Receipt Bank shepherds clients with push notifications
As Making Tax Digital ushers in an era of greater client shepherding, Receipt Bank is the latest software application to adopt automatic push notifications and item messaging to allow accountants to nudge clients into submitting receipts on time.
AccountingWEB has recently seen software such as mTrio (as seen in our practice software challenge) and CCH OneClick use push notifications technology, which is commonplace with smartphone apps like Facebook and WhatsApp.
Now Receipt Bank has updated its Practice Platform - a dashboard that tracks data such as workload and client engagement - with smartphone communication partially driven by machine learning.
Steve Lucas, Receipt Bank’s customer experience manager told AccountingWEB that the new feature was developed following feedback from Receipt Bank partners looking to improve their bookkeeping efficiencies. “The major pain point for our partners is going back and forth on email chasing clients,” Lucas said. “Chasing paperwork can take a lot of capacity and creates a lot of retrospective bookkeeping.”
The major pain point for our partners is going back and forth on email chasing clients. Chasing paperwork can take a lot of capacity and creates a lot of retrospective bookkeeping.
Push notifications
The practice platform feature takes two different forms: the item messaging element allows the accountant or bookkeeper to gain the attention of their client with a manually initiated push notification appearing on their smartphone. The accountant or bookkeeper tailors the message based on a specific item.
The second aspect prompts the client with a notification based on pattern recognition to move them away from their receipt-hoarding habits. Powered by machine learning, the push notification looks for patterns, and alerts the user when they should submit items based on their previous activity. For example, the algorithm realises if the client takes regular business trips.
The client delay metric measures the time the client takes from when the receipt was generated to when it was uploaded to Receipt Bank. Armed with this information, the practice platform can pre-emptively encourage the end user to submit receipts.
When the user swipes the notification they will be taken to the receipt and message in question. As seen in the example below, accountants can discuss any submitted item in conversation thread, where the client can reply.
Making Tax Digital
Receipt Bank said the upgrade was predicated on reducing the client chasing time. However, the automation aspect of push notifications and the manual item messaging looks to play a role in how accountants can influence their clients under the Making Tax Digital regime.
Lucas recognised that the push notification technology will be useful as more accountants process in the cloud. “As a lot of accountants move online, they will look for an efficient way to streamline communication.”
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My verdict
Push notifications are set as default for a lot of smartphone apps, so it seems a smart move for accounting tools to embrace this trend. But push notifications are far from the silver bullet in client chasing. Recent data from Kahuna, as reported by the Andrew Chen, the head of rider growth at Uber, shows that over 60% of users opt out of push notifications. The reason is simple: people don't like being constantly hassled by irrelevant social media updates and alerts However, the same research shows that users are more engaged where the notifications are time-sensitive, valuable and relevant – as Making Tax Digital will undoubtedly demonstrate, users will likely appreciate the timely reminder to submit their invoices in the same way they engage with the best performing opt-in rates industries, such as notifications from ride sharing apps like Uber (79%). For accountants and the end user, the value of push notifications will become more evident in the coming years, but for it to work the accountant will have to work hard to convince the client of the relevance and value of the information. |
Do you think the notifications will help dull the MTD axe and assist you in corralling clients’ information?
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Replies (23)
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It would be great to have access to the client messaging and the push notifications, but it looks (from Receipts Bank's slightly opaque method of advertising this) like they are only available through their Practice Platform service, which I remember as being quite expensive. Having said that, I just tried to look up the current price and can't find it easily on the Receipt Bank web site. Can anyone give me a link to a page with the price on?
Thanks (0)@chatman - funny that, no clear pricing.
Practice platform is or was last month £25 plus vat per user.
While technology greatly simplifies our work in many respects I see this as overkill and as suggested above many of my clients would get p*ssed off with constant text/email notifications - the Receipt Bank daily report notifications (which you need to turn off) are OTT.
Far better to communicate with/train clients more efficiently. A monthly list of missing documents/unreconciled bank transactions is in my opinion a more efficient use of time and a better way of communicating with clients in a personalised way.
Bookkeeping is a necessary evil. Far better to look to add value to the service you provide in better ways.
Thanks (2)I tried one invoice on a trial and it took a day and a half. Quicker to drive in to town scan it, come back, have tea, watch tv, go to bed, have breakfast, read the paper and enter it manually.
Thanks (0)The advantage for many people is that they can get other work done during that day and a half.
Thanks (1)That's useful. What we need to do is make everything take longer so we can get other things done. Like maybe a half an hour to boil kettle!
It took so long I forgot about it and it was wrong anyway.
Thanks (0)Hmmm, sounds like user error...
Thanks (1)Yes, must have been. Hold a phone up to a piece of paper and press scan.
Thanks (0).
Thanks (0)Thanks Kent. I didn't realise the notifications were daily. I thought they were monthly.
I like the idea of being able to query an invoice directly from the portal though, rather than writing an email from scratch downloading the document, attaching it to the email and then remembering to check for responses to the email.
Thanks (0)You can adjust the frequency of the notifications.
As I only use AutoEntry/ReceiptBank in conjunction with Xero I tend to export the Xero bank rec and cut and paste the unreconciled transactions into the body of an email (or a spreadsheet if there are a lot) and send to the client.
Maybe I should just print out the unreconciled items, jump in my car and go and visit the client instead - perhaps I've been missing something...
Thanks (1)@Kent Accountant - In case you hadn't seen this, last year we added an Uncoded statement lines report that creates a PDF formatted report of all the uncoded lines you'd like a client to comment / explain and it also provides them with a text box in the PDF document to do that.
https://help.xero.com/uk/BankAccounts_UncodedStatementLines
Regards,
Gary Turner
Managing Director, Xero
@garyturner
Thanks (0)Thanks Gary I had missed that. I do find it pretty easy to download to excel and cut and paste to an email or just forward the excel file.
Excel file is preferred option for bigger clients especially with more queries. I also prefer the layout of the bank rec report.
Thanks (0)I struggle to recommend Receipt Bank as a solution to clients. We trialled the service for a while and ended up getting charged during that period and the customer service was horrendous. On top of that the software is not infallible.
Thanks (1)Receipt Bank is far from infallible; you need to check the work, but it is still quicker than inputting it all yourself.
I agree about the customer service though. They can be incredibly rude and unhelpful.
Thanks (1)Yes, very arrogant and condescending.
Which is why I've moved to AutoEntry.
Thanks (1)Do they do scanning?
Thanks (0)Yes purchase invoices, sales invoices and bank statements
Thanks (1)I think you're missing the point here, which is not how much of Receipt Bank's time it takes, but how much of your time it takes. Even if it takes a week for Receipt Bank to do it, it is not taking up your time or that of your staff.
If you had to wait half an hour for your kettle to boil, rather than 15 minutes, what more could you fit into your day? Nothing as far as I can see.
If Receipt Bank is processing receipts that would take you or your staff several hours to process, then you or they could do several hours work in the mean time.
Simples.
Thanks (0)A bit inconvenient if you are up against a deadline. Like I said previously my attempt came out incorrect/incomplete but that may have been due to a slightly faint invoice.
That in itself isn't rare due to old printer cartridge/sun bleaching is it.
Thanks (0)Me too, but it feels incredibly inefficient, especially when they don't answer them all in one go. I'd much prefer to be able to send a message from within Xero that gives them a link back to that particular transaction so they amend it or write something in the "Discuss" box.
In Receipt Bank, I would like to be able to send them, from within Receipt Bank, a message with a link to, or a copy of, the document in question together with my question and a somewhere for them to respond to my question directly.
For either service, it would be easy to then have a list of unanswered questions, to make follow up easy.
Thanks (0)That makes sense.
Has it been requested as an upgrade by anyone on the Xero forum?
Thanks (0)Yes, it won't help if you have a very tight deadline, but hopefully most of one's work is not against a very tight deadline.
Thanks (0)I don't know.
Thanks (0)