We're celebrating our Living Wage anniversary at Start Software

We are celebrating the anniversary of committing to being a Living Wage employer.  We're proud of it.

Want to find out more?  Click https://www.livingwage.org.uk/, read about the benefits for your employees and your business, and join!

Elaine is at the NORAC AGM - it's been a really good day, already!

Director Elaine is at the National Organisation of Asbestos Consultants' AGM today.

It's been a really useful day for Elaine already, meeting lots of Alpha Tracker asbestos consultancies, old friends and new!

National Cyber Awards finalists! Want to work at Start Software here on the University of Wolverhampton's Telford campus?

Our Telford office is situated on the University of Wolverhampton's Telford campus. 

Start Software's Telford development office

The University of Wolverhampton has been shortlisted as a finalist for the National Cyber Awards 2022 in the “Cyber University of the Year” category.  This is great news for us at Start Software, as we specialise in the development of secure web systems including Alpha Tracker and Alpha Legal.

We're looking for new developers to join our team.  Interested?  Get in touch!

Another Alpha Tracker order! A leading New South Wales asbestos consultancy is joining the Alpha Tracker family

We're delighted to be welcoming another Australian asbestos consultancy into the Alpha Tracker family.

Another New South Wales asbestos consultancy is switching to Alpha Tracker

Watch this space for more information... we'll post again once they are fully live!

Google has approved and verified our latest Calendar Sync app

Google approved our latest Alpha Tracker Calendar Sync app over the weekend. 

The notification from Google completes the actions we had following their change of policy which had caused some of our Alpha Tracker asbestos consultancy clients an issue (see https://blog.start-software.com/2022/07/important-google-calendar-sync-alert.html).

Our support team are contacting all affected clients and updating their systems but do give us a call (UK or Aus/NZ) if you want to discuss this issue or have any further questions.

Welcome Dhiana! We are growing our Telford office team again

Our Telford office is expanding again - welcome Dhiana Allen-Bailey!

New Customer Service Assistant Dhiana ("Dhi") 

Dhiana has joined us to help our clients with queries, problems and system changes, working closely with Zac, James and Elaine.

Do say hello when you next call in and make her very welcome!

The Daily Mail has exposed the "Shameful failure to tackle toxic legacy of asbestos"

Congratulations to the Daily Mail for publishing this powerful piece about the shameful failure to tackle the asbestos problem here in the UK: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-11182621/Shameful-failure-tackle-toxic-legacy-asbestos.html?ns_mchannel=rss&ito=1490&ns_campaign=1490

The Daily Mail has exposed the failure to tackle asbestos

Liz Darlison, CEO of Mesothelioma UK, and her team worked hard to get this story into the press.  

You can read more about Mesothelioma UK and the amazing work they do here: https://www.mesothelioma.uk.com/

Robin is presenting at the Contamination Expo at the NEC today. Drop in to find out what OpenAsbestos is all about

If you're heading to the NEC for the Contamination Expo, head to the Keynote Theatre at 13:45 today!

Robin is presenting at the Keynote Theatre

Director  Robin is talking about the OpenAsbestos initiative and how it supports UKNAR in its mission to make asbestos information available to all that need it.

Joining Robin on the platform are legendary asbestos campaigner Dr Yvonne Waterman, and the co-founders of UKNAR, Andrew Paten and Andy Brown.

Exciting news! Alpha Legal has been short-listed for the Today's Wills & Probate Awards 2022

Stop press! Alpha Legal has been shortlisted for the Today's Wills & Probate Awards 2022.

Wish us luck!

We are one of three firms short-listed for the Legal Supplier of the Year award.

Alpha Legal has been shortlisted for Legal Supplier of the Year

Our covering statement reads as follows:

"Start Software has demonstrated its commitment to providing exceptional service to its clients by investing thousands of hours in the development of Alpha Legal - the most secure and easiest to use client portal for the legal industry.

Tackling the inherent insecurities of email head-on, the cyber-security experts at Start Software have built the Alpha Legal portal to help will writers communicate securely with their clients, protecting their businesses, their clients and their reputations.   

In the short time that Alpha Legal has been available, the portal has processed nearly 100,000 ID documents and has helped 10,000+ clients to read and approve draft wills and other vital documents.

Start Software’s ISO9001-certified 24x7 support service means that will writers and clients can call at any time of the night and always speak to a human being.  This personal contact coupled with our cyber-security expertise makes us unique as a legal supplier." 

Wish us luck - we have everything crossed!!!

We're talking OpenAsbestos at the Contamination Expo on Wednesday 14 September - come and find out all about it!

Are you heading to the Contamination Expo at the NEC, Birmingham, next week?  You can grab your free tickets here if you don't already have some.

Find out about OpenAsbestos at the NEC next week

We are available to talk about OpenAsbestos on the UKNAR stand with Andrew Paten and colleagues at CT F10 (near the visitor entrance & the UK Asbestos Training Association - UKATA).

Also - at 13:45 on Wednesday, we are presenting with Andrew in a panel session hosted by legendary asbestos campaigner, Dr Yvonne Waterman.  We will explain how the OpenAsbestos initiative can support the UKNAR vision of making live asbestos registers available to all who need to see them.

OpenAsbestos is an industry-wide initiative aimed at making asbestos data available no matter where that data is currently stored.  For example, our Alpha Tracker asbestos software hosts asbestos register for 6 million buildings.  Imagine if all of that asbestos information was available (with the duty holder's permission, of course) to all contractors needing to work safely at a site?  That would be a real game-changer in the industry helping to make all buildings asbestos-safe.

Xero authentication change - take note if you use the Alpha Tracker -> Xero automatic connection

Do you use Alpha Tracker's automatic link with the awesome Xero accounts software?

If so, when you have upgraded to Alpha Tracker Release 38 you'll need to be aware of a change in the Xero authentication process.

From Release 38 onwards, you only need to sign into Xero once - on the Setup|General|Linked Accounts screen:

Ask your Superuser to link Xero to Alpha Tracker

For more information, check Kim's detailed Release Notes or get in touch with Support (UK or Aus/NZ).

How quickly do we answer your technical support queries? Take a look at our August 2022 performance stats

Our support desk answered 458 calls in August 2022, about average for this time of year.

Nearly 92% of high-priority queries were resolved within 2 hours (many much faster than that, of course).  8 of 10 problems (including low and medium priority) were solved within the timescales set by our users.

Support Desk - August 2022

This isn't bad at all, but this performance shows a dip compared to the highs in April, May and June so we'll take a look at how we can improve again.