The Best Tip to Save Your Practice Time?

Is your inbox weighing you down? As an accountant, you don’t just clock in, you click in. Between chasing up clients for records and rushing towards compliance deadlines, one area that tends to gobble up a lot of time with very little return on investment is emails.

Every form, every deadline and every project involves some form of client communication. Whether it’s reminding clients of an upcoming payment or getting them to sign a form, it quickly builds up over time.

Why accountants should take advantage of email automation

Let’s say it takes you five minutes to write, check and send an email to a client. From our time-savings guide, this could add up to over 9 hours a year (or roughly 45 emails, depending on which services you provide to them) per client. This would include back and forth emails regarding deadline reminders, updating last-minute payroll changes, receipts for tax returns, and any issues that crop up.

If you have 100 clients, that’s 375 hours a year, or over six working weeks each year that’s getting swallowed up whole by your keyboard. And if a staff member was working these hours at a rate of £19 per hour, that’s £7,125 of money going towards email admin each year. Feeling a bit frazzled over those figures? Join the club. But the question every accountant should be asking: Is there a better way to email?

This is especially evident in the middle of tax season, when you end up waiting for hours, days, and even weeks for clients to get back to you with the records you need.

How practice management software can help

There are a variety of ways that our practice management software, BrightManager, can help solve this, including automated record chasing, email templates and canned messages.

Automated email templates

There are various types of automated emails and texts that BrightManager can send out, including:

• Record requests

• Payment reminders

• Reminders for signatures, forms, codes and essential details (UTR numbers, etc.)

• Reminders triggered by you or your clients’ latest action

Rather than manually writing out every email, we’ve gone ahead and saved over 40 different templates for you in our practice management software – invoice attachments, CS01s, VAT payment reminders, and professional clearance to name a few. These emails will populate the right information, and all you need to do is choose when you’d like them to be sent out.

What if a client sends the wrong file?

Did you receive the wrong file or were only some of the records sent? No worries, just let the system know exactly what’s missing and a follow-up email will be sent out.

Canned messages

Canned messages are paragraphs you only have to write up once, and then save them to quickly build emails and texts. This means you don’t even have to ‘copy and paste’ for every single email, it’s all in the system, ready to go. If you want to create your own canned messages, you could save time even further by using ChatGPT to write up some paragraphs in a tone of voice that best suits your firm.

What are the benefits of automated emails?

• The time you save: Mundane, repetitive tasks are completed at a lightning speed.

• Reduction in errors: Automation almost entirely cuts out the risk for human error.

• Improved client experience: Ensures clients receive updates and reminders on time, every time.

• Better job satisfaction: By automating regular communications, your team can spend time on more valuable work instead of getting swamped in admin.

“I’ve got 220 clients now and they’re all small, but the admin for all of those people and chasing them… it just really adds up to hours and hours.”
Carolyn, Monton Green Accountancy

Remember, automated communication should be a supplement, not a substitute, for your professionalism. Automation lets you streamline that excellent standard of service your clients are already used to, minus most of the admin involved.

To learn how our multi-award-winning cloud practice management software, BrightManager, can help, book a quick demo below.

This content may have been developed with the assistance of AI tools. Content is reviewed by a member of the Bright team before publication. Guidance on legislation can be obtained from your industry body.