WHAT DOES AJS OFFER ITS CLIENTS? Part 2

Amazing functionality and incredible benefits that’s what!

Amazing functionality and incredible benefits that’s what!

It was Mohammad Ali that said –

It’s not bragging if you can back it up.

And when you have something good to say about your business, backing it up is something you should do. Naturally. Otherwise, it simply amounts to popular opinion. And “boy oh boy” can we back it up! In fact, our work speaks for itself!

We believe that our service offering has revolutionised the way legal software operates. We go above and beyond, surpassing what we have all come to expect from legal software. And we say this without any bias.

We have so many features and benefits that we are unable to contain them in one article, so consider this the second in the series discussing all the features and benefits on offer by AJS. We are extremely excited to share these with you all.

Foreign Currency Accounting

Has your law firm gone international? Good for you! The world is now smaller than you think with the help of AJS.

What is the function? As the title suggests – foreign currency accounting. It’s that simple because it’s that good.

What is the benefit? If you have a foreign bank account, you can now post batches, do trust transfers and bank reconciliations in the foreign currency of your choice – or at least in the foreign currency your foreign bank account is in. The way the world now operates, that is a valuable feature indeed.

Payment requisitions and authorisations

Payment requisitions and authorisations have, historically, been a manual, tedious and sometimes troublesome undertaking. Completing forms by filling out all the information pertaining to a supplier or an account including the inclusion of batch transactions and narrations for each of them, only to have to cart the form all over the office to have it signed by those necessary authorised signatories. Only to then find out that one of the signatories is out of the office and the form cannot be finalised. Manual, manual, manual.

What is the function? By having a simplified screen, AJS has made it easy to capture a payment requisition. With our later version updates, more information has also been added around payment requisitions and payment releases such as who requested the payment, reasons for deleting the payment, and notifications when a payment has been completed or rejected – all of which can be viewed in the payment requisition history.

What is the benefit? By linking contacts with authorised banking details to your payment requisition system, you simply need to enter the account number, payment reference and the amount – as few as three fields. And that’s it. The info is displayed as you need it. There is no need to validate banking information as the form is loaded with all banking details already captured and included (from the linked contact information).

Pertinent supporting documents related to the account or invoice can also be easily attached (uploaded or linked from documents already attached to an account, so there is no need for duplication of uploads), making the viewing of the requisition and understanding why it needs to be paid, simple to understand and easy to action. The generation of the requisition document will be done in a matter of a few simple steps. Even for the busiest of authorisers. With AJS’s Authorisation feature, you will no longer need to run around trying to find a signatory. What’s more there will be no confusion as to who may or may not authorise a payment.

Simply put – you save an incredible amount of time.

KYC Provider Integration

The Know Your Customer (KYC) is an umbrella term used for identity verification of potential customers before entering into any business relationship with them. It forms part of FICA Compliance.

The KYC process involves obtaining copies of ID card verification, face verification, document verification such as utility bills as proof of address, and biometric verification.

KYC compliance helps businesses prevent penalties, fight fraud, and mitigate financial crimes (money laundering, terrorist financing) (ShuftiPro).

What is the function? AJS offers system integration with DocFox and Lexis Nexis KYC providers

What is the benefit? A completely simplified KYC process. Automatically update the AJS account’s status with the provider’s status and view a full change log.

Auto Bank Feeds

What is the function? With AJS’s auto bank feeds you can easily locate a specific transaction without having to struggle through massive amounts of red tape and months of transactions.

What is the benefit? You can log on to your online banking platform through the AJS system (of course with strict security controls in place) without having to leave the AJS system to log on to your online banking platform. Going through the whole tiresome process of inserting all your details, passwords, credentials, and authorisations only to sift through hundreds of transactions to find one particular transaction. You can connect to your banking system via the AJS system to download your bank statement (i.e. by simply clicking a button) or you can schedule the statement to download during the early hours of the morning and arrive at your desk, coffee in hand, to find out exactly what the monetary situation of the practice is – it will be there just sitting and waiting for you.

You will also get a little notification and/or email that the statement has been downloaded and is ready to view. This notification will appear on your home screen and resembles a “WhatsApp” message icon – i.e. “1 new message”. That way you never miss a thing! Best of all, the statement will be ready to view as an attachment – no need to log into any other system, just our AJS system. Once the statement has been downloaded, AJS will match any transactions based on time, date, and narration and highlight them for you. Saving you the time you would normally have spent searching for a specific payment (which could easily take hours and hours). What’s more, you also have the option to tick those transactions in bulk or individually – making reconciling a breeze.

Potential matches can be rejected and ticked off at a later stage. The spreadsheet of downloaded statement transactions can be imported in batches, so there is no manual capturing or transposing numbers because you are using the bank statement as your source data. Your bank statement total will be visible on your recon screen which can be compared to the calculated recon balance. That way you can always ensure that you are reconciling to the correct balance. Everything square and accounted for.

Workflow Queries

What is the function? Standard queries to view matters due and overdue have been added to the workspace lists.

What is the benefit? You can now choose which of your queries should be at the top of the workspace list. A toggle button can show you worked accounts only vs all accounts in the original selection.

Making viewing what needs to be worked on and what has already been worked on as easy as 1;2;3.

AJS Notifications

What is the function? With AJS’s Notifications, you are now given the divine ability of knowing exactly when background processing is done, eliminating the need to sit glued to your screen watching and waiting for things to happen. Knowing when someone has actioned a task (even when it has been completed or rejected). Knowing exactly when money comes into your trust account (which is handy). And knowing when you need to authorise a payment. As and when it all happens.

What is the benefit? AJS’s Notifications revolutionises how you can effortlessly stay “in the know”. Best of all, imagine you could customise these notifications for your specific practice. Or, more impressively, customise these notifications as preferences for each individual department. You will be notified when anything important happens either in your in-app indicators at the top of your screen or via email (email notifications requiring authorisations include attachments and links to authorise or reject) – which can be set up according to the preferences of each user.

Workflow Landing Page

Wouldn’t it be wonderful to view your workflow on one easy to understand landing page? We agree. Which is why….

What is the function? We have updated the workflow landing page.

What is the benefit? The landing page for your workflow process steps has some additional columns to show whether there are documents attached to the step, the association (so that the related steps can be grouped) and whether conflict checking applies. What’s more, a new business rule allows you to create a task via the process step.

Those are all pretty marvellous functions – and benefits – wouldn’t you agree?

To find out how to incorporate a new tool into your existing accounting and practice management suite, or how to get started with legal tech,  feel free to get in touch with AJS – we have the right combination of systems, resources and business partnerships to assist you with incorporating supportive legal software into your practice. Effortlessly.

AJS is always here to help you, wherever and whenever possible!

– Written by Alicia Koch on behalf of AJS