Collection · 13 articles
Accounting inbox playbooks.
An accounting practice does not have an email problem in general. It has the same dozen email problems on a schedule: the client who has not sent the thing, the PBC list that lives across eleven replies, the extension request buried in a thread from March, the year-end close where every number arrives from a different person. Each guide here takes one of those and stays on it, written for a firm that already knows the work and wants the mail around it to stop costing a day a week. They assume nothing about each other, so start with the one that describes your Tuesday. Where a piece touches the question of whether a tool should be reading client mail at all, it hands off rather than re-arguing it.
-
Email management for accountants: running the firm inbox
The practice mailbox is the only record of what each client still owes you. How to read it by client and against a list, instead of by arrival.
-
Inbox zero during busy season, and what to count instead
Clearing the mailbox is the wrong target when the volume triples. The count that decides a season, why chase dates shrink, and what to defer.
-
Managing client document requests without the chasing
A document is late for about six reasons and only one is forgetting. What the first ask should contain, and what a chase should say when you need one.
-
One PBC list, not five copies of it in the mail
A PBC list is a register two organisations share, and email hands each side its own copy. How to keep one of them true while answers arrive in pieces.
-
Engagement letters, and the signature nobody chases
An unsigned letter blocks nothing, so nothing surfaces it. How to track a signature you sent out, and what to do when the scope moves in March.
-
W-2s and 1099s: the ones you collect and the ones you issue
Two unrelated jobs arrive in the same weeks under the same words. How to sort the mail by which one it is, and how to count what has not come.
-
Tax extensions, and the six months of quiet after them
An extension moves the date and removes the pressure that was doing your chasing. What the April message must say, and how to work the summer.
-
Year-end close, and the inputs you cannot get in March
A close is one month-end plus a dozen annual jobs, and a few of its inputs stop existing on the last day. What to send in November, and what to ask after.
-
Quarterly estimate reminders, and the silence that follows
Nothing comes back when a client pays, so silence proves nothing. What the four messages have to carry, and how to get a receipt worth having.
-
Supplier and software invoices in the firm's own inbox
Most of them arrived after the money had already gone, so they are records rather than requests. What to capture, and where the real decision sits.
-
Stopping client questions from piling up in a practice
A client question is unscheduled work with no date on it, which is why it waits. What is in the pile, how to hold one, and which ones stop arriving.
-
Onboarding a new tax client, from enquiry to first return
The only job in a practice with no prior year behind it. What to ask for first, why the outgoing accountant sets your start date, and when it ends.
-
The bookkeeping inbox, and the month that starts again
Bookkeeping mail repeats twelve times a year and no single item is worth chasing. How to batch the queries and catch the alerts that matter.