Streamline Your Accounting Practice with These Workflow Suggestions

July 1, 2021

Having a clearly defined workflow designed for efficiency is what every accounting practice needs if they want everything to run smoothly. For every task, there should be progress at all times, minus any bottlenecks for faster results without compromising the quality. Your firm also needs to utilize automation using workflow software for accountants to speed things up a bit.

Of course, all those things are the ideal setup for any accounting firm. The problem is, this isn’t always the case. While it’s hard trying to solve all these problems at once, let’s focus on one thing first—the workflow. If you want to focus on efficiency, here are some workflows that accounting firms need to focus on if they’re going to improve their operations.

Workflow #1: New Client Onboarding

The first of many workflow processes in any accounting firm is, of course, onboarding clients. Whether they are old or new clients, giving them the best experience during onboarding is the goal of this workflow.

When you onboard a client, it’s crucial that your client progresses efficiently in your company. Not only that, but this is where you start building a dynamic and solid relationship with them as you go through the onboarding process. Now, the workflow itself needs to be structured following a particular timeline and with a focus on:

  • Availability of customer support
  • Length of onboarding
  • Clear onboarding steps

The onboarding process is a perfect opportunity to showcase your accounting management software to your clients so they’ll have an idea of how you process everything on your end.

Workflow #2: Sales Qualification

Another essential workflow employed by accounting firms is the sales qualification process. This allows you and your team to understand the behavior of your leads. Basically, a sales qualification process looks at a lead and determines if they have the potential to convert into a client based on how your services match their needs and their intent.

Like any other process, a sales qualification workflow needs to be streamlined. Here are some considerations that could make your qualification process much more efficient:

  • Clear vision of an ideal accounting client
  • Identify marketing qualified leads (MQLs)
  • Utilize discovery questions
  • Remain responsive throughout the whole process

Workflow #3: Communication Workflow

In any business, communication is key, and it actually serves as the organization’s lifeblood, especially an accounting firm. Without a proper communication workflow, it would be impossible to stay productive and reliable.

This is especially true if you have a remote team working with you on any project. Your remote team can effectively communicate and collaborate with other members of the team as well as your client. Ideally, your workflow should go as smooth as this: getting a request from a client, responding to it, finding a solution, and resolving it as soon as possible. While that may sound like an oversimplification, that’s exactly what’s at the core of every accounting process.

Remember, proper communication encourages collaboration and responsiveness at work. Having that kind of adaptive and stable communication workflow will attract the attention of more clients as they see how you do your work almost effortlessly.

Conclusion

In any accounting practice, workflow is everything. It’s what makes the business model work and is one of the reasons why the industry continues to evolve. These three workflow processes should make your operations become much more efficient and reliable than ever before.

Firm360 is an all-in-one solution to make your practice more streamlined and get more work done in as little time as possible. From advanced reporting and project management to integrations, Firm360 is packed with features tailored to your firm’s needs. Contact us today to request a demo of our accounting workflow management software.

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