What this looks like in a professional services business
A new client signs up, and the same dance starts again: an email asking for ID, another chasing bank details, a third asking for the information that got lost somewhere in the second email. None of it is complicated. It just takes a surprising number of back-and-forth messages to get one client properly set up, and then it happens again for the next one, and the one after that.
By the evening, the actual advisory or compliance work hasn't moved much, because the day went on chasing records and typing the same engagement letter with different names. It's not that anyone in the practice is slow. It's that onboarding has grown into enough small steps that doing it from memory, every time, eats hours nobody budgeted for.
The admin a regulated practice can't skip, even when it's the slow part
Some of this admin exists because it has to. Anti-money laundering regulations require a UK accountancy practice to carry out client due diligence before taking someone on:
- verify identity
- understand the source of funds
- risk-rate the client
- keep records for five years after the relationship ends
- review periodically, not just at the start
That's before any actual accounting work starts, and the order it all has to happen in matters too. An engagement letter needs to go out and be agreed before chargeable work properly begins, and automating the letter itself removes a surprising amount of retyping. None of this is admin you can simply skip to save time, which is exactly why it's worth automating rather than abandoning: the ID checks and engagement letter still happen, they just stop depending on someone remembering to chase them, and buying an AML tool versus automating the paper trail yourself is worth weighing up properly rather than guessing.
Deadlines don't move, even when admin is behind
VAT quarters, the 31 January personal tax deadline and now the staged rollout of Making Tax Digital for Income Tax Self Assessment all arrive on fixed dates regardless of how far behind onboarding and record-chasing have fallen. A practice already has deadlines visible in theory with the right tool: Xero Practice Manager suits one fully in Xero wanting job tracking and billing in the same place, Karbon suits one built around workflow and email, and the fuller comparison, including Dext versus Hubdoc, is worth a look before choosing. But if client records for a job are still sitting half-collected in an inbox, the deadline tracker is only showing you how late you already are, not helping you catch up.
Meet Sarah
Sarah runs a four-person accountancy practice. A new client means a dozen emails before anything's actually underway, and she's noticed the same small things get forgotten, like confirming VAT status or completing the AML identity check properly, often enough that it's becoming a pattern rather than a one-off.
"I didn't train for years to spend my evenings chasing bank details by email. The advice is the part I'm good at. The admin around it is what's eating my week."
Sarah is an illustrative example, a composite of the practices we talk to, not a real client.
How we'd fix it
- Document and form automation, generating engagement letters, AML identity requests and onboarding packs from a template and the client's own details, rather than retyped by hand each time.
- A CRM set up around the practice's real onboarding steps, so a partner can see exactly which stage every new client is at, identity check, engagement letter, information requested, information received, instead of checking an inbox, a spreadsheet and asking a colleague.
- Receipt and document capture through Dext, if it isn't already in place, so client paperwork arrives already extracted into structured data rather than being typed in by hand from a photo or a PDF.
- A single automated reminder for outstanding documents, chasing the client automatically a week on, rather than relying on anyone remembering to, with a clear audit trail of what was requested and when for AML purposes.
- A short training session and written guide, so every member of staff onboards a client the same, reliable way, and the practice's compliance obligations get met the same way every time rather than depending on who happens to be free.
What it costs and how long it takes
Document and form automation is a guide price from £500, usually live within one to three weeks. A full CRM setup around your onboarding process starts from £900, with a single automated reminder workflow on its own from £350 if that's the quickest win for now. Most projects like this are scoped and delivered within a few weeks, often with the CRM usable earlier while document automation is finished and tested against real onboarding packs from your own client base. These are guide prices, with the fixed quote following a free 30-minute call.
The trade-offs worth knowing
Automating the paperwork around onboarding doesn't remove the need for a human to actually review what comes back, an AML check still needs a person to look at the ID and decide it's genuinely satisfactory, and a generated engagement letter still needs a partner's eyes on it before it goes out, particularly for anything non-standard. The aim is removing the retyping and the chasing, not the judgement. It's also worth building in from day one rather than bolted on afterwards: a workflow that skips a compliance step to save a few minutes creates far more admin later than it saves now.
What you get back
An engagement letter that goes out within minutes instead of whenever there's a free half hour, and a clear view of where every new client actually stands, including the compliance steps that have to happen regardless.
Related
Read the general guide to admin eats our evenings and weekends, see the wider picture for professional services, and the related example of an accountancy practice with onboarding that runs itself. For more detail, see how to automate client onboarding.