Support Policy

This document details our support services, contact information, and best practices for contacting support to ensure quick response and issue resolution.

Support Channels

Support is available by telephone on the number provided to you by your account manager or by email to support@taxteq.co.

Support requests can be raised at any time, and the response time you can expect will depend on the level of support you have arranged with us.

Support Levels

We offer three levels of support to our users:

Evaluation support, for potential customers who are trialling our services
Standard support, for paying customers
Premium support, where we have specifically agreed to provide it.

	Evaluation Support	Standard Support	Premium Support
Service Upgrades	Yes	Yes	Yes
Support Hours	Mon-Fri 9am-5pm GMT	Mon-Fri 8am-8pm GMT	24/7 x 365
Support Channels	Phone & Email	Phone & Email	Phone & Email
2nd line support available to IT and support personnel within customer organisation	Yes	Yes	Yes
1st line support available to all users within customer organisation	No	Yes	Yes
1st line support available to invited 3rd parties	No	No	Yes
Response time SLA	Not provided	Not provided	Yes

In-portal Help

Before logging a support request, please make use of our in-Portal resources help, available in the Accountants Workspace, by navigating to Documents > Support Resources folder. Please note that some help items are available only to registered users of Taxteq, and that only help items that are relevant to the user’s level of access are shown.

User & Administration Guides

User & administration are available from your assigned account manager by request.

Severity Definitions & Response Times

Severity levels provide an indication of the urgency of an issue, and help us provide a rapid and effective response. Categorising severity levels incorrectly hinders the overall case-handling process, and can adversely affect you. When you report an issue, you and the Taxteq Support Analyst should discuss and agree upon an appropriate severity level. You have the option to change the severity level of an issue as business conditions change around the impact.

For customers who have subscribed to support levels that include a response time SLA, we will provide an initial response to the issues and queries within the target timeframes stated below. We will work a Severity 1 issue around the clock (subject to your own availability, if your help is needed to diagnose, reproduce or resolve the issue), until a resolution or workaround is in place and business impact has been mitigated, or until the severity is downgraded by mutual agreement.

Severity	Description	Target response time
Severity 1	The service is inoperable or unavailable for more than a single user; the service is down; or there is an emergency condition. Requires an immediate workaround or solution.	2 hours
Severity 2	The service is available and operable, but is seriously restricted	Examples: response times or system performance are unacceptably slow, while system is available. Specific critical information is unavailable. Some features are unavailable. Some users cannot access particular parts of the service. 4 working hours (8 - 6pm Monday – Friday GMT)
Severity 3	The service Is available and operable, but some specific features, rooms, or types of information are not accessible, a limited condition that can be readily circumvented. Example: non- Production application response times or system performance are slow, system is available.	24 hours
Severity 4	Minor issue or question that does not affect the service, or a feature request.	48 hours

Severity levels are assigned by mutual agreement based on the degree of the impact with reference to the severity table above.

Raising An Issue

When raising a support request, please include any information you can, as this can have a significant impact on how fast the issue is diagnosed and resolved.

Issue description, impact on your system and business operations, issue severity, and the exact text of error messages and diagnostic details.
Steps to reproduce the problem.
Any known workarounds that you might have found yourself.
A contact telephone number.
The best way to reach you, eg. email or telephone.

We will confirm that we have received your request.

Redirection Of Issues Raised By Third Parties, Unauthorised Customer Personnel

We may redirect or refuse any support requests made by third parties (such as users external to your organisation that have been invited to use the service by yourselves) or by people within your organisation, if either:

You have asked us to, in order to ensure that all issues are raised through your own helpdesk.
The level of support to which you have subscribed does not allow for the requesting party to receive support directly.

While An Issue Is Open

While an issue is open, the support team will keep you informed of the resolution status, and will notify you when a reported issue has been resolved. If at any point during the resolution process, you become dissatisfied with the handling of your issue, simply contact your account manager and request an escalation. This allows us to understand your concerns and make adjustments in resources if necessary.

We will make three attempts, on separate business days, to contact you for updates or information on an open case. If we are unable to make contact with you, we may close the case without your consent. If the issue continues to exist, you may open a new case and reference the old one.

Issue Resolution

Resolution of an issue can include any of the following actions:

Resolution	Nature of update
A fix for the problem	Case closed
A permanent business or system workaround	Case closed
A temporary business or system workaround	Severity downgraded accordingly
An action plan for the development of a fix or workaround, with defined milestones and communication of status updates to the customer	Potential update to severity
A determination that the issue is due to customer-controlled configuration, with guidance on how this can be corrected	Case closed
A determination that the issue is a feature request, which is not covered under the support agreement. The request might be added to our development schedule though – we welcome new ideas!	Case closed
A determination that the person raising the issue is not authorised to do so, either due to the customer’s request that issues be refused or redirected, or due to the level of support that was agreed with the customer.	Case closed or case owner changed.

Feature Requests

We welcome and encourage feature requests. If you have a suggestion, please call or send us an email.

Customer Satisfaction

We periodically survey customers to obtain additional feedback on recent experiences with the service and our support team, and the survey results are reviewed by management. When a support case is closed, an e-mail may be sent to the customer contact associated with the case. The e-mail contains a link to an online survey with questions covering areas such as the handling of the support case, professionalism, knowledge of the support analyst, and overall satisfaction with the management of the case.

Quality Assurance

Our goal is to go beyond quickly solving problems, and actually preventing problems from occurring in the first place. As a result, stringent quality control procedures are built into the release cycle of the core software. New releases are run through a fully automated test suite, covering all functionality plus regression tests for past issues, and with a particular focus on the robustness of our security controls. Manual testing using the most popular browsers helps to identify any further issues, which are then added to the automated test suite. However, bugs do sometimes slip through. Where this happens, we will endeavour to roll out the required fixes either immediately, overnight, or during a maintenance window, depending on the severity of the related issues and the potential impact of the deployment.

Changes To This Policy

We may update our Support Policy from time to time. We will notify you of any changes by posting the new policy on this page.

You are advised to review this Support Policy periodically for any changes. Changes to this Support Policy are effective when they are posted on this page.

If we make any material changes to this Support Policy, we will notify you either through the email address you have provided us, or by placing a prominent notice on our website.