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Your Accounting Firm Desperately Needs A Collaboration Solution

21st Nov 2017
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accountants

 

Why Is Collaboration So Important For Accountants? 

Effective collaboration keeps your workload under control and produces better results for your firm, through increased productivity and boosted morale.

When clients are central to your business, this is all the more reason to want to improve collaboration. If you have clients leave as a result of being unsatisfied with your services; which could be due to lack of transparency or communication—it can be preventive to the success of your accounting firm.

To help you determine whether your accounting firm could benefit from a cloud-based collaboration tool with clients, here are some signs to look out for.

 

You have a geographically dispersed organisation

If you have geographically dispersed clients, team members, business partners and more—it’s likely that you will be dealing with multiple countries and time zones. This means it will be necessary for everyone, no matter where they are, to have secure and instant access to the relevant financial documentation and communication.

And not only will clients want immediate access to their accounts, they may need access from mobile devices (such as a smartphone or a tablet)—and access to those files will need to be secure.

A cloud-based collaboration tool will be available on any device, in any location. This means that your clients will be able to retrieve and provide feedback on their files securely, instantly and efficiently – in real-time and with minimal hassle.

 

Your accounting firm heavily relies on the use of email

When you are relying on email for the bulk of your communication and collaboration with clients and partners, it won’t be maintainable in the long run—especially when working within a large or growing accounting firm. 

This is because email chains can easily become overwhelming, and there is a lack of accountability if emails get ignored or attachments are sent to the wrong client. And as accounting firms may have to deal with significant amounts of communication and files for clients, it will quickly becomes apparent that email is inefficient for dealing with this amount of information.

Not only that, but email isn’t secure enough for your team to be sharing sensitive financial information with team members and clients; when compared with a collaboration solution that offers security measures such as two-factor authentication and content access permissions.

Collaboration tools reduce the need for email. They will allow your firm, its clients and team members to work directly on documents and communicate within groups—without needing to search through email chains in order to find the latest version of a file.

 

There’s a lack of transparency between accountant and client

If you are struggling to maintain efficient communication with your clients, it could be a clear sign that there is a lack of transparency—which will need to be dealt with effectively.

It is also important to be able to deal with the large files needing to be stored and shared. If you are unable to manage this effectively, clients will become frustrated, you will be unproductive and important deadlines (for instance, annual accounts and tax returns) may be missed.

If it has become difficult to manage communication, documentation and to keep your clients up to date on the overall project progress—it’s clear that your firm needs a scalable collaboration solution.

Collaboration tools encourage transparency between accountants and their clients by offering open collaboration within a secure solution. You’re able to upload a document, request feedback from the client and get it approved easily and efficiently, with no room for miscommunication.

 

Efficient Collaboration For Everyone

So, collaboration tools have been developed in order to solve these problems that organisations may be facing, including your accounting firm. 

These cloud-based solutions are inexpensive and relatively easy to implement, and offer support from a third-party vendor to manage the installation, maintenance and updates—with no IT personnel or training required on your company’s side.

So what are you waiting for? Not only will a collaboration tool benefit your business, your clients and team members will also experience increased productivity, engagement and satisfaction.

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