The whole point of AccountancyManager is to take as much off your plate as possible, help you organise your practice and free up hours of time.

“The time saved with automatic chasing means that we have more time available for our clients.” 

Sharon, review on Capterra 

One of the main ways our users save considerable time is with automated record requests and reminders. First, AccountancyManager automates the process of gathering everything you need to complete your clients’ compliance jobs throughout the year. Then, if your clients don’t respond, AM will do all your chasing for you. Finally, once you’ve submitted the tax return, AccountancyManager will send reminders for your clients to pay their tax liability. 

All without you lifting a finger.

New feature – remind clients to pay their VAT

As well as reminding your clients to pay their Self Assessment and Corporation Tax, AccountancyManager can now remind your clients to pay their VAT too. (Just one of 8 new features released over the last two months.)

1. Automated record requests

When you onboard a new client – or bring your clients over to AccountancyManager – our integration with Companies House populates your client’s details, accounting deadlines and period end dates in their client file. These dates control when your client is contacted for their records. So there’s no need to set dates manually. Continue reading...

Although it doesn’t seem like it at a glance (due to the uncluttered interface) there’s a lot going on in AccountancyManager. Automated emails and texts to your clients, tasks being completed by different people and information and documents flowing in and out of your practice daily.

“The amount of client information that you can enter – including details of any communication that has occured – is extremely useful.” 

– Jennifer W, AccountancyManager review on Capterra

The overview pages for clients, tasks, time tracking and profitability give you high-level oversight, but what about tracking and recording your interactions with specific clients over time? That’s where the Client Timeline comes in. A much-appreciated feature as far as our existing users are concerned.

Record every interaction, change, document shared – and time spent

Client emails, texts and calls

The Client Timeline keeps a time-stamped record of every email and text your practice sends to your clients – and any reply emails and texts. Crucially, AccountancyManager will also record whether your client has opened your email. 

Whenever you have a meeting or impromptu call, you can also capture a summary of items covered by entering it into your client’s timeline. This keeps everyone in your practice on the same page. 

Changes to client details

All updates to the client’s details – whether made by a member of your team, your client or an integration – are tracked on the timeline. The entry will detail who made the change and whether the change was made by an integration like Companies House, Xero or FreeAgent. Your client can also change their details in their portal. Continue reading...

We’re often asked ‘is AccountancyManager customisable?’ Think of AccountancyManager like play-doh. It may start off looking the same for everyone, but check back once they’ve added some personalisation and creative flair… Each system will be unique to each practice – and better than how it began.

“We’re often surprised by what our users create by using AM in their own way.”

       –  Rachel, Support Lead at AccountancyManager

When we say ‘it works out of the box’, that’s because AccountancyManager will work straight away. But when you tweak the system to suit your practice and processes, AM becomes all the more powerful. 

“When you buy something ‘off the shelf’ it might work straight away, but you have to change your processes around it. The key is to customise your software around your existing workflows.”

       –  Matthew McConnell, Certax – Durham

Mould AccountancyManager to your practice

Once you’ve uploaded all your clients onto the system, the fun begins. 

With every tweak you make, AccountancyManager transforms into your very own automation machine and X-ray goggles in one: automating your existing processes and opening up invaluable sight-lines across your practice.

“We only discovered AccountancyManager a week ago and already it has become the most fundamental part of our business. Internally we refer to it as the “Control Centre” of our operations.” Continue reading...

The kicker about time, is that it takes time to manage it. You write endless to-do lists, only to reshuffle them when things inevitably change or clients get back to you. 

With everyone planning their time separately and following different processes, it’s impossible to keep track of job progress or guarantee that the correct procedures are being followed.

For practices using AccountancyManager (AM), the whole team’s time is managed for them. Using a combination of your clients’ accounting dates and deadlines you set yourself, AccountancyManager builds personalised, highly detailed task lists to keep you and your clients’ accounting on track.

Now set your own target dates

We’re excited to announce a significant new feature to AccountancyManager’s task management. Now, as well as external deadlines, you can also set internal deadlines. This gives you an extra level of control over your time and allows you to customise AccountancyManager to how your practice works. 

“This will change people’s lives, I mean they may not call and tell their friends, but you know what I mean, this is big.”

– James Byrne, AccountancyManager CEO (on today’s team Zoom call)

How to use Target Dates

When you create a new Task or edit an automated Task, you set your ‘external’ Deadline and now, ‘internal’ Target Date. You can enter Target Dates manually or set them for each service based on either the period end or when you’ve updated the task to records received. Continue reading...

You probably didn’t go into accountancy to write the same client emails over and over again – or endlessly chase for responses. You might be thinking, ‘A 10-minute email? That’s no big deal.’ But let’s do a quick calculation…

Take one client. They are VAT registered, complete self assessments and pay PAYE – on top of the usual submissions and ongoing bookkeeping. Let’s put some rose-tinted glasses on and assume you never have to chase them (ha!).

You’re spending months – maybe years – just writing emails

If you have 20 clients, that’s 613 hours a year (77 8-hour days). If your practice has 300 clients you’re looking at over 9,000 hours across the firm. That’s over a year just writing emails. And remember, this doesn’t include the time spent chasing them or checking whether they’ve replied.

You might equate this to extra time for your team, or replacing the need for one whole staff member. Either way, that’s 9,000 hours which practices already automating their admin, aren’t having to spend.

Gather everything you need – without lifting a finger 

When you automate all requests for client records, signatures and payments, quite a few time-consuming jobs are taken off your plate: Keeping track of each client’s accounting dates, writing repetitive emails and chasing clients.

Hit every deadline

Your clients’ accounting dates are pulled through the Companies House integration and you can enter any others manually. When a task reaches its period end date, this will trigger the automatic request for that particular service. As well as controlling client emails, these dates manage your team’s daily task lists. Continue reading...

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...