With over 70 staff supplying services throughout East and Central Scotland, Warners Solicitors & Estate Agents are a leading Scottish law firm, specialising in estate agency, conveyancing and private client services.
Lara Waddell, legal assistant at Warners Solicitors in Edinburgh, says:
“Estate administration can be one of the most difficult times of a client’s life, because people are grieving. Our mission is to assist and guide our clients through the executry case and ensure we support them as professionally as possible. As a result, clients have told us we ‘go the extra mile’. Our diligent approach ensures that they do not need to grasp what goes on behind the scenes because we take care of every detail as efficiently and smoothly as possible.
“We have used Exizent since 2025 to help produce estate accounts, create correspondence to institutions to make enquiries about assets, and for Inheritance Tax (IHT) 400 form completion. The Exizent platform is intuitive and brings everything together. A simple update or change needed within an IHT 400 form, for example, needs to be reflected across the entire form. Exizent swiftly automates this process, ensuring accuracy and saving hours, if not days, of repetitive, detailed administration relating to form completion, while also removing any chance of human error.
“In Scotland, estate administration should be completed within two years of death. However, one major challenge all firms working on executry cases face is that court applications can take anywhere from nine to 13 weeks to be accepted. If anything goes wrong and the court rejects the application, the process has to start again. Industry-wide, we accept that different Sheriffdoms often have distinct requirements for form submissions, but sometimes these diverge in indistinguishable ways, which only become obvious upon rejection of applications. Exizent ensures the information input into submissions is universally acceptable and adheres to all courts’ requirements.
“Since we have been using Exizent, we have been able to improve the accuracy of our court applications and have had no rejections.
“For estate accounts created in Exizent, we have found that the format is digestible for both our team and our clients. Numerous email updates to advise on share fluctuations, valuations or other asset information can feel overwhelming for our clients in an already foreign process. Being able to provide the Exizent report is so helpful; the report formats the same information in a condensed, clear and cohesive way. Our clients appreciate the simplicity of the layout, which is easy to understand. The system notices any discrepancies and ensures any changes are pulled through automatically, again saving time and ensuring accuracy.
“The correspondence feature is also helpful. Banks frequently change addresses and the system ensures we always have up-to-date addresses. We do not need to trawl through previous emails or access online portals to track down account details, as they are all pulled through and easy to incorporate into the correspondence with the appropriate financial institution. Everything is in one place and we treat Exizent like a mini case management system.
“The Exizent team are also incredibly accessible and helpful. We have used the online help button a couple of times and it is not a chatbot, but a real team member who is responsive, knowledgeable and happy to help.
“Overall, the accuracy and comprehensive nature of Exizent, backed up by direct team contact, with all information presented in a straightforward way, helps us support our clients through the executry process. Exizent ensures we get everything right first time every time, and this means we provide an even better service for our clients.”
For further information about Warners Solicitors, please see www.warnersllp.com
For further information about Exizent, please see www.exizent.com
This article was submitted by Estatsesearch as part of an advertising agreement with Today’s Wills and Probate. The views expressed in this article are those of the submitter and not those of Today’s Wills and Probate.
