Client Queries: Their (only) problem, and what can be done about it

I’ve worked in accountancy practices, large and small, since 2003 – including my own for the last ten years. Over that time, myself and the teams I have worked within have helped thousands of business owners to deal with the accounts and tax side of their business.

When I started out in 2003, clients had a few options for how they got their accounting records to us each month/quarter/year. Perhaps it was a Sage Instant or Sage Line 50 backup. Perhaps it was Quickbooks Desktop. Maybe it was a spreadsheet or even a handwritten cash book (great for learning how to reconcile your first few bank accounts!). Or perhaps it was just a good old-fashioned bag of receipts.

Of course, all of these options still exist (albeit with a slight name change in the case of some), but the advent of cloud accounting packages and apps over the past ten or so years has really propelled possibilities for the accountancy profession and their clients forward.

The ease and speed at which accountants can collaborate with clients from anywhere with a web browser/smart phone just was not possible in my early days at the start of the millennium.

However, there is one thing that I have noticed that has not substantially improved in line with these advancements in technology. That is the time we spend as accountants answering routine client queries.

The (only) problem with client queries…

If anything, as improvements in cloud bookkeeping packages such as Xero and QBO have made “doing the bookkeeping” much more accessible to the average business owner, they have brought with them more queries from clients regarding their bookkeeping, accounts and tax returns.

In my opinion, this ultimately should be seen as positive as it means that clients are getting more involved in the financial side of their business. Rather than merely passing their year-end records into the black box (that is their accountant) that previously worked in mysterious ways to produce their reports each year, clients are questioning the financial data that flows through their business each day.

I’ve noticed that the average business owner seems to have a higher level of understanding of their financial performance and position in more recent years. Have you?

Another positive of receiving regular client queries is that it provides us with the opportunity to build deeper relationships with clients and ensure that we are kept in mind as the expert to go to, and kept in favour (rather than the accountant on the other side of the street, or the other side of the Google results).

Of course, there is a cost to us as accountants in feeding this client hunger for more information – our time. We are all also very aware that the time taken to reply to client queries on mass across our portfolio can easily take a toll on our availability to carry out the work we had planned at the start of the day/week/month.

From the client’s point of view, it is just a “quick query” that they hope we can help with – for which the client is hoping (or - more than likely - expecting) not to be billed for. Of course, the reality for client facing accountants is that these quick queries can soon become a full-time job in themselves.

So what can we all do about it?

I am a firm believer that technology can help to leverage our time and knowledge as accountants.

At the start of the lockdown in March 2020 I spent a few weeks researching how, as accountants, we could streamline the service we provide to clients without incurring the additional cost of time.

I went through many of the last ten years’ worth of emails from clients (no mean feat!) to find out if any of the queries were repetitive in nature. My inkling was that many were repetitive. I don’t know about you, but there is certainly a core theme of queries that get asked over and over again.

It doesn’t matter how many fantastically colourful and clear brochures, newsletters and webinars we produce - if the information or guidance doesn’t hit their eyes or ears at the exact time it is needed, there is very little chance it will be close enough to the forefront of the client’s mind to prevent them from sending a “quick query” request.

It isn’t the client’s fault in the slightest. If an SEO specialist were to explain to me the top ten most important “on page” checks to carry out before I had even thought about creating a new website, it is unlikely that I would be able to remember even half of them when I actually needed the information further down the line. Of course, I would be able to ask the SEO specialist when the time came – after all it is their bread and butter. But that is pretty much the point.

So how do we get timely snippets of advice to clients on auto-pilot?

I came to the realisation that my accountancy practice would benefit significantly if I could find a way of drip-feeding timely nuggets of advice (or even just signposts) to clients when their current bookkeeping data dictated they needed it.

I started to create a list of recurring queries for which, to get a reply drafted to the client, I needed to first log into their bookkeeping system to view their up to date financial data.

Here are just a few examples:

• VAT Registration Threshold - Detecting when the client exceeds the current VAT registration threshold, but is not yet registered for VAT.
• Directors’ Loan Accounts Overdrawn – Detecting when a DLA account becomes overdrawn (or becomes increasingly overdrawn). Never a nice conversation after the horse has already bolted!
• In Year Corporation Tax Estimate – Giving a decent estimate of what the client’s corporation tax charge will be for the current year so that they have an idea of how much money they should be putting aside each month.
• Dividend Availability – The maximum current value of profit reserves that can be distributed to shareholders today.
• Cash Health Check – How well equipped the client is to pay their upcoming outgoings (short, medium & long term), based upon their current cash balance.
• Potential Bookkeeping Errors – Which transactions look like duplicates, which invoices are very old, which items have been posted to a, seemingly, incorrect account code? etc.

You will note that all half-decent bookkeeping packages hold the raw data required to answer each of the above 6 examples queries in an unambiguous manner – but they don’t, for one reason or another. I feel that this is where we can step in as accountants.

Let’s take the overdrawn director’s loan account as an example. Bookkeeping systems allow the client to run off a balance sheet report, or a trial balance report, or perhaps highlight the appropriate account on the dashboard in order to view the current balance of a clients’ director’s loan account. It can provide the client with that specific data. But where is the resultant information? Where is the knowledge?

In order to interpret that data, the client must first understand what their director’s loan account represents. They must know where to look for the appropriate data. Then they must understand what the difference is between a debit and a credit balance when the item is on the balance sheet (which, of course, is the other way around to how they see things all of the time on their bank statements). Finally, they must understand the ramifications of their particular balance (i.e. overdrawn = adverse tax consequences, whereas in credit means that they can draw cash out of the company “tax free”).

As accountants, we take our knowledge about such things for granted as they are our bread and butter. We even recognise that the language we use in the office with colleagues should be brought back down to Earth when we are talking to clients, as to most, it is seen as nothing more than jargon. But can we do more to ensure that we are communicating relevant issues that are currently, or soon will be, affecting individual clients in a more timely manner? I think so.

During lockdown, my goal has been to create a cloud system which focuses in on dozens of these specific areas that have historically been “quick client query” hotspots. The idea being that I would be able to tap into the client’s cloud bookkeeping portal and convert that raw data (e.g. director’s loan account balance) into specific and meaningful information in their language and get it in front of the client’s eyes in real-time – without the need for my immediate input.

My hope is that, in doing so, I can decrease the amount of time that myself and my team spend answering repetitive queries that the client can now have pushed directly to them (normally, before they realise that there could be an issue). Instead, this will free up much more time to have more valuable and enjoyable conversations with clients where we may be able to help them further grow their business.

I also hope that I can all but eradicate the potential for future “as my accountant, shouldn’t you have told me about this?” conversations with clients. A win-win situation.

Accountants, I need your help!

The cloud software I have created with my team of accountants and developers currently taps into Xero’s API (as that is the package that most of our clients use). I have rolled it out to a number of our own clients with extremely positive feedback.

Our software development company is now looking to roll out the package to other UK accountants before the end of the year – and we are currently looking for 20 accountancy pioneers - who really see the value in what I have been talking about above - to take it for a spin, hopefully providing helpful feedback along the way. Let me know if that sounds like you or visit this page.

I would love to find out about ways that you minimise the number of avoidable client queries in your own accountancy practice, so please do comment below or send me a message.

Thanks for reading,

Gareth Salomon