447 The #1 Tech Unlock for Accounting Firms

Gang, this is, this is a biggie and it's a blocker right now to a lot of folks trying to lean into new accounting firm tech. The issue that your accountants ignore automated emails and they won't respond to them and it maybe feels too low. Touch? I've never done this before. I've never like spammed machine generated messages at my clients before. In fact, I've heard from a number of accountants who coming out of tax season were frustrated, maybe they rolled out a new tool. But they're like my clients. They just ghosted all those emails. I didn't do anything. So we're talking about that today. I'll tell you like where my head is out on that because it's still something I would be leaning into really, really hard in my firm. I'll give you five reasons why and then I'll give you three, like really practical tips to make this as easy as possible for people to lean into. We are at where we're at today. We just got to decide what to do next. So we're going to talk about that now. Excuse yourself to the other room. The birthday party can wait. Put the noise canceling air bobs on. Let's get into. There's almost an entire category of accounting firm tech now that has been built around the almighty client email notification. Think of the number of tools that rely on sending a magic link email to a client, on reminders going out to clients where if that step doesn't work, like if the client doesn't actually use that and leverage it, then it kind of undercuts the value of the entire tool. Right? And I would say that this started with requests, which if you're an OG and you've been around the channel long by the way, hey, this is an opportunity. You've been around very long. Pop a little note down in the comments. How many years? Or if, or if it's just months, I'm not insulted. How many months you been hanging around? A really wild thing about the Internet is you post something, you post a video. Even after 400 and something episodes of a podcast, more people see it who have never seen you before than returning people like that. Isn't that wild? Especially if you've been around for a while. Like that's just how big the world is. Anyways, this whole automated email thing and sending, sending these machine generated emails to clients, it all kind of started with request tools. And this is something I super hammered on beginning maybe two years ago. The power of staging your requests for the client ahead of Time. Because building out that customer quest list, when you're in the heat of battle and you're really busy with a bunch of other things like that's just a really bad use of your time. It comes up both in tax and in the month end close. So in tax, the trap is in your busiest time of year, sending out those bespoke lists of questions to clients, the one through 10, and then they only respond to three of them. And you do the whole hokey pokey back and forth for months. The accounting, the bookkeeping side, you got the same crunch every single month. In the month end close, when everybody's trying to make a run at the bank, everyone wants their financials on the 5th of the month and it means all of your questions, they, they all go out before the 5th of the month, right? No they don't. You pick up the file, it's got to get shipped on the 12th, on the 10th, and you're like, I got like 30 questions and now I have to send it to the client a day before the financials are due. Whoops. It's all right. This is a, this is a safe space. We've all been there, okay? A lot of us, a lot of us own a townhome there. But the power of, of requests as it was then and still is now is, you know, for example, in your practice management system, if you need the client to get you this one thing every sing, then you set up a request to automatically go out on the 1st of each month. You don't have to raise a finger to ask the question. It goes out to the client and the client. Then if, if they're kind of following what you want them to do, they hop in, they give that thing to you. But then equally important is if they don't, it keeps following up with them until they do. On, you know, a notification schedule of your choosing, it doesn't have to be super frequent, super annoying, or if it's really timely, it can follow up like every single day. And that works for requesting one item or requesting 10 items. The beauty there being if they only give you some of those things back, it will follow up only for the remaining things that you need. And there's some standalone request tools that do this stuff in an open ended way really well. I think my favorite standalone request tool is still content snare. We can put a link to that down in the show notes. It's like an example of requests done really, really well. But increasingly people are using like built in requests in their practice management system. For this. They're not as shiny, like, not as well done as how standalone tools like Content Snare do it. But they're okay. They're good enough oftentimes. So whether it's an annual tax project or a monthly bookkeeping project, I can build into that requests that will go out automatically. Now, there's lots more examples of this. Like, when it comes to tax workflow tools, if you've got like all of this info gathering set to go out on, you know, February 1st or something like that, and it emails 1600 of your clients and says, here's the list of things that we need. You are very dependent upon clients actually paying attention to those emails and your initial reaction. Because, like, this will be the case for almost every firm when you first roll out something like this. If you've never instructed clients that they have to pay attention to this, they won't because of the volume of automated emails that we all get. You'll have some OCD clients who will like, go through their. Their other inbox, their promotions in box what it is. You'll have some OCD people who watch that stuff very closely, but most people these days do not. But that is not reason to throw in the towel. And actually anecdote here I've shared with you all before. One of the best decisions I ever made for my own personal finances was hiring an accountant. Even when I was running a tax firm and I had, you know, 40 tax pros under my employee, I went out and I hired a tax pro because everybody like you are either one of two types of people. The person who does your stuff first or the person who does your stuff last. And I'm the latter. I always did my stuff last. It got so much less love and attention than all the client stuff. And the moment I outsourced it, I learned a number of things. One, I got to, like, interact with the tech stack of these other firms, which was kind of cool. And I had a network of firms so, like, I could go out and hire somebody that I knew was really good. So, like, I got to work with, you know, tax caddy for the first time and the carbon portal and all these different things that I hadn't been on, like, the client user side of before. But when I hired somebody to do that stuff, it felt so good knowing somebody else was, like, paying attention to it. Some people get that. The other half of you are like, that's just about the stupidest thing I've ever heard in my entire life. And I understand that. Okay, for whatever reason on this issue, there is, there is no grounds in between those two ends of the spectrum. So personal anecdote through the lens of being a client. I have experienced being scolded for ignoring automated emails because I did, I did the exact same thing. They were coming in, I didn't even see them because my inbox was basically filter filtering them out and all it took was one conversation of hey, this is how we send stuff to you because we don't want our humans to have to follow up with you and be annoying. Can you pay attention to these? And I was like, oh yeah. So I flagged that so that it would always come into the inbox and now it's completely fine. And as with most things like AI, meeting recorders, you know, changing things for clients, all it usually requires is one conversation and the client is completely fine. But oftentimes we build up that conversation to be something more than it needs to be or even will actually be when you talk to them and then he actually had the conversation and they're like, oh no, it's cool. Or sometimes you get a couple weirdos that object and they take up too much headspace. And because those couple weirdos objected, all the people who are like, just tell me what to do, I'm fine doing whatever. Who are the clients that I actually want to serve long time, long term, I don't think about them being fine with it because I'm too fixated on the couple of weirdos that are are giving me objections. So if you've struggled with this at all, or if this has even blocked you from leaning into these new tools, these automated emails, let me just give you five, five reasons why it's worth pushing back against this if there even is any pushback. Five, five really big upsides of this to your firm. One, the big one is just the enormous time savings opportunity here. If you are a tax firm, the time savings opportunity of using a tax workflow tool to request all of the specific documents that you need from clients, not a boilerplate questionnaire, although you can do that also. But like the pro forma document request list, we did 1600 1040s a year and I don't care if you do 10 or 10,000 of them. Tracking down every little document that you need from every single client is a monumental undertaking that just totally blows up your tax season. Similarly, for bookkeeping firms, as much as I would like for us there for there to be a way for us to self serve getting every single little thing that we need to do the month end close. That's just not the reality we live in right now. Most month end closes still requires getting something from this stakeholder and that stakeholder and being able to put that on rails so that it either goes out automatically each month or when there's something I'm missing. Instead of emailing the client, I put it into the practice management system or whatever tool I'm using and that makes the request to the client. That's infinitely better because I'm then not having to juggle remembering when did I last follow up with that person? Who do I need to follow up with next? Is this thing actually going to be late because this person hasn't gotten that thing to me yet? That's a project that you can totally take out of your brain and delegate to the machines. So the big upside here, number one, arguably the biggest, is just the raw time savings and the headspace that it saves for you. Today's episode is sponsored in part by Teamup, who helps you directly hire talented accountants in the Philippines. Ever wondered how much you pay a Filipino bookkeeper? Pop quiz. That's not pop. I'm just gonna give you the answer. This is courtesy of an excellent salary guide that the people at Teamup put together that you can grab for the low low price of going down to my show notes and clicking and getting it. Salary range for Filipino bookkeepers if they have one to three years US experience that is like working with US or Western companies. Usually gonna pay em between 1100 and 1400 USD per month. Three to five years experience, you're looking at 1400-1700 USD. Five plus years $1700 to $2000 USD per month. Here's a profile of actually someone that team up recently placed with a firm. Got a Bachelor's in accounting. They're a quote certified bookkeeper and registered cost accountant. I know what that is. Both QBO and Xero certified. Six years of experience in the accounting field. Three years experience with a US accounting firm serving 60 clients from manufacturing, e commerce and merchandising industries. Oh those are yucky ones. Proficient in QBO and desktop multi threat and they were looking for 1500 bucks a month gang. I've told you before, the last four hires I made were in the Philippines. Really good. Maybe I got lucky, I don't know. You want to explore doing the same or just want to learn more? Check out that salary guide that Team up made. I'll link that down in the show notes. This episode is sponsored in part by clienthub clienthub who turns your firm's busy seasons into wow seasons. Because those seasons, they're an opportunity to wow the ever loving off of your clients. Wait just one minute, Scooter. You can't say that in an ad read. I'm. I'm sorry K. I get excited. Client Hub is going to wow your clients right off their socks because it is a game changing client experience. Simple, intuitive, easy to use, doesn't require a Ph.D. and goodness gracious, this practice management system is complex. It's not some like herky jerky bolted on client portal that has like three options on the left hand side and each one you select, it looks like, I don't know, something some junior developer just made in like 25 minutes. Because let's be real, that's what a lot of client portals still look like. Can you get back to the bullet points here? Okay. One of the reasons people love Client Hub is clients. Clients just become users. Like the design is so good, they're like, oh, I get this. It's kind of just like a two sided task management system. Client hops in, looks like the other tools that they use, they can see their tasks, their files, their financials. It's not hard mobile friendly, so they can do it on the road too. But it's intuitive, doesn't really require training and they're going to be like, oh you're like a cool modern firm. Not like that last firm that I used where I logged into this thing and I'm like Henry the eighth, is that you? You know what I mean. To learn more about Client Hub, check out the link down in the show notes. Number two is it genuinely, when it is working, reduces the frustration with your client. There's nothing more like dehumanizing than asking somebody for the same thing like a third or fourth time and eventually you just like stop, right? Because it's so weird. And then three months later something goes sideways and the client's like when's the last time you asked me? And you're like well like three months ago. And they're like well why didn't you stop asking me? And you're like why is that a reasonable thing to be mad at me about? I'm pretty sure it isn't. Chasing clients for documents is just irritating and it creates friction in the relationship that I would rather just avoid by letting the machines do the requesting. Thought number three on why this is worth doing. It's just the way that everything's been going. Like it's the way that all tech is Going, nobody calls me from my, you know, power company until they're about to shut the power off. Nobody calls me when I don't pay my AMEX bill. There's this notion that maybe, like, professional services and what we do needs to have like a weird, like, little bow tie and bowler hat sort of service delivery. It really doesn't. There's a reason that every other service works this way. You know, a payment method fails, you get an email. I don't need Tina to give me a call to do that. In fact, I'm a millennial, so I'm going to be enraged if Tina calls me to update my, my payment method. Just shoot me an email and I'll do it. So while not everyone is, like, comfortable with this and our client base, it's definitely the way that the world, world is going. One of my implementation tips, we'll talk about, like, how to work around the people that maybe won't comply. But the fourth reason to do it is it actually gets all that stuff into you sooner. If the alternative is humans having to do this outreach over and over and over again, you, you're just not going to, like, you're not going to. At least if you're like me, you're not going to commit the time to following up with other human beings, probably because it's so dehumanizing. You're not going to commit the time to doing that religiously because you just, you're crossing your fingers that they just don't make you ask again and they'll just send it in. The result is you don't follow up all that much, and at a certain point, you just stop machines. They are relentless. And to be clear, like, the right request platforms give you control over how frequently you pester their clients, your clients, because it can be too much. You don't want to overdo it. But some will even let clients select, like, their preferred channel. Like, do you want to. Do you want to get texted whenever there's something new? An email? Like, should I have a mobile app and get a notification there anytime there's something new I need to provide? But the net effect of all that is you get everything in sooner. I've actually had conversations with firms before where they're like, oh, we're already over capacity. We don't want stuff to come in sooner. And to be clear, you can schedule this outbound to go happen whenever you want it to. So, like for tax intake, for example, you can have everything go out on February 1st, or if you're going More the scheduled tax work approach where everybody has a week or a few week block during the year when you're supposed to do their work. That email goes out a week before that block opens. Like, you have control over how you stagger that stuff. And that's the upside here, is greater control. Last upside number five is that in my opinion, unless you are using a machine to do the requesting and a really big part of what the client associates you with, like their perception of a big part of your job is gathering documents. And that's extremely frustrating because that is not the value that I provide chasing other human beings for freaking documents. And this, I think, is where you need to get on your high horse and be like, do you know how much freaking expertise I have that you are going to expect me to chase you around for documents? Do you know what my hourly rate is? Do you really want me sending you emails saying, hey, John, just checking in for the third time, you forgot to give us this or that? Like, no, I'm, I'm better than that. I'm going to tell you where you're going to get these emails from. I want them to go to your inbox. And I expect you to be able to handle that. I don't think that's too much to ask. But the reality is on day one, it probably won't work because it's not going to likely default to your client's inbox. It's going to get flagged as like, you know, a message that's coming from an automated sender. And so it just doesn't get the same level of priorities. How do we navigate this? Number one is do all of the old school methods of communication as a fallback, but don't do it as an alternative. Do it to get them to follow your preferred process. So, so one of the conversations online was like, oh, man, we used this practice management system to automate a bunch of this stuff this year. But none of my clients responded to the email. So we're just going to go back to calling them like we used to. Please, please don't do this. That is like when the phone was invented, people saying, well, I call them, but they're not always home, so they don't answer. So I'm going to go back to driving to their home. No, no, no, no, no, no. Now what I'd say to a firm like that is call them to say, hey, go to your email. Do you see this message? Right click, move to inbox. This is how you're going to get these. Now that's what I call them to tell them. That's what I drive to their house to tell. No, you probably still shouldn't do that, but that's probably going to be required. And if you see a large volume of that on your horizon, consider like is there an admin or a client concierge type role or somebody else that can do this besides me if I'm the big boss? Or like can I send an email from me out to my clients to say, hey, look out for emails like this, who's the sender? Include a screenshot. What does it look like? Here's how to make sure it doesn't end up in your, your other inbox, your spam or something like that. Just so they know what to expect. Because these days if they get an email from whoever it is, ignition anchor your practice management system and it says, you know, on behalf of this company or that company, there's so many scammy emails that we get every single day that they're probably in the right to not think that that's real. Like unless you tell them via the normal channels to look out for this, they probably shouldn't pay any attention to it. So it will take some sort of communication strategy to tell them like this is what you got to look out for. And so if you find yourself being pulled back to the old ways of doing things, that's fine. Just go back to the old ways of doing things to recommunicate what the new way of doing things are. There's very, very few people these days who do not have an email address and can't click through a link in an email. Like accountants, we can be old timey but I don't think we're asking too much. But like by doing that. Second tip here is include this as part of onboarding. So like what does it take? Or even before onboarding in like the discovery process, if they need to get you prior tax returns and QuickBooks access and all these things, have them do it through the portal and say look out for this. This is what to expect. Here's how I'm going to communicate these things for you. And this system will automatically follow up with you until you do these things. If they can't do that in the discovery process, that's good to know. Now if they can't do this in the onboarding process, it's good to have that conversation now. But the reality is when the, when the engagement starts this way, they're never going to know anything different. Like that's the Best man. That's the best thing about new clients is they're so dumb. They're like babies being born into the world with no context and all of these blockers that you have, that's like, well, that's not how we've always done it. We always try to file their return in February. We always try to get all the financials out by the 10th of the month. You tell a new client, you just make something up like, ah, yeah, no, we've never, we've never filed, we've never finished financial statements before. Like the 25th of the following month. Just give it a try. The client will be like, oh, wow, okay. I mean that's a little weird. That seems a little slow, but okay. That might be a bad example. But you know what I mean? All of like the tunnel vision we have for what the norm is in our firm. New clients don't have that. And so when they come in and we're like, no, this is how we request stuff from us because we're so big and wise and expensive that you don't want humans doing this. Also, we're not willing to like degrade ourselves to the level of people that spend half of our day emailing people saying, hey John, can you, can you give me three, seven and nine? When those people come into the firm, they're like, cool. That's just how it works. I'll keep an eye out for those Last one, number three. And a lot of this is like changing friction. This is one time change friction. Because if you are starting a new firm from scratch tomorrow and you do that, you tell them all in the beginning, you're like, oh yeah, that's easy. Like my problem is getting from A to B. This third tip is decide whether you're going to make exceptions or not. Because it's actually perfectly okay to not make exceptions and tell everybody like, nope, you just have to do it this way way. But if you are going to make an exception, don't make it cheap. Please don't. We've been talking about three tier proposals lately and how your silver and gold packages, they shouldn't be more like, they don't need to be more in terms of the scope of work, they needed to be fancier. They are like the first class and business class on your accounting firm airplane where heads up, everybody's flying to the same place. I don't need to do a completely different body of work for this person. My bronze, silver gold simply captures different clients willingness to pay. Willingness and ability to pay. Because not Everybody has the money to pay more, but the folks who do, who are happy to that want like a more premium service delivery. Sure, Steve, do you want to pay twice as much money? I'll give you a call. Well, I won't, but my admin will and if that works for you, whatever. Seems like a massive waste to me, but it's your money. You just got to have like a clear path for folks. If they are willing to do that or not willing to do that, then what is the talk track? What do you tell them next? Okay, we just aren't willing to do that on the package that you're on right now, but we can move you to this if that makes sense for you. And we're, we're happy to like extend you that sort of concierge service. This is something I don't think people talk about enough. The fact that the default will be and you just kind of have to come into it with this, this expectation the default will be that the clients don't see those emails. Unfortunately, that's just how it is. Until we do a bit of training, I this oughta just look like a couple email blasts upfront and hopefully that covers as many clients as possible. If this is a new thing that you're starting out for the very first time, it may take falling back to those old methods, having a couple phone calls, sending follow up emails to be like, hey, Jim, did you see this? In my case, when I was the client, in this case, it just sent, it just meant a human sent me an email. And they're like, hey, just making sure you're getting these. This is how we manage requests. And I was like, oh no, I wasn't getting those. I'll pay more attention to those, thanks. And that was it. And that took them probably 60 seconds to send. So don't like, don't abandon all the upsides of what automated outreach can do just because maybe you hit like a couple of roadblocks initially. You got any practical wisdom on this stuff or if you're still grappling with this doesn't feel like white glove enough. Like, I know that I kind of had to navigate the same things. I think what it ultimately boils down to is like your time is valuable, your expertise is valuable, but the engagement and the perception of the engagement is ultimately going to come down to the pie chart of what your communications look like, like on the client side, how they perceive it. It's going to come down to like their touch points with you. And if 80% of their touch points with you. Are you hounding them for documents? They're going to see you as being administrative and like this is all around us. You have clients that see you this way, the annual once a year tax client who all they do is give you government forms and you have no other interaction. They, they see what you do as administrative. They do because they just, they don't see all this stuff that's happening behind the scenes. And if we don't communicate the value add stuff we're doing or the extra lengths that we're going to for them, like they kind of can't just be expected to like somehow see this stuff happening without us putting it in front of them. All that, all that being said, consider right now what those communications look like between the client and your team. Let's flip that so that instead of 80% of them being administrative, 20% of them are administrative and 80% of them are like, oh dang, that's actually really helpful that we're actually moving the needle now, having a higher level conversation and they're going to be like, oh dang, this person's actually really smart and has a lot of things that they can contribute to my tax situation, my business, whatever that looks like. But if they groan every time they get an email from you because it's a to do where they have to go and track this stuff down. Like, you don't want that association happening. You got any other wisdom or tips on that stuff, drop it down in the comments. Thanks for coming. Hanging today. See you in the next one.