Last updated on November 11th, 2019 at 03:23 pm

I was talking to a friend who is a local accountant recently that was thinking about using online messaging for his clients and wondered how secure it would be (after the introduction of GDPR earlier this year brought to his attention that he is responsible for making sure that all data is secure).

As I had a bit of quiet time I told him that I would do some digging for him to see what was available so asked him exactly what it was that he was hoping to do with this messaging.  It quickly became apparent that he was not just looking for a way to send and receive messages but was hoping to use it for exchanging documents such as tax returns, accounts and all the other bits and pieces that accountants get and send when working with clients.

This immediately meant that I could discount the idea of a Skype type of system or even Facebook messaging – don’t laugh but that was one that he thought might be a possibility!

A bit of investigation lead me to a product called accSEND which is a tool that is designed specifically for accountants here in the UK and even allows something called digital signatures to be added to documents if needs be with all the messages being encrypted.  One of the benefits of this tool is that it’s been created by a firm that concentrates on providing websites and digital solutions for firms of accountants (with over 1,300 clients I gather) so they understand all the various needs from the “industry”.

At the time of writing the product is only available to their existing clients but I understand that they are planning on rolling it out to the general accountancy profession in the near future.

Needless to say, my friend is looking into this in more detail, and is even considering “jumping the gun” by getting a new website from the firm as he tells me that his existing site is a little dated so needs to be “refreshed”, something that I’d tend to agree with having looked at his site.