IRIS strengthens focus on quality product delivery whilst expanding team to meet demands of increased legislative change.

IRIS Accountancy Practice Solutions today announced that in the course of the past 12 months it has doubled the size of its development organisation, strengthening its focus on product quality, whilst significantly expanding resources to meet the demands of increasing legislative change.

In line with a group wide initiative to invest £20m in R&D during 2009, IRIS Accountancy Practice Solutions has now brought together its engineering teams from IRIS, PTP and Drummohr and has concurrently delivered new releases of all 3 product lines for the new tax year.

“Version 9.3 and the associated PTP and Drummohr releases together, were our biggest release ever,” said Phil Dawes, recently hired, Group Director of Engineering. “We have radically increased the size of our business analyst, engineering and QA teams, to ensure that v10, which comes out in October, incrementally includes a further 300% increase in development effort.”

“The last 3 years have seen unprecedented levels of legislative and fiscal change; this is only set to increase in the years ahead. Through this investment IRIS will ensure that it is well placed to keep its customers compliant and well ahead of the competition. Changes to legislation mean that the upcoming October release will include a redevelopment of the entire core of our Company Secretarial module, to support the Companies Act 2006. Furthermore HMRC and Companies House mandation requires all CT-Comp and accounts filings to use iXBRL by April 2011, both are significant and complex undertakings.”

Phill Robinson, Managing Director of IRIS Accountancy Practice Solutions commented “IRIS has been a leading supplier to the accountancy market for 30 years and is now by far the largest third party provider of Internet filing returns to the HMRC. We take our commitment to each of our 14,000 practice customers in this sector very seriously. By doubling the size of our development organisation and working closely with HMRC, we will ensure that at a time of unprecedented legislative change, every one of our customers remains compliant. Whilst doing that we maintain a passionate focus on continuing to improve the quality of each release.” He added “At a time of economic uncertainty, and particular turmoil in the software industry, IRIS customers can be confident in their choice of supplier and its ability to continue to deliver world-class products to market.”