Wright Vigar

Wright Vigar is an independent firm of chartered accountants based in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire and London in the U.K. The firm employs close to 200 professionals who work closely with business owners to help them achieve their goals. Wright Vigar offers many traditional accounting and advisory services, including audit, tax, banking and finance, estate planning, business advisory and more.

Challenge

According to Josh Bowden, Associate Director at Wright Vigar, the firm had employed a paper-heavy process for client audits. In 2022, he embarked on a project to make the firm paperless. “We’ve committed to being more environmentally conscious,” he said. “Using less paper is part of that effort.”

Wright Vigar found that conducting audits with a paper-based approach was inefficient. The firm had to set aside office space to store its binders of documents, and the data in the papers couldn’t be easily searched, referenced or analysed. The manual process of rolling forward paper-based audits also used up valuable time.

Solution

Wright Vigar considered multiple cloud-based audit engagement solutions before selecting Caseware Cloud Audit. Several factors influenced the firm’s decision. Caseware’s offering had an intuitive interface and a workflow incorporating the Mercia audit methodology, including specialist audit templates for academies, charities, pensions and LLPs. It also allowed audit team members to easily collaborate on engagements from any location and roll forward files from one year to the next.

Moving to the cloud made the most sense for Wright Vigar because it’s a flexible platform and easier to implement than an on-premises solution. It would allow the firm to reduce the time spent conducting audits and increase audit quality.

Caseware Cloud Audit provides Wright Vigar’s team with smooth, simple-to-use risk management and visualisation tools and intelligent content tailored for each engagement. By presenting only relevant information, Caseware Cloud Audit improves efficiency. It also means teams don’t need to worry about losing or misplacing papers, or searching through binders for the information they need.

Results

Wright Vigar’s adoption of Caseware Cloud Audit went smoothly. When the firm began transitioning to the cloud, it offered employees multiple training sessions to prepare them for the new workflow.

“The training gave all our staff time to pick up Cloud Audit over several weeks,” Josh said. “A few of us had been trained earlier so we could act as champions. We didn’t encounter any major issues. It’s relatively straightforward and people could pick it up quickly.”

Migrating the firm’s data to the cloud was simple. “Caseware gave us very clear instructions,” Josh explained. “We populated the documents we were given with our data and it was imported into the cloud from our database. Because we were previously paper-based, the Caseware engagement files were brand new and gave us the opportunity to overhaul our approach and enhance the audit quality of our files.”

Since Wright Vigar’s move to the cloud, Josh and his team have met with Caseware every quarter. “The support has been excellent,” he said. “I’ll give the development team suggestions, and I think most of them have made it onto the list of changes, which is great. Caseware is very flexible in listening to people’s wants and improving the product.” 

Some of the benefits Wright Vigar has received from Caseware Cloud Audit include:

Better collaboration – Wright Vigar has multiple U.K. offices and sometimes team members from different locations work together. “Now that we’re cloud-based, it doesn’t matter where we are,” Josh said. “People can jump on the file from anywhere. It offers us more flexibility.”

More efficient client site experience – Before moving to Cloud Audit, Wright Vigar’s audit teams would take paper binders and portable printers to client sites to perform their work. “It was a nightmare,” Josh said. “Now we can just take our laptops, and as long as we’ve got a Wi-Fi connection, we’re good to go.”

More timely reviews of audit engagements – Wright Vigar’s reviewers can log into Cloud Audit to see how audit engagements are progressing. “It’s convenient because the reviewers can be in the office reviewing the work as our team is out at the client site,” said Josh. “If there are any review points, we can clear those up before the team comes back, as opposed to the team coming back, handing in a paper file for review and then having to go back to the client site later.”

Better information management – Finding information in Caseware Cloud Audit is much simpler. “No one likes sifting through binders of papers,” Josh said. “When you’ve got everything in the cloud, you can just use the search function to find what you need.”

Roll forward – Wright Vigar can roll forward client engagement files and all their associated data, meaning staff don’t have to waste time re-entering data.

The future

Wright Vigar believes the cloud will play an essential role in the firm’s future, particularly when attracting new talent. “When we’d try to recruit new staff, we’d always get comments about how much paper was lying around the office,” Josh said. “So I think with people coming out of school and University, technology and software are expected.”

Many clients are also now paperless thanks to the cloud. “The cloud is important for us going forward. If you don’t have access to cloud technology, people aren’t going to want to work with you.”

Get in touch to learn how Caseware can help your organisation realise the benefits of modern technology, both today and in the future.