Gone are the days of printing and mailing out documents to clients to review and sign. As more and more firms work with clients remotely, it’s important to have a secure and efficient method of exchanging documents online. A cloud-based secure client portal is a key tool that all accounting firms need to enable this.
What is a client portal
In essence, a client portal is a secure channel or hub for sharing and managing sensitive and confidential information between accountants and their clients. A client portal offers greater security than simply emailing documents or sending documents via less secure online tools. It can also be more efficient and cost effective than spending time and money on printing and mailing documents back and forth with clients, as everything happens digitally, with just a few clicks.
Efficiency of workflow
A client portal offers many efficiency benefits. For example, accountants can view the status of documents within the portal to see if a client has opened or signed the document. Reminders to review or sign documents can be fully automated, thus minimising the need for follow up calls and emails. Automated notifications can also alert accountants when a client has added or amended a document into their portal.
Client Portal software that is integrated with your Tax return software or Document Management software can enable a more seamless end-to-end compliance workflow. With an integrated software solution, it can be just a few clicks to get a tax return sent, signed and saved securely against your client or job. This also makes it easy to view all documents relating to a job or client and retrieve these documents in future years.
