Summary
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Senta and BrightManager (formerly known as AccountancyManager) are practice management tools serving smaller accounting, tax, and bookkeeping firms in the UK and Ireland.
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Senta and BrightManager have comparable project management, workflow, and client portal features.
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Both lack customisable reporting and analytics dashboards.
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Both are integrated with their parent company products, but are less integrated with other accounting ecosystem apps.
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For firms that need comprehensive customer support and want to experiment with AI in their practice management software, Karbon is a top alternative.
Senta and BrightManager are practice management tools serving small and medium-sized accounting, tax, and bookkeeping firms in the UK and Ireland.
At a glance, both offer essential practice management features including:
Job and workflow management
CRM
Client communication and collaboration
Document management
Email management
Time tracking
Reporting
Integrations with key partners like Companies House and Xama
If you’re new to accounting practice management software, check out the 7 best accounting practice management software in the UK guide for a round-up of the top options to consider alongside Senta and BrightManager.
But if you’re deciding between Senta and BrightManager, below is a detailed review of how they compare against each other across nine key categories. This information will help you decide which is best suited to help you run your tax, accounting, or bookkeeping practice.
It’s also worth noting that Senta is now a part of IRIS Elements after being acquired by IRIS in 2021. This guide is based on the functionality and features of Senta by IRIS, which has a different user interface compared to the original Senta.
1. Project management and workflow automation
🥇 A tie between Senta and BrightManager
🏆 Best alternative: Karbon
Senta and BrightManager both offer job and workflow management features like job and task lists, task assignments based on role or person, bulk work creation, and workflow templates.
In Senta, jobs are bulk-created when you set up your clients. As you enter client information, you also select the services they need. Jobs will then be automatically created based on existing templates. This is a convenient feature as it makes bulk work creation a relatively easy process.
Setting up client services in Senta by IRIS
That said, Senta’s job management and workflow features have drawbacks:
No ability to create subtasks, which means it’s difficult to organise complex jobs that have multiple stages
No ability to @mention colleagues or comment on a job, which creates unnecessary information silos and communication delays
Limited workflow automation—updating task statuses and reassigning work are still manual processes
BrightManager’s jobs setup and workflow configurations are similar. But it allows you to create subtasks within a workflow, which is an advantage over Senta.
Task and subtasks in BrightManager, screenshot taken from BrightManager’s product demo
Beyond that, BrightManager also has significant limitations:
No ability to collaborate with your colleagues using @mentions or comments
Limited workflow automation compared to more advanced workflow solutions
No Kanban boards, which means you can only manage tasks using a list view
If your accounting firm has distributed team members and handles larger, more complex client jobs, you might want to consider alternatives that have better project management and workflow features like Karbon.
As the #1 rated practice management software on G2 (vs. BrightManager at #12 and Senta at #14), Karbon boasts:
Here’s a closer look at Karbon’s full workflow management capabilities.
2. Team collaboration and communication
🥇 Winner: None
🏆 Best alternative: Karbon
Neither Senta or BrightManager has features built for team communication and collaboration. You can leave notes on tasks, jobs, and client records in Senta and BrightManager but that’s the extent of their collaboration functionality.
For accounting firms with distributed teams that require firm-wide visibility and collaboration, consider alternatives like Karbon, where collaboration is built into every part of the platform. You can @mention a colleague and comment on emails, tasks, jobs, and client records, and emails are fully integrated.
Triage in Karbon, showcasing internal collaboration via emails, comments and @mentions
3. Client management and invoicing
🥇 Winner: BrightManager
BrightManager and Senta both feature a comprehensive CRM for client management.
In BrightManager, you can store client information, client communication timelines, documents, custom forms, engagement letters, and invoices.
CRM in BrightManager
Senta’s CRM lets you connect to Xero to pull in client’s financial data and store critical client and client-related work information.
CRM in Senta
While both have an adequate CRM, BrightManager wins this category for its invoicing capabilities. In BrightManager’s CRM, firms can create, manage, and track invoices. They can’t do so in Senta.
For firms that wish to use their practice management platform to manage the quote-to-cash process, BrightManager is a better choice.
4. Client portal
🥇 Winner: A tie between Senta and BrightManager
When it comes to client portals, Senta and BrightManager are comparable.
Both platforms have essential client portal features that allow firms to effectively engage and collaborate with their clients like:
Client information collection: personal details, VAT details, and payroll details
Secure file storage and sharing
eSignature on documents
Custom forms like a client questionnaire for self-assessment tax
But each platform also has unique functionality that the other doesn’t offer.
In BrightManager, there’s an option to display a client’s tax liabilities. If your firm is heavily focused on tax services, this is an efficient way to keep your clients informed of their tax deadlines without needing to repeatedly remind them of their responsibilities.
Tax Liabilities view in BrightManager’s client portal
In Senta, you can exchange comments with your clients directly in the portal, which enables a more streamlined communication and collaboration experience.
Client portal in Senta
5.Reporting and analytics
🥇 Winner: BrightManager
🏆 Best alternative: Karbon
In terms of reporting and analytics, BrightManager is a step ahead of Senta.
Senta currently doesn’t offer any reporting and analytics capabilities. But BrightManager has a profitability feature that gives firms visibility and insights into key business metrics like revenue, time spent on client jobs, cost of labour, and profitability rate.
Profitability in BrightManager
Although BrightManager has more insights than Senta, its insights and analytics functionality still pale in comparison to other practice management platforms on the market.
If you are looking for a practice management system that has a customisable and in-depth practice intelligence feature today, consider Karbon as an alternative.
Karbon’s business intelligence and reporting feature—Karbon Practice Intelligence (KPI)—is an innovative data analytics tool that gives accounting firms unparalleled insights into their business performance.
Billing Work-in-Progress Dashboard in Karbon Practice Intelligence
With KPI, you not only have access to data, you can also use it to gain actionable insights to answer critical questions like:
How many days do we spend waiting on client records on average?
How many client engagements are over budget?
How much work is ready to start, in progress, in review, or completed?
The flexibility and capabilities of KPI makes it a leader in the accounting practice management space.
6. Integrations with other software
🥇 Winner: None
🏆 Best alternative: Karbon
Because Senta is now a part of IRIS and BrightManager merged with Bright, both platforms are now more connected to a larger suite with their own accounting, payroll, or bookkeeping solutions that compete with other best-of-breed software on the market.
For example, Senta used to integrate with more UK accounting software providers but since its acquisition by IRIS Elements, it only offers an integration with Xero.
Though Senta has a Xero integration and BrightManager integrates with Xero and QuickBooks, the options available are considerably less compared to platforms like Karbon where there are more native integrations, plus an open API and ecosystem for your firm to build your own best-of-breed tech stack.
7. Generative AI capabilities
🥇 Winner: None
🏆 Best alternative: Karbon
As of September 2023, neither Senta or BrightManager has announced any plans to integrate generative AI into their practice management platform.
But a few other accounting practice management platforms have already released or promised to release AI-powered features that can elevate the efficiency and productivity of accounting firms.
Karbon, for example, released GPT-powered Karbon AI that can draft and reply to emails, plus:
Summarise long email threads into succinct bullet lists (including comments)
Provide personalised updates to your clients as their job progresses
Improve your writing by helping you adjust your tone
If you’re curious about how AI can transform your firm’s workflow, it’s best to look at alternatives like Karbon.
8. Pricing
Senta: $$
BrightManager: $$
Senta’s pricing
Senta starts at £32+VAT/month, per user on a monthly subscription or £25.60+VAT/month, per user on an annual subscription.
As you add additional users, the cost per user, per month decreases incrementally. Here’s a look at Senta’s full pricing scale.
BrightManager’s pricing
BrightManager starts at £42+VAT/month, per user on a monthly subscription and £33.60+VAT/month, per user on an annual subscription. For practices that have 12 or more users, AccoutancyManager also offers enterprise pricing.
Comparable pricing for a 5-user firm (billed annually):
9. Customer support
🥇 Winner: A tie between Senta and BrightManager
🏆 Best alternative: Karbon
As a result of the acquisitions, Senta is now supported by IRIS, and BrightManager is supported through Bright.
Senta customers can access IRIS Elements’ knowledge base for support articles. But to receive one-on-one assistance for your specific issue, you have to join the IRIS Service Community and create a service request. There’s no in-app messaging available.
BrightManager customers can expect similar support options. There’s a knowledge base with product support articles on Bright’s website. And customers can call or email for one-on-one support. But they can’t contact a support specialist directly in-app.
If your firm needs high-touch customer onboarding, implementation, training, and support, consider a platform with comprehensive customer resources like Karbon.
Try Karbon for free
Now that you have had an in-depth review of Senta and BrightManager, you should have a better idea about which option best suits your practice.
If neither is exactly what you’re looking for and you’d like to check out Karbon, you can learn more or book a demo.
To see how professional services firms save an average of 16.5 hours per employee each week, you can learn about the Karbon Effect. Or you can use the Karbon ROI calculator to see what your return on investment could be.
You can also hear directly from Karbon customers about what Karbon is enabling them to do at their firm (and for their clients).
