A 14-person accounting firm spends most of January and February asking clients for paperwork that was already requested twice. This replaces the asking.
The firm is not disorganized. There is a checklist, it is a good checklist, and somebody works through it. The problem is that the checklist lives in one person’s head about who has already been asked, and the asking happens by hand, one email at a time, between other work.
So it gets done late, or twice, or not at all. A client who was chased on Tuesday gets chased again on Friday by someone else. A client who was never chased is discovered in April. Neither shows up anywhere as a problem — they show up as a busy season that felt worse than it needed to.
One link per client, no login to create, no app to install — the single biggest reason document portals go unused. They see the list of what is still outstanding, they upload, and the list updates. It works on a phone, because that is where the photograph of the receipt already is.
A reminder goes out on a schedule you set — day three, day seven, day fourteen, whatever you want — and it names the documents still missing rather than saying “your documents”. It stops the moment they arrive. Nobody on your side remembers to send it and nobody on your side feels rude sending it.
Every client, what is missing, how long it has been missing, and when they were last chased. That last column is the one that ends the double-chasing, because right now the answer lives in whoever sent it.
Uploads land in the right client folder, named to your convention rather than IMG_4471.jpg. This is where most of the nine hours actually goes — not the asking, the tidying up afterward.
Wrong document, unreadable photograph, a client who has ignored three reminders — those come to you. Everything else completes without anyone knowing it happened. An automation that needs watching has not saved anybody anything.
Your existing document storage, your practice-management system for the client list, and email for the reminders. Three connections, all of them things you already pay for. Nothing new to buy, nothing for your staff to learn, and no second place where client records live.
We would ask for a limited account rather than a login to your main one, and we write down what we were given so you can revoke it later. Never a password by email.
Not hourly, not a subscription, not a retainer. If we quoted it wrong, that is our problem. The only thing that changes the price is you changing what you asked for, in writing, and you are free to say no.
Against $21,060 a year of time — $405 a week — it pays for itself in about ten weeks. That arithmetic is yours, from your own numbers on the call — check it.
If it breaks, we fix it, and usually we know before you do. That is included and it does not expire.
What is not included: changes to what it does, new features, or connecting something that was not in this plan. Those are a new quote. We would rather be blunt about that line now than argue about it in six months.
It does not read the documents and decide whether they are right — that is your job and it should stay your job. It does not talk to your tax software. It will not stop a client who ignores everything from ignoring this too; it will just make sure you know which clients those are by the second week of January rather than the second week of April.
If any of that is the part you actually needed, say so and we will requote or tell you we are not the right people.
Running in about two weeks. You would see it working on your own data before it goes anywhere near a client, and nothing goes live until you have said yes.
A 15-minute call, then one of these — your job, your numbers, a fixed price, and an honest note about what it will not do. No obligation and nothing to sign to get it.
If the arithmetic does not work, we say so. A job that takes longer than a year to pay for itself is one we will tell you not to do.
Tell us what you do by handWhere the numbers come from. Hours, headcount and hourly cost are yours, given on the call — we do not estimate them for you. Everything else follows by multiplication, and it is on this page so you can check it rather than trust it.
Why the price is what it is. A job like this reuses components we have already built, which is why it is not priced like bespoke software. Our floor is $2,500; below that the arithmetic stops working for us, and we would rather say so than quote something we will resent.
What is invented here. The firm, the staff count and every figure. The structure, the price band and the commitments are exactly what a real plan carries.