, Employee Earnings Summary Report along with enhancements to other existing reports. We’ve also extended classifications into payroll recently as well and we’re certainly looking to ensure classifications are both flexible and meaningful for your business.

Great feedback in regard to descriptions in reporting, that’s certainly something our Research & Design and product teams can consider and I’d love if you could add a feature request for this in our Reckon One Ideas space.

I also hear your point on documentation and support — we need to ensure our resources are current, complete, and easy to follow. That’s an area we’ve already identified to place more emphasis on and the good news is, we’re already making improvements here. We’ve now made the Reckon Community the home for our Reckon One help videos! We've got a range of brand new videos which you’ll find right here with more to come, and our knowledgebase articles are under review as well.