Going digital with the onboarding process simplifies the process and makes it straightforward for your potential clients. You don’t want to miss your clients’ tax and financial reporting deadlines because you can’t reach someone. That’s why it is critical to have a contact person whom you can call, text, or email whenever you have a question regarding the client’s bookkeeping.
Would you like a step-by-step guide to onboarding your clients?
In this guide, we’ll walk you through the process of client onboarding. We’ll share actionable tips you can use to ensure that every new client feels valued, understood, and excited about the journey ahead with your firm. Unlike bookkeepers, whose roles are more administrative and transactional, accountants provide more insights into the business’s finances. Therefore, it is best to allow the customer to explain what challenges they are facing. This way, you can gauge whether their needs are also on the accounting side of things and whether you can help. These could range from tax filing and planning to reviewing financial reports, auditing, and business advisory.
Key elements of a Bookkeeping Onboarding Checklist
- Respect your client’s preference for communication frequency and channels.
- This client onboarding template checklist will help to ensure that every step of your client onboarding is covered consistently and efficiently.
- Some companies use different software to manage and send invoices that might or might not be integrated with their bookkeeping software.
- This ensures that all necessary steps are covered without overwhelming the client with irrelevant details.
Is it data entry, billing customers, recording payments, reconciliations, or payroll management? Keep in mind that while a client might be looking for bookkeeping services, they may also need other accounting services. One way to stand out from other accounting firms and CPAs providing bookkeeping services is to leverage technology to create a “tech-enabled” approach.
Educate Your Clients
The goal here is to make your client feel at home in their workspace and provide them with a tailored experience that meets their specific needs. By personalizing their workspace, you impress your clients and boost the likelihood that they want to continue doing business with you. As a result, your accounting firm might miss deadlines, which isn’t a good performance indicator. Once you have all the items on the checklist that your firm needs to begin work, schedule regular status updates. Communicate these checkpoints to the client so they know what to expect. You need to ask your client to allow you access to the firm’s inventory records.
An effective client onboarding experience will include certain key elements. Outline the Onboarding Process – Clearly describe the steps of the onboarding process. Include a timeline and what each step entails, ensuring your client knows what to expect and when to expect it. This transparency helps prevent confusion and sets a clear path forward. Take time during the onboarding to educate your clients about how your workflow software and processes top 5 reasons why not filing an income tax return is a bad idea work.
This part will depend on how you approach payments in your business and the types of services you provide. For example, some professionals like to bill upfront before the work begins (or bill a partial amount). You can choose to record training videos for navigating through the dashboard, accessing relevant features, and customizing their interface. Alternatively, provide your clients with access to QuickBooks resources to familiarise them with the platform’s features. Another way to keep a live documentation record and update your checklist is with platforms like Dropbox, which allows you to share files easily.
Answer any questions and make sure the client agrees with everything. Set the project up in your project management workflow software or any other applicable software using the information from the client questionnaire. Over 300 accounting and bookkeeping workflow templates, ready for you to download or add to your Karbon account. Again, you’ll make the most of your billing if your practice management tool can invoice and collect payments—like Karbon can.
This article offers a thorough onboarding checklist to keep you ahead of the game and get you everything you need to begin working with your client. It involves an introduction to the company’s processes, software, and clients. It also involves the collection of necessary documents and a training period. Bookkeepers should explain their billing procedures and current records.
With Copilot’s intake forms, you can create a branded florida income tax questionnaire that covers all the essential information you need from your client. The form can be customized to fit your specific services and can include various question types, such as multiple-choice, open-ended, and file uploads. And by automating your recurring billing with subscriptions, you’ll make sure you have a steady flow of money coming in for your firm.
When best way to crowdfund a nonprofit you’re ready to onboard new clients, ensuring they get a proper checklist of the documents you need from them is critical. Let’s look at how you can simplify bookkeeper onboarding with a customized checklist and free templates. If billing before performing the bookkeeping services, attach an invoice as well. On the client’s end, the onboarding process is where they discover how you will work together to achieve their goals.
