These are all features that we built out because we couldn’t already find them in the market.

That said, the other solutions on this list have their advantages and may be more suitable in certain circumstances. Here’s what you should know to determine which option is right for you.

• Keeper
• Canopy
• Jetpack Workflow
• Uncat
• Botkeeper

Best Bookkeeping Practice Management Software

1. Keeper: Best Bookkeeping Practice Management Software

Keeper is the best bookkeeping practice management software on the market in 2025, providing a supremely well-rounded solution specifically for accountants and bookkeepers.

It includes features designed to help streamline many different aspects of your operation, including:

• File review and closing: Keeper facilitates a faster month-end close by automatically highlighting potentially miscoded transactions. It also has two-way integration with QuickBooks Online (QBO) and Xero, meaning updates in Keeper adjust the client’s QBO or Xero file and vice versa.
• Management reporting: Keeper can generate reports summarizing the data your clients care about most in just four clicks, including financial statements, an executive financial summary, noteworthy accounts, graphs of key performance indicators (KPIs), and AP and AR aging reports.
• Client communication: Instead of emailing back and forth, Keeper lets you communicate with clients on the platform. Both parties can comment directly on transactions, instant message, and send automated text or email reminders. Clients can also sign in using magic links, with no need to remember a password.
• Workflow management: Keeper includes task management tools to help organize your team’s efforts. You can create and automate workflow templates, tag tasks to help prioritize them, and communicate internally with the same chat and comment features used to collaborate with clients.
• Client relationships management (CRM): Keeper stores all your client information in one place, helping you monitor and maintain your relationships. The CRM dashboard shows monthly close statuses, open transaction questions, chats, assigned staff, and more for each client.
• Document management: You can use Keeper to request and organize all your client’s key documents, including receipts, invoices, 1099s, and W-9s. Keeper’s artificial intelligence (AI) can also automatically extract and process the information in them.

Despite being packed with features, Keeper’s prices are relatively low, starting at just $8 per user, per month. The only notable downside to the platform is that there can be a steep learning curve due to the depth and breadth of its tools.

Book a demo with Keeper.

2. Canopy

Canopy is another great example of well-rounded bookkeeping practice management software that contains a variety of features capable of streamlining multiple aspects of your operation. Similar to Keeper, that includes tools to facilitate:

• Client interaction
• Workflow management
• Relationship management
• Document management

The primary reason we prefer Keeper to Canopy is that Canopy lacks tools to help facilitate actual bookkeeping tasks, like highlighting transactions that need your attention or generating key financial reports for clients.

Canopy also has a higher cost floor than Keeper and other competitors on this list, with the cheapest subscription starting at $150 per month.

However, Canopy does include some features Keeper lacks, which can make it a better fit for some, especially if they don’t care about bookkeeping automation. Most notably, that includes tools that support:

Tax resolution: Canopy can capture data from prospective tax resolution clients using questionnaire templates and IRS transcript access, then auto-populate the appropriate forms to file. It can also guide you step-by-step through multiple types of tax resolution cases and calculate penalties and payment plans.

Time tracking and billing: Canopy includes a time tracking feature that integrates with its billing tool, allowing you to track your hours down to the minute, generate invoices, and collect payment from your clients seamlessly through the platform.

If you’re trying to choose between Keeper and Canopy, the decision will typically depend on whether your practice focuses on bookkeeping work or tax services.

Keeper is often superior for bookkeepers, while Canopy may be a better practice manager for tax professionals or a tax-focused CPA firm.

Get a demo of Canopy.

3. Jetpack Workflow

As you might have guessed from the brand name, Jetpack Workflow focuses primarily on workflow automation and management.

Rather than incorporating other accounting practice management features into its software solution, it doubles down on optimizing that function.

As a result, its workflow dashboard and features may feel more refined than some of those you’ll see in other solutions that spend resources diversifying into other processes. For example, here are some of the ways it stands out:

Intuitive interface: Jetpack’s user interface is uncluttered and easy to understand due to the lack of other features. As a result, it has a shallow learning curve, and you should be able to incorporate it into your systems relatively easily.

“Plan” feature: Jetpack’s unique Plan feature provides uniquely granular insight into your team’s outstanding tasks, including a visual overview of their workloads, deadlines, and capacity. It’s designed to help you recognize who is overburdened and who is underutilized, then reassign work as needed.

Unlimited storage: Jetpack can support an unlimited number of clients, contacts, and documents, no matter the subscription tier. You never have to pay for extra storage or usage, only additional users.

While there are benefits to doubling down on one function, the flipside is that Jetpack focuses on workflows to the exclusion of virtually everything else.

Unlike Keeper and Canopy, which are all-in-one solutions, Jetpack is best for those who already have tools in place for other aspects of practice management and just want to add a workflow management tool to their accounting tech stack.

Schedule a demo of Jetpack Workflow.

4. Uncat

Like Jetpack, Uncat has a more limited scope than Keeper or Canopy, but rather than focusing on workflow management, it prioritizes file review features and document management features designed to streamline your day-to-day client work.

It separates these into three categories, which it refers to as:

• Uncat Transactions: Like Keeper’s file review tools, these features help you identify and correct problems in each client’s books. That includes the ability to automatically aggregate uncategorized transactions in the software for cleanup and sync the changes back to your client’s bookkeeping file.
• Uncat Requests: Uncat lets you request important documents from clients through the platform, including 1099s, bank statements, receipts, and W-9s. Clients receive a magic link they can use to sign into your portal with one click and upload their documents. You can also customize the appearance of the portal to fit your brand.
• Uncat Receipts: Uncat Receipts lets multiple clients submit receipts through the platform, email, or text message. Once captured, it can also parse the documents and link them with the appropriate transactions.

Uncat may be a good fit if you’re looking to plug file review and document management tools into your existing tech stack. It also has a slight edge over Keeper in that it supports two-way syncing with QB Desktop in addition to QBO and Xero.

However, its file review features aren’t quite as robust as Keeper’s, as they’re limited to highlighting uncategorized transactions. It also costs a dollar more per client, per month.

Start a free trial of Uncat.

5. Botkeeper

Botkeeper is another holistic accounting practice management software option, designed to streamline as many aspects of your bookkeeping or accounting firm as possible.

That includes file reviews, document management, relationship management, and workflow management.

It breaks its offerings down into 12 distinct features. Here’s how they work:

• Smart Connect: Connect directly to your client’s bank and credit card accounts, providing real-time access to their transactions and most recent statements.
• Transaction Manager: Automatically categorize transactions using machine learning. If the software isn’t sure, a human Botkeeper accountant will step in. Only when that fails will they reach out to you.
• Auto Bank Rec: Like most modern accounting software, Botkeeper can automate the bank reconciliation process so you don’t have to do it by hand.
• Documents: This is Botkeeper’s document management tool, which allows you to securely request and store your client’s sensitive paperwork in organized digital folders.
• Work: Formerly called Task Manager, this is a to-do list that tracks the responsibilities assigned to you, your clients, and Botkeeper.
• Password Manager: Botkeeper’s platform includes a tool for securely requesting, saving, and sharing client log-in credentials.
• User and Client Management: You can control what clients and team members have access to on Botkeeper, allowing you to customize roles and protect sensitive client data.
• Transaction Insights: Each month-end close, this tool provides a summary of how many transactions you, the client, Botkeeper’s accounting professionals, and the software handled. For auto-categorized transactions, it also estimates how confident the software was in its treatment.
• Bot Review: Botkeeper automatically searches through the general ledger for 13 different types of exceptional transactions that may need further attention.
• Activity Hub: This is Botkeeper’s relationship management and client communication feature, which aggregates comments across the entire platform.
• Journal Entry Automation: When you upload loan documents into Botkeeper, it can automatically generate journal entries and post them to QBO or Xero.
• Close Tracker: This is another type of project management software that helps you keep track of the status of each client’s month-end close.

Like the other comprehensive platforms on this list, Botkeeper may have a steep learning curve. However, all plans come with some amount of onboarding support, which can make adoption easier for bookkeeping, accounting, and CPA firms.

Unfortunately, there’s no free trial, so you have to pay to try out the software and see if you like it, which starts at $69 per license, per month.

Sign up for Botkeeper.

The post Best Bookkeeping Practice Management Software in 2025 appeared first on Keeper.

What Is Uncategorized Income?

Uncategorized income refers to income that has been recognized in accounting or bookkeeping software without being assigned to a specific account, such as Product Sales, dividends, or interest earnings.

Uncategorized income typically appears on the books when accounting software imports a deposit from a bank account or payment processor that it can’t match with an income category.

For example, that could happen because the payment comes from a new customer or payment processor.

As a bookkeeper or accountant, fixing uncategorized income is a routine part of cleanup and catch-up projects.

While it doesn’t distort the bottom line, uncategorized income does obscure revenue data, and it must be corrected before the financial statements are suitable to be used for financial planning or sharing with prospective lenders or investors.

QuickBooks Example

Say you have a bookkeeping client who uses QuickBooks to organize their accounting records. They generally collect each customer's payment via Stripe, but they switch to PayPal to accommodate more customers.

Since their QuickBooks hasn’t seen any deposits come from PayPal or that customer before, it doesn’t know which account to match their bill payment to, so it ends up appearing on the profit and loss (P&L) statement as Uncategorized Income.

How To Fix Uncategorized Income in QuickBooks Online

Fixing uncategorized income in QuickBooks Online (QBO) is often a tedious and time-consuming process, especially when you’re cleaning up the records of a company with high deposit volumes.

Since QBO doesn’t offer a convenient way to edit transactions in bulk, you have to track down and correct every uncategorized deposit individually. Even if you know immediately how to reclassify them, the time it takes to do each one can add up quickly.

Here’s how the process works:

1.Generate report: QBO doesn’t provide a convenient way to track down uncategorized transactions, so you typically have to generate a report to identify them for a given period. For example, you can do so through the P&L or general ledger.

2. Drill down into the account: After creating a report for the period you’re fixing, click on the Uncategorized Income account total to pull up a list of deposits assigned to the category during the period.

3. Drill down into a transaction: From the list of Uncategorized income deposits, click on the first one you want to fix to pull up the details of the transaction.

4. Review the transaction details: The transaction’s description, total amount, source, and other details can help you determine where it belongs.

5. Reclassify the transaction: Change the transaction’s account from Uncategorized Income to the correct category, such as Product Sales, Consulting Fees, or Interest Income.

6. Save and exit: QBO won’t remember that you updated the financial transaction to the appropriate account unless you save it before exiting. 

7. Repeat steps 3–6 for each transaction: Exiting the transaction will take you back to the list of deposits assigned to Uncategorized Income for the period, where you can repeat the reclassification process for each one.

If you can’t determine where a bank deposit belongs, fixing its category becomes even more laborious, as you’ll need to consult the client first. Since QBO’s platform doesn’t facilitate convenient communication with them, you typically have to go back and forth via email.

Unfortunately, many clients take days to respond to transaction inquiries, if they reply at all. You often need to send multiple reminders to get an answer, and even then, it may not be sufficiently comprehensive, requiring further rounds of emails for clarification.

Fixing Uncategorized Expenses

Fixing uncategorized expenses in QBO is a similar process to fixing uncategorized income. In fact, the steps are virtually identical, requiring you to generate a report, drill down into the uncategorized expense account, and update each individual transaction.

However, in practice, uncategorized expenses are more common than uncategorized deposits and more difficult to reclassify, making the correction process even more time-consuming. That’s primarily due to:

• Volume of expenses: Businesses often process more payments than deposits, so uncategorized expenses tend to pile up in the books more quickly than uncategorized income, even if the rate of misclassification is the same.
• Diversity of expenses: Businesses rarely sort their income into more than a handful of accounts, while expenses frequently cover a much broader range of potential categories.
• Complexity of expenses: Deposits typically represent a single source of income, while a business expense transaction is more likely to involve multiple costs bundled together.

Given the nature of uncategorized expenses, it’s beneficial to clear them out frequently. You might be able to let uncategorized deposits accumulate for a few months without consequence, but uncategorized expenses should be fixed monthly, at least.

Fixing Uncategorized Assets

Mechanically, fixing uncategorized assets in QBO is much the same as fixing uncategorized income or expenses.

The only practical difference is that the Uncategorized Asset is a balance sheet account, so you may have to generate a different financial statement to identify them.

However, transactions typically get assigned to the Uncategorized Asset account for a specific reason. Namely, when it picks up a transaction in your bank feed that’s described as a transfer, especially to an account that isn’t connected to your QBO.

For example, say you transfer $2,000 from your checking account to your savings account, but only the checking account syncs to your QuickBooks file. In that case, QBO would likely classify the transaction as an Uncategorized Asset.

Making sure all your client’s accounts are connected to QBO can help prevent this issue, as it enables the software to match the transactions across accounts and more easily identify them as two sides of a cash transfer.

You can also establish rules to help QBO categorize transactions correctly going forward, but it won’t fix the backlog you already have.

QuickBooks rules are also far from foolproof, and uncategorized transactions can still slip through the cracks due to slight variations in the bank or payment processing feed.

The New Way: Fixing Uncategorized Income in Keeper

If you’re tired of the repetitive, manual processes of QBO, Keeper can help you fix uncategorized income deposits in a much more efficient way. It’s loaded with features designed to streamline the file review and cleanup process, including:

• Automatic transaction highlights: Keeper flags uncategorized income and other potentially problematic transactions for you automatically, so you don’t have to comb through reports hunting for them.
• Batch transaction edits: Instead of forcing you to update every transaction individually, Keeper lets you edit them en masse, significantly reducing the time and effort it takes to assign multiple transactions to an appropriate category.
• Local client communication: Keeper lets you attach questions to specific transactions and send automatic reminders to unresponsive clients, so you can stop going back and forth via email and start communicating in the same place where you do your work.
• Two-way QuickBooks syncing: Any updates you make to your client’s books in the Keeper app automatically sync to your client’s QBO or Xero file and vice versa, ensuring accurate financial records on both ends.

In addition, Keeper’s Receipts feature uses artificial intelligence to study your historical transactions, greatly enhancing its automatic categorization capabilities and reducing the number of uncategorized transactions that arise in the first place.

Project Management and Team Assignments

In addition to facilitating the fixing of uncategorized transactions, Keeper contains features designed to streamline your entire bookkeeping process, including robust project management tools. Some of its most notable capabilities include:

• Reusable workflow templates: Keeper lets you create reusable workflow patterns for recurring bookkeeping tasks. These help ensure all work is done consistently and efficiently.
• Task tagging and assignments: You can assign specific tasks and subtasks of a project to certain team members and add tags to help them filter and prioritize their responsibilities.
• Local team collaboration tools: The same features that make communicating with clients on Keeper more efficient can help enhance collaboration with your team members, including instant messenger and the ability to attach comments and questions to individual transactions.

Best of all, these features are integrated directly into your Keeper dashboard, so you don’t have to juggle multiple apps or tabs like you would with an external project management solution.

Bank Account and Merchant Processing Reconciliation

Account reconciliation is another fundamental bookkeeping task that Keeper can help make significantly more efficient, whether you need to reconcile bank accounts, credit cards, or merchant processing systems.

Not only does Keeper support the process directly on its platform—with a full sync back to your client’s QBO or Xero file—but it also includes features that help keep your account reconciliations organized and make it easy to review their status.

Some of those features include:

• Automatic addition to workflows: When you add a new client to Keeper, the software automatically creates an account reconciliation task for each of its bank account and credit card feeds.
• Transaction filters by reconciliation status: When you drill down into an account reconciliation task, you can open a ledger of all the transactions it contains and filter them by their status as uncleared, cleared but not reconciled, or reconciled.
• Timestamped account balances: Keeper lets you add timestamped account balances to reconciliation tasks, making it easy to find accounts whose balances have changed since you last reconciled them.

If you have a bookkeeping client with multiple related business entities, Keeper can even help you complete intercompany reconciliations by displaying account balances from other QuickBooks files.

The Importance of Categorizing Income Correctly for Financial Reports

Allowing uncategorized income items to accumulate on a client’s books may not affect their net earnings, but it distorts their revenue data and significantly diminishes the value of their P&L for strategic and financial planning.

After all, revenue growth is a key performance indicator (KPI) for many businesses, and analyzing it is often essential for making informed decisions.

For example, your clients may want to know how each revenue stream performs to help them determine which products or services are most profitable and where to allocate their sales and marketing resources.

Categorizing income correctly is even more important if your client intends to share their financial reports with external stakeholders, such as prospective lenders or investors.

These third parties expect to see clean, accurate, and up-to-date financial statements, and having uncategorized income on the P&L won’t instill much confidence in your client’s financial reporting or management.

Common Mistakes in Classifying Uncategorized Transactions

Classifying uncategorized transactions may seem like a straightforward process, but it’s easy to make mistakes that significantly reduce your efficiency, especially in combination. Here are some common ones to avoid:

• Using software inefficiently: Whatever bookkeeping software you use, make sure you learn to fully utilize its capabilities. For example, automation tools like bank feed rules and recurring workflow templates can save you time and effort.
• Failing to connect all accounts to software: Connecting all of your client’s accounts to their bookkeeping solution ensures you have a comprehensive picture of their finances and helps the software prevent uncategorized assets.
• Not knowing when to ask clients for info: Repeatedly asking your client about an uncategorized transaction when you don’t need to can damage the relationship, but spinning your wheels for too long is a waste of time. It’s essential to develop a sense for balancing these competing needs.

Developing effective bookkeeping systems is the best way to avoid mistakes like these. For example, consider following a consistent onboarding routine, transaction categorization workflow, and client check-in process.

Speed Up Month-End Close With Keeper

Keeper is a comprehensive bookkeeping practice management software designed to streamline the month-end. We built it to provide bookkeepers and accountants with a single platform where they can complete all their work in record time.

• Some of Keeper’s most powerful features include:
• Two-way syncing with QBO and Xero
• Personalized workflow templates to facilitate file reviews
• Automatic highlighting of uncategorized banking transactions
• A custom-branded client portal with magic sign-in links
• Built-in communication tools that facilitate collaboration
• Digital receipt capture, storage, and organization software
• Integrated project management and task assignment tools

Schedule a demo with one of our experts to test-drive Keeper’s powerful software and learn how you can use it to close your clients’ books in half the time.

The post Uncategorized Income Explained: The Ultimate Bookkeeper’s Guide appeared first on Keeper.

Popular practice management solutions often integrate with accounting platforms like QuickBooks or Xero.  

Features such as automated reminders, secure portals, and customizable reporting make it easier to stay on top of tasks while saving time.  

This helps manage client workflows, track KPIs, and catch accounting errors—all in one place.

With so many options out there, how do you choose the best practice management software to transform your bookkeeping success?

If you’re curious about practice management software, let’s explore everything you need to know to help you make the best choice for your firm.

How Practice Management Software Works

Accounting and bookkeeping practice management software is designed to centralize and automate a majority of accounting functions. With this, your team can spend less time on data entry and more time on value-added work.

For example, Keeper’s practice management software integrates with QuickBooks and Xero so you can sync client data, transactions, and reports in one click. 

The software will feature a central dashboard where you can view all client communications, track projects, and review financials. 

Automated reminders and alerts also help keep you on top of deadlines and follow-ups so nothing falls through the cracks with your clients. 

Most practice management systems also offer task management features. This could include:

• Creating recurring or one-off tasks
• Assigning them to team members
• Tracking task progression/completion 
• Categorizing tasks with tags and sections
• Advanced workflow management features across multiple clients

Keeper also stands out as one of the few practice management systems that can automatically catch and correct common input errors in your client’s books. 

For example, by reviewing P&L reports at the vendor level, you can standardize reviews across your firm. 

By automating the routine tasks carried out by accounting firms daily, practice management software can help: 

• Reduce the number of errors
• Save time spent on mundane activities
• Boost the bottom line 

This helps your business grow and manage more clients with time. 

Bookkeeping-Specific Features

Now, let’s explore the unique features that make Keeper’s practice management system the best for bookkeeping firms.

CRM

Keeper’s CRM is designed to make client management easy for bookkeeping and accounting firms.

With a personal dashboard, you can see and manage all client information in one place.

Whether it’s tracking monthly closes or open transaction questions, Keeper gives you a clear view of your entire client list so your team can stay on top of everything.

Custom client properties let you organize information to fit your firm’s workflow. You can filter, hide, and save views to find what you need, whenever you need it. 

Keeper rewards you with a super personalized client management experience for your team.

Keeper also integrates with your existing tech stack via Zapier integrations. 

You can seamlessly update your client list when a proposal is signed or trigger actions across all connected platforms if something changes in Keeper.

From task management and client communication to file reviews tools all in one app, Keeper’s CRM keeps your firm connected in all the right ways, allowing you to focus on what matters most: your clients.

File Review

Bookkeeping and accounting firms can review their clients’ books faster and with more accuracy using Keeper’s file review feature.

It eliminates the need for manual checks by automatically identifying errors, inconsistent expenses, and uncategorized transactions—saving you from surprises during the month-end close.

If you choose Keeper as your practice management software, you can also say goodbye to tab switching and tool jumping. 

Scale your month-end close process up to 3x faster using the consolidated and unified dashboard. Plus, every correction made in Keeper syncs back with QuickBooks Online and Xero. 

Keeper’s file review enables more visibility by:

• Reviewing P&L reports at the vendor level
• Drilling down into individual transactions 
• Seeing cost drivers and variances without opening Excel

Keeper’s tools also show transactions coded to parent accounts, tax inconsistencies, and other anomalies so nothing gets missed.

Finally, custom-saved search reports allow your team to customize reviews for maximum operational efficiency. 

Every change is tracked in the Client Portal, providing your team with a clear audit trail and reducing errors during file review. This ensures accurate financial insights while freeing up review time for higher value work.

Client Portal

Keeper’s custom-branded Client Portal is designed to simplify client communication for bookkeeping and accounting firms while housing client records in one common place.

Bid farewell to endless spreadsheets and emails—this central hub lets your clients respond to transaction questions, share documents, and view their financials in one place.

Asking questions is easy. You can send transaction questions directly from the bank feed.

When your clients respond, you can edit transactions in Keeper and they will auto-sync back to your accounting software.

With scheduled requests and automated email/text reminders, no question goes unanswered, and it saves you time on the back and forth.

Clients also love Keeper’s Magic Link login system which eliminates the need to remember passwords—just one click, and they’re in. 

Plus, with Keeper’s mobile app, clients can respond to questions, upload documents, and stay connected on the go.

The portal provides unlimited file storage to store receipts, other financial reports, and strengthen your overall document management. 

Pro-Tip: With custom branding and white labeling, you can host the portal on your domain with your firm’s colors and logo so it feels like an extension of your business.

Keeper’s Client Portal combines ease of use with bank-grade security, creating a secure modern solution that clients will actually use.

Project and Task Management

Keeper’s project and task management features are designed to change the way bookkeeping and accounting teams work.

Keeper allows you to create, organize, and track tasks while boosting your team's collaboration and productivity.

You can get started by:

• Creating workflow templates for recurring tasks like month-end, payroll, or administrative tasks
• Assigning recurring or one-off tasks to your team so everyone is on track with minimal effort
• Using tagging and client properties features to organize tasks in a way that makes sense for your firm

Using Keeper’s single client dashboard, you can track outstanding tasks, resolve bottlenecks, and mark completed work for managers to review instantly.

Features like internal commenting and in-app chat help get issues resolved quickly and efficiently. You can also use attachments to reduce confusion. 

Additionally, Keeper helps manage non-closing tasks like tax filings or bi-weekly payroll by creating schedules that assign work to your team. 

Within the interface, you can add more clarity by breaking down projects into sub-tasks, assigning users, and marking priority tasks.

Finally, you can use daily digest emails and starred tasks to keep everyone aligned so nothing gets missed. 

1099 Management

Say goodbye to the seasonal stress of January 1099 management with Keeper on your side. 

Keeper makes the whole process smoother, so you can manage vendor compliance year-round, not just at the last minute.

With Keeper’s Prepare 1099s Report, finding 1099-eligible vendors has never been easier. The system automatically excludes credit card transactions so you only see what matters.

For vendors missing W-9s, Keeper’s Client Portal lets you request them from your clients or the vendors themselves.

You can even add W-9 requests to your monthly workflow with the newly added vendors report to practice efficiency and stay ahead of the game.

Once a vendor submits their W-9, simply update it in Keeper, and it will instantly sync back to QuickBooks Online or Xero. 

When it’s time to file, export all 1099 data in your preferred file format to trusted platforms like Track1099 or Tax1099 for easy filing.

By managing 1099s as part of your workflow, Keeper saves your team time, reduces errors, and eliminates the last-minute stress so that you can be compliant without the hassle.

Report Creation and Management

Get financial reports your clients will read—and understand—with Keeper’s bookkeeping and accounting reporting tools.

Keeper connects to your client’s general ledger so you can generate a full financial report in four clicks. 

With Keeper’s Executive Summary, you can give your clients a quick snapshot of their financials, with visuals and key metrics to make it easy to digest. 

For example, a client looking for insights on their revenue cycle management can receive customized insights. 

Keeper’s Executive Summary includes:

• Space for commentary or notes on the report
• Profit & Loss vs prior periods
• Key metrics your clients care about
• Bar charts to show year-over-year performance
• Once published, management reports can be pushed to the Keeper Client Portal with one click.

Clients are notified and can access their financials. Reports are stored in the Portal for future reference.

Plus, you can customize even more aspects of the practice management software by tracking custom KPIs and metrics specific to your client’s business. 

With Keeper’s formula-based variables, these metrics update automatically as new data syncs from QuickBooks Online or Xero.

Hence, with Keeper’s streamlined report creation, customization, and management features, you can turn your financial reporting into a valuable, insightful experience. 

Ready to Simplify Your Practice Management?

It’s your time to streamline all your workflows, boost your team collaboration, and deliver exceptional value to your clients. 

This is where Keeper comes in.

Ready to see it in action? 

Book a demo today and discover how Keeper can transform your accounting firm.  

The post What Is Practice Management Software? appeared first on Keeper.

With that said, here are four concrete strategies for streamlining core accounting tasks to reach maximum efficiency. 

1. Integrate Your Task and Project Management

For many accountants, one of the biggest time drainers is simply spending too much time managing day-to-day tasks and big-picture projects. 

Say, for example, you assign someone on your accounting team an inventory or expenses task through a 3rd-party project management software like Asana or Trello. 

You have to jump back and forth between that platform and your accounting software to update those accounting tasks. This is incredibly inefficient and can lower productivity. 

However, using bookkeeping practice management software like Keeper lets you handle task management and project management from a single location. 

That way you can organize workflows in one place.

You can conveniently track the progress of your clients closing and non-closing tasks from start to finish for full visibility and tighter collaboration. By using internal chat features, you can work through problems quickly and attach files right from within the platform to ensure nothing is missed.

And by creating workflow templates, you can automate assigning tasks by re-applying them each month. 

Whether you’re dealing with expenses, inventory turnover, receivable turnover, payable turnover, or any other accounting processes, this feature keeps things organized while eliminating repetitive tasks that are common with manual accounting. 

2. Streamline Client Communication

Like anyone in financial services, ongoing communication with all your business clients is extremely important to the success of an accounting practice. But there comes a point when you have to ask, “How much time is wasted because of inefficient client communication?”

For many in the accounting industry, the number is uncomfortably high. 

Fortunately, we’re at a point where accounting automation can facilitate clear communication to ensure clients get the service they need without harming operational efficiency. 

Take, for instance, a custom-branded client portal. 

Here your accounting firm can manage all aspects of communication from a single, convenient location. You can centralize communication to ask questions and get responses, view financial data at a glance, and submit receipts and documents. 

Follow-ups can be streamlined by an accounting professional creating scheduled requests and automating messages to obtain important client information quickly and efficiently.  

And when it comes to the dreaded spreadsheets, they can be eliminated by asking questions about a transaction right from within the bank feed, with your work from those answers automatically being synced to QuickBooks Online or Xero for maximum efficiency.

3. Automate W-9 Collection and Follow-up

Here’s the scenario. Your outsourced accounting firm sends out W-9s to client vendors so you can report their financial records to the IRS. However, you encounter vendors who either don’t care or don’t respond to your accounting team. 

This is one of the most hated parts of an accountant or bookkeeper’s job and can put a serious strain on productivity. 

If you’ve ever found yourself in this situation, you’ll be happy to know that there’s now a way to automate W-9 gathering, as well as follow-up, which can save you a ton of time when you’re running accounting services. With bookkeeping workflow software, the platform will automatically determine which vendors have reached the 1099 threshold by analyzing financial transactions.

Once they’ve been identified, you can use the platform to quickly send out a request to reach out to them directly.

From there, you can easily track the progress from within the platform to see who’s completed their W-9 and who hasn’t. Keep in mind that you can either upload your own W-9 or use Keeper’s form-fill that generates a brand new one entirely for you.

Once the vendor has filled out the form, the information is automatically synced with QuickBooks Online or Xero, and it’s ready to go for far greater efficiency. 

4. Automate Financial Reporting

Producing accurate financial reporting on things like cash flow, assets, and expenses is critical to your finance team providing clients with high-level insights to guide their financial management decisions. 

However, generating and sharing this information with clients — especially in a way that’s easy for them to understand — is often easier said than done. And when you get “too much in the weeds” with a financial report, it can shave hours off your week. 

But this too is an area that can largely be automated for greater accounting efficiency. 

For instance, with Keeper, you can easily connect to your client’s ledger with just four clicks. 

You can then produce reports that are not only in-depth and measure what truly matters with assets and accounts but produce user-friendly reports with intuitive visuals. That way, your clients can make data-driven decisions without having to be data scientists. 

And rather than having to send financial reports through email or a different platform, your accounting firm can publish them directly through a client portal with a single click. 

If you’ve ever run into problems efficiently producing timely, accurate reports and found that it takes up more time than it should, this technology can be a breakthrough. 

Work More Efficiently with Keeper Bookkeeping Practice Management Software

Accounting efficiency is important on many levels. It increases productivity, reduces labor costs, and boosts client satisfaction. 

And when you zoom out and look at the big picture, accounting efficiency frees up your time so you can focus on advising your business clients to set them up for financial success. 

When it comes to bookkeeping software for accountants that checks all the boxes, Keeper is one of the best options available. 

From task/project management to streamlining client communication to automating W-9 gathering to automating financial reporting, Keeper has all of the features you need for process improvement. It’s also the first platform powered by a 2-way integration with QuickBooks Online and Xero. And with transparent, scalable pricing, you can get the exact plan you need to grow your accounting department while maximizing efficiency. Book a demo today.

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“I’ve been in bookkeeping for over a decade, and I have yet to see a product like this.”

Highlights

• Keeper’s dashboard helped Dental Accounting Group (DAG) managers know exactly what the team was working on, eliminating the need for constant check-ins.
• Keeper’s Client Portal and automated email reminders saves DAG 10+ hours per month of chasing clients for answers by email

Growing a firm in the dental accounting niche

In 2022, two successful CPA and advisory firms, Dental Accounting Group and The Dental Group, joined forces to provide a full-service solution for the dental industry spanning bookkeeping, tax, and advisory services. Today, Dental Accounting Group (DAG) manages the monthly books for over 140 clients and has seen substantial benefits by using Keeper, including the addition of 30 new clients and 10 hours of saved time per month.

In order to keep up with this post-merger growth, two talented accounting specialists, Heather Lansink and Caitlin Moy, were charged with overseeing the combined bookkeeping segment of the practice. Heather manages a team of eight bookkeepers, and Caitlin works as an onboarding specialist for new clients.

Disconnected systems and limited visibility

With new growth comes natural growing pains. The systems between the merged entities were disconnected, which led to process inconsistencies between departments, as well. Specifically, Heather and Caitlin noticed their bookkeeping team’s workflows were siloed, which made it difficult for other teammates to collaborate or quickly step in to help. For example, if a bookkeeper needed to take time off, it was up to Heather to backtrack through all of the clients’ files, identify what had been completed or was still left to do, and relay that information to whoever was taking over.

The firm had an existing tool for task management, but it still wasn’t cutting it for DAG’s bookkeeping segment. “The program was not set up for bookkeepers specifically,” said Heather. “I still found myself checking in on the status of each client on a weekly basis.”

Solving the workflow problem

When Heather and Caitlin were asked by one of the firm’s partners to evaluate Keeper, they were instantly impressed (even with the demo meeting occurring during the heart of a chaotic 1099 season.) Keeper’s high-level client dashboard provided the critical insight DAG’s bookkeeping managers were in search of, and eliminated the need to check in with each bookkeeper individually on the status of their work.

“I save at least a full day each month by not having to ask my team where they’re at in the close process,” said Heather. “We also love the internal chat within Keeper, because my team can ask me questions on certain transactions and I can see them directly. They don’t have to write it down, come and find me, and pull up QuickBooks to give context.”

The improvements to DAG’s task management and workflows allowed for increased capacity across the board. Since subscribing to Keeper, each bookkeeper on the team was able to add three to four clients to their workload, totaling to roughly 30 new clients across the entire bookkeeping segment. Beyond the increase of sheer client volume, DAG’s management has been able to step back while still maintaining confidence in the accuracy of client books, and plan to empower the team further with Keeper’s Preparer, Reviewer and Manager designations.

“We plan to assign these roles so that each bookkeeper will be a peer reviewer of another teammate’s work,” said Heather. “I now have more time to manage and perfect our processes rather than worrying about the tasks at hand.”

Reducing manual follow-ups with Keeper’s Client Portal

“Using Keeper for client communication has saved me 10 hours a month and multiple emails.”

In addition to solving the workflow problem, DAG was eager to upgrade their approach to client communication. Before Keeper, the bookkeeping team would email spreadsheets filled with transaction questions to their clients. Follow-ups were almost always necessary, and keeping track of those messages was tedious and took time away from the work at hand. By using Keeper’s Client Portal and setting up automated reminders, the heavy lifting was done for them, and clients were responding with very little friction.

“I’ve seen efficiency turn a corner with our bookkeepers, and they no longer struggle with getting clients to answer questions or upload documents. Since implementing the automated reminders, there has been an increase in our clients already knowing when they need to send us specific items each month,” said Heather. 

DAG’s bookkeeping team now uses the Uncategorized Transaction Report to ask clients specific questions. Clients no longer have to worry about formatting issues when editing spreadsheet files, and they enjoy having the full picture of their bank records in their portal to help answer pending questions. Prior to transitioning to Keeper, roughly 30% of DAG’s bookkeeping clients had issues with responding to questions in a timely manner or utilizing communication methods that were unfamiliar to them. Today, that 30% is engaged and prompt in their responses, which they largely credit to the user-friendly nature of the Keeper Client Portal.

Why Keeper was the clear choice

DAG utilized Keeper’s features to eliminate  the specific issues that were hindering their team’s productivity and growth. But as they continued learning the tool alongside their Customer Success Manager (CSM), Heather and Caitlin realized that they could improve several other processes for the bookkeeping segment. The team plans to leverage Keeper to further reduce stress during the 1099 season, build out unique client properties, and complete their tax-related work months before the deadline.

When asked why Keeper is the clear choice for bookkeeping teams, Heather had this to say:

“I’ve been in bookkeeping for over a decade, and I have yet to see a product like this. Our feedback on the platform is being heard and I cannot tell you how thankful we are for that. It speaks volumes.”

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In 2019, Cheryl Lanahan put her entrepreneurial spirit to the test when she started PlumbBooks. Specializing in accounting and bookkeeping services for residential home service companies, Cheryl’s vision stemmed from her time working at a plumbing company. She realized the need for a specialized bookkeeping practice catering to the trades industry.

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Highlights

• Adopting Keeper helped Springstead Solutions transform their month-end close, cutting down turnaround times by 10 working days.
• By transitioning to Keeper, the firm moved from tabbing through multiple platforms and manual tasks to focusing on scaling and improving the business.
• With newfound efficiency and time, Springstead Solutions was able to onboard 3 new clients in their first month on Keeper.

Springstead’s start

Christina Springstead has had a lifelong knack for numbers. After taking an accounting class in high school and joining Business Professionals of America, it was clear which path she would take after graduation. However, after two semesters into her accounting degree, Christina pivoted to study sports management as she believed it would be more exciting. Ultimately, all roads led back to accounting as she launched her bookkeeping side business in tandem with her full-time career, to ensure she could provide for her daughter as a single mom.

In 2020, the time had come for Christina to focus all her efforts on running her bookkeeping business, Springstead Solutions. Simultaneously, COVID-19 presented a need for businesses to update and organize their books in order to apply for relief loans. Drawing from her experiences in accounting, management of a brick-and-mortar business, and participation in the Profit First program (PFP), Christina identified the true impact disorganized accounting systems had on small businesses.

“So many businesses’ books were messy, which led to them making bad business decisions. That’s where I found my passion.”

Flipping through tabs to complete the month-end close

That passion was recognized and appreciated by a growing book of clients, which brought with it a need for an additional employee and new processes. As a self-proclaimed “deep-dive software user,” Christina was not afraid to test out tools to organize her practice. At first, she relied on a workflow platform to track daily tasks, QuickBooks Online to manage and reconcile accounts, a spreadsheet to review the monthly close process, and Keeper for final quality-control checks. These spread out procedures caused Springstead Solution’s rapid growth to seem daunting rather than exciting.

“Before diving into Keeper, our process was made up of many changing systems and a lot of wasted time flipping between tabs and tools, with no single source of truth for oversight of operations,” said Christina. “We were always running into the new month scrambling to get things done and books closed out.”

Closing the books 10 days faster with Keeper

After scheduling a call with Keeper to answer some lingering feature-related questions, Christina took the initiative to coordinate a collaborative work group with her Customer Success Manager and her fellow PFP peers to determine the best use of Keeper for bookkeeping firms. As a result of those interactions, she made use of what she learned throughout those weeks in order to do her own software “deep-dive,” and was amazed by the results.

“I built out 20 different templates based on our work strategies. I tested, retested, and tested them again. It worked, and the transformation was overnight. From the moment I showed it to my staff, I had more hope in my business than I had in months,” said Christina. “With the ease of Keeper, I actually had oversight of what was happening for all of my clients.”

Springstead Solutions found a powerful way to condense their month-end close process, all in Keeper. And more than cutting down on extra clicks each day, Keeper reduced the actual time spent closing their clients’ books; to the tune of roughly 10 working days per month.

“When we started completing our month-end closes in Keeper, we had more than half of our client work finished by the 12th of the month. Previously, that was not the case – we would often spend up to the 25th of the month getting these tasks finished.”

Using Keeper to scale the practice

This newly freed up time was historically spent tracking specific client workflows and drudging through tedious and manual bookkeeping processes – while simultaneously researching, testing, and seeking out better systems. Now, Christina was fully invested in Keeper’s various tools, and decided to go further by switching and subscribing to Keeper Receipts.

Springstead Solutions’ tech stack was effectively and intuitively condensed. “I just need QuickBooks and Keeper – and almost minimally QuickBooks – at this point in time.” Christina recognized this as the perfect time to scale her business.

“With Keeper, we didn’t need more employees, but we could bring on more clients. The amount of time I’ve saved in the last five weeks has been so immense that my client success manager told me she needed more work to fill her plate,” said Christina.

Christina took advantage of this additional time by adding extra TLC to her website and business operations. She revamped her pricing calculator, updated her health check template, and held a few discovery calls with prospective clients.

“I have been able to work on my business instead of in my business because I know the month-end close has been taken care of,” Christina said. “I was even able to move up a discovery call appointment because it was important to the prospective client. In my first 28 days on Keeper, I’ve been able to sign 3 new clients.”

“Hands down, the best decision you will make is using Keeper to its full potential for streamlining your operations. I love it.”

Continuing the momentum

Springstead Solutions is just getting started, and the team is identifying new areas to scale and build out by leveraging Keeper to manage the practice. Looking ahead, Christina is eager to build out new financial tools, improve her branding, and engage in discovery calls with clients to find true alignment.

“I can now have a clear mind to actually go through and understand the work that needs to be done each month. Our books have always been clean, but now they’re sparkly clean.”

 

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