As an accountant, your timing is important. Throughout the year, you’re met with many time-sensitive tasks that can affect your client’s financial welfare. That’s a lot of responsibility, and we know you want to meet every important deadline for your clients. So, here are some of our tips for delivering services to your clients on time, every time.
Document Your Procedures
Writing things down can save you a lot of time. There are a lot of little tasks that go into every challenge you undertake at your accounting firm, and you can write all these little steps down to standardize your processes. There will be far fewer mistakes if you have a strict checklist to follow, and if you miss a step, you can figure out what that step was in a pinch. This will also save you time when onboarding new team members, allowing you to focus your efforts on client work.
Have a Communication Plan in Place
Many missed deadlines result from poor communication, and the way to fix that is with a client communication plan. If you are communicating regularly and effectively with clients, you’ll be much more likely to deliver satisfactory services. To make a communication plan, you just need to figure out how and how often you need to talk to your client. Find out why type of communication works best. Do you want to schedule regular Zoom meetings or is email the most trustworthy way to reach them? How often are you going to give them updates?
Stay on Top of Tech
The right tech can help you work smarter and faster. When all of your apps integrate seamlessly together, you’ll reduce the amount of time you spend switching between them and reentering information. After all, the best apps are those you don’t notice and don’t require extra work. You can use accounting software to help you keep track of assignments, and good scheduling apps help you follow through on client communication plans.
Go Paperless
Going digital might actually help ensure you don’t miss important deadlines. Think about it: how much time does it take to locate physical papers and pass them around to every party that needs to see them? Luckily, the days of waiting for someone to sign a document and mail it back are long gone. Digital documents can be sent instantly from one person to another. Operating a paperless firm can also come in handy when you or a team member is out sick and needs to access work from home.
In our industry, it’s important to be always on time. We know you want to deliver the best services to your clients, consistently. Replicating processes flawlessly might be difficult, but it isn’t impossible. If you follow these simple steps, you might be able to reduce the number of deadlines you miss at your accounting firm.
Have you ever had trouble delivering client services on time at your accounting firm? Let us know how you tackled this issue down below!
