CASS Partner Story – Taking headaches away from clients

Here at citrus HR, we’re proud to be able to partner with other fantastic small businesses. We find that our software can be super helpful to accountancy firms, and we’re delighted when they feel the same way.

CASS (Cloud Account Support Services) are champions of citrus HR and we’re big fans of them. They’ve got over 25 years of accounting software experience and 10 years of cloud-based knowledge; they make their clients lives easier (just like we do), and we’re thrilled that they’ve been recommending us to so many of them.

We’re speaking to Paul Barnes, Managing Director of CASS, about his business journey so far and why he’s been such a loyal partner of citrus HR.

The background

Paul said: “We’ve been trading for 4 and a half years and the company started off as just me. I left my day job and found a little niche with helping businesses set up on the cloud – people who were fed up of desktop platforms. We’d been using Xero within our business and others were charging way too much money to upgrade desktop software. So, I helped a couple of friends who were both in business, they then introduced me to an accountant that had a need to help her clients transition over. That’s what we started off doing.”

Over the last four years, CASS have transitioned into bookkeeping and payroll, as well as moving people to the cloud, and then helping them with the day-to-day management of it. This ultimately allows the accountants to give accurate tax planning advice, because the data is real time. Now, CASS has gone from just Paul, to Paul and six others.

CASS had been using a third-party HR provider but then got into the realms of managing holiday for part-time staff. As well as that, the payroll they were using just wasn’t fit for purpose. “It was becoming a nightmare to try and manage who was due what, where, when and how. So I trolled the old inter web (as you do) and citrus HR popped up, so I demoed it,” Paul added.

“I loved the software and that’s where it came from really – from using it for our own business. Then we met the Partnerships team at Xerocon, and realised that actually, it was a platform that our clients could really benefit from on their own growth journey. We now try and encourage people, that when they get to that ‘magic number 5’ employees, or have got part-time or zero hours contract staff, to have conversations with the team at citrus HR.”

The partnership

“One benefit people love with citrus HR is, if you identify something that would improve the system (and if they’re able to do it), then they will. We provide private medical, but our team have extended it to their family which means that they take money out of their salary each month. Previously I’ve had to physically go in and remember to deduct it, whereas now we can have regular deductions that just happen. That was on the back of a conversation with the citrus HR team, who got on and solved the challenge. This is another one of the reasons we like citrus HR as opposed to some of the others that are out there.”

Paul recently made the decision to upgrade from the citrus HR software package, to include HR support as well. He explained to us that some of it was cost, but it was also because he knew he was going to get an instant response from the team. “It’s having that ability to pick up the phone and say “I want to do this; how does that stack up legally from a HR perspective?”. It’s the reassurance that someone’s always at the end of the phone.”

The results

“The software is big enough (and robust enough) to handle what is required, but then citrus HR also offer that personal touch, and the relationships that you build are really important.

“For me, I would recommend for anyone to partner with citrus HR because they are brilliant what they do. They don’t pretend to be anything that that they’re not. They know what they’re good at, and that’s what they continue to do. I like the fact that we get people to talk to, we’re not just another tick in the box.

“We chose to partner with citrus HR to be able to offer our clients HR solutions as they grow. The managing the entire recruitment process from offer letter onwards, they take away the HR headaches for our clients. The team have similar values to us, with the client being front and centre. If you’re not using citrus HR with your clients yet, you need to have a conversation with them!”

If you’d like to find out more about our partnership options, you can do so here.