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

Hi all,  

Thank you for all of your questions regarding the roadmap and future of our Personal Range software. It’s certainly been a hot topic of this first AMA session! It’s clear, and we are well aware, this software continues to play a valuable role in helping many of you manage your personal finances and investments - and we truly appreciate your long-standing support. 

In working with @Rav (our amazing Community Manager) we have decided to try and answer the many questions on this topic once and then link back to this answer where possible. 

The Reckon Personal Range has been a trusted tool for over two decades. We have invested a great deal into the product over that time. Today, it remains feature-rich, compliant, and stable. However, it is built on legacy technology and that legacy technology limits our ability to introduce new features or enhancements, and certainly limits our ability to take our Personal Range to the cloud or upgrade the user experience. Today, any change to this code base comes with risk of breaking other areas and requires a great deal of QA (quality assurance).  

As such, we consider it a mature feature-rich product, and while we'll continue to support it with updates for Windows compatibility, security, and compliance, we won't be adding new features, taking it to the cloud, or updating the user experience further.  

Looking ahead, our focus is on Reckon One - our cloud-based platform designed for the future. We are investing heavily into Reckon One and constantly adding new features and functionality. It offers a modern interface, ongoing regular updates and new features, and the flexibility of being accessible from any device, anywhere.   

While Reckon One doesn't currently support all Personal Range features (namely share downloads or investment tracking), it is a great fit for those looking for a more contemporary solution for managing personal finances.  

If you're not using the investment features in the Personal Range, Reckon One could be a great option for you! We'd love to help you explore whether it's the right fit - feel free to give our Customer Service team a call on 1300 756 663 and our friendly team will be happy to chat about it further with you.  

We know how important this software is to many of you, and we don't take this position lightly. However, we believe in being transparent about the direction we're heading so you can make informed decisions about the tools you use.

Thank you once again for the many questions around our Personal Range and for your ongoing support and loyalty.

Hi Ray,

Thanks for sharing your feedback and for being a long-term user of Reckon Personal Plus.

While BPay isn’t included by default, I believe you can add it yourself to your list of Num options. To do this, simply:

• Click into the Num field.
• Select Edit List.
• Choose New and enter BPay as the new item.

This will then appear as an available option whenever you’re recording transactions.

Appreciate you bringing this up, and I hope this helps streamline things for you.

Hi @Ann_Marie, thanks for your question.

We did look at integrating a new employee self-onboarding process into Reckon Accounts Desktop and Reckon Accounts Hosted however due to the unique legacy code that they operate on, unfortunately it just wasn’t possible.

We’ve recently introduced a brand new employee onboarding process in Reckon One through the Reckon Mate app, which makes it really easy for new employees to get setup and provide their details directly & securely.

This new process allows employees to self-onboard which not only streamlines the process but also reduces manual data entry. It also gives them access to Reckon Mate which allows them to view leave balances, access payslips and update their personal information all on their mobile. I'll link to our recent release announcement here in case you're interested in reading more about it.

If employee onboarding is an important requirement for your business, I'd encourage you to check out Reckon One, which now includes this functionality as part of its modern cloud-based platform.

Hi to you both and thanks for the feedback on this. I agree, cheques aren't as prolific as they once were.

I'm not sure how much I can add here but I know that you're able to create your own custom payment methods however unfortunately, getting them to filter through to an area such as Pay Bills is not possible at this time as its a limitation of the older codebase that Reckon Accounts currently operates on.

I can't say for certain we can make any changes in this area however I will ask that you add this to our Ideas space for Reckon Accounts here and I will ask our product team to review.

Its great to hear you’re considering a move to the cloud from your existing Reckon Accounts Desktop software.

I'll be open with you in saying moving over to Reckon Accounts Hosted is largely the same functionality since its Reckon Accounts Enterprise running in a cloud environment. Its still a feature-packed software and a powerhouse for reporting and functionality however it won’t be a huge departure in terms of what you’re familiar with.

If you’re open to exploring Reckon One, our modern cloud-based solution, there are a number of advantages that go beyond simply moving your data to the cloud. Reckon One provides bank feed functionality via Open Banking which allows you to automatically import your transactions to make your reconciliations faster and easier. We’ve just rolled out a massive upgrade to our invoice experience in Reckon One which allows you to utilise features like custom fields, additional invoice customisation options, invoicing on-the-go with our Reckon Invoices mobile app and a lot more.

On top of that, Reckon One also has access to our next-gen payroll experience which allows you to easily manage your payruns, employees and Single Touch Payroll compliance. We’ve also just added a new employee self-onboarding feature in conjunction with the Reckon Mate app for employees.

If you’d like to have a chat about whether Reckon One might be a good fit for you, I’m more than happy to organise a call with a member of our team or give our Customer Service team a call on 1300 756 663.

Thanks so much for your thoughtful feedback and kind words – I really appreciate it, and I know @Rav will too! He does an incredible job supporting the Community and it’s fantastic to see that recognised.

Your suggestions are great ones. In fact, the topic of search in Reckon One has been actively discussed by the team just this week. We previously removed the earlier version of search within Reckon One as we received feedback that it wasn’t as intuitive or as helpful as it could be, so we’re currently evaluating the best way to bring it back in a way that really adds value.

On the topic of memorised/customisable reports, I completely agree this is a much-needed feature, especially for customers who’ve moved over from Reckon Accounts Desktop or Hosted. There’s an open feature request for this (which I can see you’ve already voted on - thank you for that!). We’ll be continuing to investigate how to best incorporate this into Reckon One, and I’d strongly encourage everyone to keep voting and sharing details of their use cases in the idea post.

That input really helps our product team prioritise and design the most impactful improvements. Thanks again for sharing your perspective – it’s great to have such engaged users in our Community!

Thank you so much for your thoughtful message! Your observation about the culture here at Reckon and the support you've received from the team really mean a lot to us. It’s a huge focus of mine and our Leadership Team and a key reason I am still at Reckon after 25+ years.

I'll be sure to pass on your shoutouts to Abbey and Rajesh as well, they’re awesome members of the team and I know they’ll be thrilled to hear your feedback! Even better I'll make sure they get to spin our prize wheel at our next company team meeting, it certainly sounds like they did a great job and deserve it!

I also really appreciate you sharing your perspective as an accountant and long-time user across different products. It's fantastic to hear your encouragement to other users around the quality of support, our teams really set high standards for themselves with the support experience and I love hearing that is resonating with you.

I absolutely do take on board the limitations you’ve highlighted too - particularly around reporting, and search functions in Reckon One. We know there are improvements to be made in these areas, and hearing directly from professionals like yourself helps us prioritise and validate those changes. On a positive note I can confirm both are on our roadmap and you absolutely will see improvements in both areas in the future.

In terms of sending through the issues you’ve collated – yes, absolutely, that would be very helpful. If you'd like, you can email them through to Abbey and she'll ensure they're passed on and tracked with the right people here, including myself. That way we can make sure nothing gets lost, and we can assess and prioritise them properly.

Thanks again for your support, your patience, and for encouraging others to stick with Reckon. Feedback like yours is exactly why we're doing this AMA – so we can hear what’s working, but also where we need to do better.

Thanks for taking the time to share your thoughts, it’s clear you’ve been all been long-term users of the Personal Range which I really do appreciate.

Subscription pricing is the way almost all software providers license their software today including our competitors, as well as countless other organisations that you’ll likely use on a daily basis such as the likes of Microsoft, Google, Netflix, and many others. This approach has been phased in over many years and helps us, and all software companies, manage our own ongoing business costs and ensures we can continue providing the software and support our customers rely on.

Whilst I completely appreciate your perspectives and understand the frustration this shift may have caused over time, I need to be upfront and confirm all of our products will continue to be charged as a subscription. Annual subscriptions cover support, maintenance, compliance updates, and our own licensing costs to deliver the software to our clients.

Our costs continue to increase and we need to take that into account when reviewing our price increases. Any price changes we make are very carefully considered and again, reflect the rising costs as a business along with the costs maintaining and supporting this legacy technology. We recognise that the increases can feel significant, particularly for long-standing customers, and we want to assure you these decisions are not made lightly or with any intent of ‘taking advantage’ whatsoever.

I want to be clear that while we truly value you all as long-time Personal Range customers, you are not locked in. If you don’t feel you’re receiving $18.50 per month of value from the software, you do have the option to explore alternatives. Of course, we don’t want you to go anywhere, we love having you as customers but we do have very real and ongoing costs in delivering and supporting this product.

I also want to make it clear that your feedback is heard, and it reinforces for us how important the Personal Range continues to be for long-time users like yourselves. We will continue to maintain and support the product for many years to come, and we will also continue to invest heavily into Reckon One and hope one day soon it is a viable alternative for you to use.

Firstly, thank you for being with Reckon One for the past four years and its great to hear you’ve been happy with it!

Thank you also for sharing such a detailed list of suggestions, I really appreciate the time you’ve taken to provide this.

A number of the items you’ve mentioned such as memorised reports, improvements to bank transaction allocation through fast coding are actively being designed and worked on by our team right now as part of ongoing improvements and feedback like yours helps us prioritise where we focus, so it’s great to see this level of detail.

I’ll loop this in with our R&D and product teams for their consideration but I’ll also ask @Rav to ensure we have feature requests created in our Reckon One Ideas space on the Community for some of your suggestions if there isn’t already an existing one (ensure you add your vote if there is!). I’d like to ensure they are captured and gain visibility so that we can track them to ensure we’re delivering value in the areas you need.