We’re often asked ‘is AccountancyManager customisable?’ Think of AccountancyManager like play-doh. It may start off looking the same for everyone, but check back once they’ve added some personalisation and creative flair… Each system will be unique to each practice – and better than how it began.
“We’re often surprised by what our users create by using AM in their own way.”
– Rachel, Support Lead at AccountancyManager
When we say ‘it works out of the box’, that’s because AccountancyManager will work straight away. But when you tweak the system to suit your practice and processes, AM becomes all the more powerful.
“When you buy something ‘off the shelf’ it might work straight away, but you have to change your processes around it. The key is to customise your software around your existing workflows.”
– Matthew McConnell, Certax – Durham
Mould AccountancyManager to your practice
Once you’ve uploaded all your clients onto the system, the fun begins.
With every tweak you make, AccountancyManager transforms into your very own automation machine and X-ray goggles in one: automating your existing processes and opening up invaluable sight-lines across your practice.
“We only discovered AccountancyManager a week ago and already it has become the most fundamental part of our business. Internally we refer to it as the “Control Centre” of our operations.”
– Rezaul, Assurance Accountancy Ltd
‘Switch on’ your practice’s services
In your Account Settings, you choose which services to switch on. We’ve included the main services already, such as Accounts, Bookkeeping, CT600 Return, VAT Returns etc. and you can add your own, whenever you like.
These services control several functions, like generating tasks for your staff based on your clients’ accounting deadlines (or your own) and sending automated emails and texts to your clients.
You can also choose to hide areas of AM if you don’t plan on using that functionality yet. This means you won’t see pages and options that don’t relate to you. However, unlike play-doh which turns brown, AccountancyManager works best when you use every part – and doesn’t cost any extra.
Set client-specific fee structures
Assign fees to your services and AM will use these to create proposal emails and track your practice’s profitability. The customisation goes further by letting you add your own Fee Structures to apply to any specific client.
Give staff appropriate permissions
Decide which information different staff can see in AccountancyManager by customising their access. You can hide other users’ clients (handy if you outsource some work), invoicing, chargeable rates and control the hours your team can log into AM.
Onboarding: Your process, just quicker.
Replicate your existing process on AM
Proposals, letters of engagement, professional clearances, AML ID checks, credit checks, agent authorisations… welcoming a client is hard, time-consuming work. So manage it all automatically with tasks, deadlines and emails generated by AccountancyManager.
“Getting proposals to potential clients is a dream once you have everything configured/customised to your way of working – 5 minutes after talking to a prospect you can have a full proposal with T&C’s in their inbox.”
– Wendy B., review on Capterra
Get to know your clients better with custom fields
If you want to capture and record extra information about your clients, you can add your own custom fields.
These will then show up in the client file – under the section you’ve chosen.
Kickstart the whole process with one button
When you welcome a new client, you can click one button and all the tasks that need to be completed will be added to your (or your team’s) task list. You can easily track progress on the Task List and see all communications between your practice and the client on the Client Timeline.
Read our full article on onboarding with AccountancyManager.
Tasks: Plan your day, your way.
Create your own tasks
As well as automated tasks, you can also create your own ad hoc tasks and deadlines for any non-compliance work or internal projects. These can be recurring or one-off.
New feature: Set internal deadlines with Target Dates
Now, as well as external deadlines, you can also set internal deadlines – you can do this manually, or allow AccountancyManager to automate the process of setting target dates. Either based off X number of days after the ‘period end’ or ‘records received’. This gives you an extra level of control over your time, helping you prepare early and get ahead of deadlines.
When you create a new Task (or edit an automated Task) simply set your ‘external’ Deadline and now, ‘internal’ Target Date. You can then filter your Task List based on these internal deadlines.
Assign tasks to specific people
Each task is assigned to a member of staff (Task Manager), along with a partner or overseer (monitor). So you know exactly who is responsible every step of the way.
“We can prioritise our work schedule and assign different work tasks to each employee.”
– Mantas V – review of AM on Capterra
Pick your favourite Task List view
Your Task List can be filtered in a lot of different ways, to bring the right tasks to the top of your to-do list. Everyone will have their own favourite order – the default list you see whenever you log in. So set the default filter on your Task List to view it by what is important to you.
Break tasks down into steps
To make your workflow and tasks even more detailed, you can create Task Breakdown Templates. These are saved sets of steps for tasks, which you can quickly add to a task. Great for making tasks more manageable or to guarantee the right processes are followed.
For one-off checklists for tasks, just click the task in the task list and enter your steps.
Read our full article on tasks and target dates.
Automated emails & texts: Send highly tailored messages
Over 40 editable templates – and the option to create your own
We’ve saved over 40 templates for emails you send regularly, including proposal and invoice emails, record requests and tax payment reminders. You could use these templates as they are, but we recommend editing them and adding your personal voice.
Give your clients the personal touch
You might have generic emails that suit all clients – or you might tailor emails to certain groups of clients.
“Some practices have different foreign language templates for certain clients, or create their own Records Request emails for specific clients.”
– Rachel, Support Lead at AccountancyManager
Automated – but entirely controlled by you
AccountancyManager will take care of pulling the right information into emails and texts and sending them to the right clients at the right time. Exactly when and how often these emails are sent, is up to you.
Read our full article on automated client emails and texts.
Make the portal look like part of your website
Your clients can log into their online portal (which technically sits on AccountancyManager) through your website. Once in the portal, it just looks like part of your website, with your logo and brand colours. It’s almost like you’ve created it yourself… A seamless experience for your clients and not bad for your reputation.
“We love the document sharing portal!!! E-signatures are amazing :D”
– Alana I. – Review of AccountancyManager on Capterra
Give your clients what they need
You can design your portal around your clients. Do they just need somewhere to store and sign documents? Or would they benefit from a full-blown CRM system? The portal can be used as either.
Create custom online forms
Gone are the days of painstakingly building forms in Word. Now whenever you need certain information from your clients, simply create a form in AccountancyManager. Then your clients can fill them in online, with no need to download or re-upload.
Add your branding to invoices
It’s a small thing, but having your details and logo on all your invoices is professionalism 101.
Design your own personal experience
As well as practice-wide customisations, you can shape AM to suit your personal working style too. In My Settings you can choose when AM should open up a new tab depending on where in the system you are and choose which email notifications you want to receive – on job progress for example.
As well as picking your favourite default view of the Task List, you can do the same with your Client List. You can also save bookmarks of filtered sections of data to refer to anytime, this is Liston’s (on our support team) favourite thing about AM, so deserves an article of its own – watch this space.
“Signing up to AccountancyManager has been one of the best decisions our practice has ever made. After adapting generic CRM systems to the best of our abilities, AM has been a breath of fresh air and is improving week on week.”
– Clare, Tax Kings
