Be honest, do you know exactly which of your clients, services and business areas generate the most profit? 

As an accountant, you know how important visibility of this data is for your clients, so we apologise in advance if this article preaches to the converted…

By using AM, you can track staff costs against client revenue. This means you can see which jobs are most, and least, profitable. Helping you make business-critical decisions around pricing and efficiency and business strategy.

Identify where your profits are coming from

Start by tracking the time your staff spend on any chargeable work. We took a closer look at time tracking last month. Simply add the fixed fee you charge for services and an actual hourly cost for each staff member. Then, at a glance, you can see:

• Total revenue
• Total value of time
• Total cost of labour
• Total hours
• Total budget profit
• Total actual profit 

You can then filter this data to see exactly how much profit specific clients and services are generating for your practice. Your overview will show your profit over the year and you can filter this by month.

Use profitability insights to plan your next move

The power of this feature lies in how you use this new data. Your accounting software already gives you visibility of your cash flow and AccountancyManager shows you what everyone is working on. Add profitability to the mix and you can pinpoint areas of improvement, uncover opportunities for new revenue streams and track the profitability of any new approaches or ventures. Continue reading...

Onboarding new clients was a significant pain point for accountant James Byrne. So much so, he designed a system to automate as much of the process as possible. The result? AccountancyManager. Constantly finding new ways to make onboarding even more efficient for accountants is still a priority for us. 

In a nutshell, AccountancyManager:

• Helps you manage the whole process with an onboarding workflow
• Automatically puts together and sends out letters of engagement, professional clearances and 64-8 agent authorisations for you
• Helps you build quick emails with pre-written messages
• Chases your client and their incumbent accountant (if applicable)
• Gives your clients one place to read, sign and store their documents
• Lets you complete anti-money-laundering ID checks 

Automate your letters of engagement

If you’re an ACCA member, sending letters of engagement to new clients is mandatory. Even if you’re not subject to this rule, setting out clear terms makes good business sense. It not only establishes a framework for the work you’ll perform and how fees will be charged, but can detail liability caps and your process for dispute resolution. 

“On accepting an appointment, the practitioner must send the client a letter of engagement… This forms the basis of a contractual relationship between the practitioner and the client.”

– ACCA 

With AccountancyManager, creating, sending and chasing letters of engagement is considerably faster than normal. Select the specific services you’re providing your client and AM will automatically compile the correct associated policies, terms and obligations and send them to your client. If your client needs to submit a self assessment tax return as well as company accounts for example, you simply turn this service on and the relevant documents will be added. Continue reading...

Remember when everyone at your practice was working from the same place? If you needed to update colleagues with new information or ask a quick question, you’d just pop over to a colleague’s desk. The absence of this option makes us realise just how important it is. 

Working alone can be lonely, but the negative effects can extend much further – impacting the performance of your team and the productivity of your practice. 

More emails? More meetings?

You might be relying on internal emails or more online meetings to combat the ‘proximity problem’, but there are a few good reasons why you don’t normally do this at your office:

• Efficiency: It’s quicker to simply turn around or get up, than to open your emails and write the obligatory pleasantries or set up a meeting. There’s also the risk of getting sidetracked by your own inbox.
• Immediacy: You get your answer straight away – instead of having to wait for your colleague to check their emails and read and respond to their other emails first.
• Human contact: It’s a great excuse to have casual conversations. Which, by their very nature, can end up solving more problems than a lengthy email chain or an official ‘meeting’.

So, do we need to wait until we’re all back in the office to enjoy efficient, immediate communication with the ‘human’ element? Thankfully not.

Send notifications through AccountancyManager 

If you hit any roadblocks, you just fire a question over to a colleague, keeping efficiency and productivity high. Team meetings are also kept short as some issues are solved with quick exchanges as you work.

Customise your messages 

Of course, you can write whatever you like in your message. The customisations are around how and when your messages appear to the recipient.

• Mark messages as urgent
  When you create your message, you can set it as urgent. Not only will your colleague’s ‘notification bell’ flash, they’ll get a red bar across the top of their AccountancyManager screen that won’t disappear until they’ve read and actioned your message. 
  
  You can also set a message to become urgent after a certain number of days.
• Highlight client-related notes
  If your message is about a particular client, you can send notifications to other staff members and make them client related. When you click this option you’ll get a drop-down list of all your practice’s clients (which also makes them appear on the client timeline).
  
• Set a time for your messages to send 
  Delaying your messages is useful if, for example, you’re going on holiday and need someone else to contact a client for you. Simply set this notification up before you go.
  
• Choose when you’ll get a notification
  Do you want to be notified when the recipient reads your message, when they archive it or not at all? The choice is yours.

Update progress of a task and send as a notification 

If your message relates to a task, you can add a Progress Note directly to a task. There’s an option to automatically send this as a notification to another staff user.  Continue reading...

We recently reported on how AccountancyManager customers have been responding to the lockdown. As we expected there was a direct correlation between the challenges they’re facing, the features of AM that are helping and the spikes we’d spotted in AccountancyManager usage. 

One challenge was not being able to meet clients in person or get documentation and signatures from them. We saw a 20% increase in portal sign-ups over March and April and it was rated third ‘most useful AM feature’ (after bulk emails and tasks).

“Had an interesting chat with one of our customers this morning, they are using their time to get all of their clients portal registered seeing as they won’t be seeing them face to face for a while.”

– Rachel Blacklock, AM Support  

Share docs, get signatures and give your clients more control

Getting your clients portal registered is simple, and you can invite multiple clients at once. Once they’re in, your clients can access any documents you share with them, add their e-signature and directly fill in any online forms (created by you). They can update their details in AccountancyManager directly, removing the middle-person (you). No more printed checklists, temperamental Word docs or time spent deciphering dodgy handwriting. 

“We’re getting more clients signed up to the portal so they can upload documents and we can still do their accounts/tax returns without too much disruption.” Continue reading...