Tax season is a whirlwind. Between juggling client communications, managing deadlines, and ensuring compliance, the last thing you need is a cumbersome e-signature process. Enter Knowledge-Based Authentication (KBA) e-signatures—a secure, IRS-compliant method for obtaining electronic signatures on critical tax documents like Form 8879.​

At Keeper, we've seamlessly integrated KBA e-signatures into our Tax Suite, eliminating the need for third-party tools and streamlining your workflow.​

What is KBA, and why does it matter?

KBA is a security measure that verifies a signer's identity by prompting them to answer questions based on public records (think previous addresses or loan details). This method ensures that the person signing the document is indeed who they claim to be.

For tax professionals, KBA is a legal requirement. The IRS mandates KBA for electronically signed Forms 8878 and 8879, which exist to authorize the e-filing of an individual’s tax returns.

The old way:

Historically, incorporating KBA into your tax workflow meant relying on separate platforms, leading to:​

• Manual data transfers between systems
• Increased risk of errors
• Additional costs for standalone KBA services
• Disjointed client experiences​

These inefficiencies can obviously slow down your operations and increase the likelihood of compliance issues or overwhelm for tax teams, which is exactly why we built a KBA feature into our Tax Suite. Now, your firm can securely manage and verify signatures without leaving the platform.

The Keeper way:

Keeper’s e-signature features makes sending, signing, and verifying documents simple. The highlights include:

• Uploading documents directly from a client’s tax return page in Keeper.
• Adding multiple signers and customize the signing order easily.
• Customizing fields with various types (text, signature, date, etc.), ensuring all necessary information is clearly requested. Make templates so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel each tax season.
• Optional KBA verification enhances security, verifying the signer’s identity through personal information and public records.

How it works:

1. Enable KBA verification simply by selecting "KBA signature required" from the Role drop-down when adding recipients.
2. Pay per signature: affordable pricing ($1 per signature in the US) covers the cost of verification.
3. Pre-fill optional client details (such as Name, Address, Date of Birth, and SSN) or let clients provide this information during the verification process.
4. Signers complete verification by answering KBA questions before being redirected seamlessly to sign their document.

Put simply: clients get a link, they answer a few simple questions, and they sign. They’ll automatically receive confirmation, and so will you. That’s it!

Stay organized and compliant

Once completed, signatures and related documents are auto-organized within Keeper’s Files tab, accessible anytime. Both you and your client receive notifications confirming the completed signatures.

Keeper’s integrated KBA e-signatures simplify your firm’s workflow, ensuring secure, compliant, and stress-free tax seasons. Ready to get started?

The post Simplify IRS Compliance with KBA e-Signatures in Keeper appeared first on Keeper.

Ever get stuck waiting on missing receipts or scrambling to reconcile uncategorized transactions at month’s end? Most accounting professionals have been there, juggling multiple apps, and sending clients endless follow-up emails. But what if a single, integrated tool could streamline every stage of your monthly close—from task management to real-time collaboration with clients?

In a recent Earmark Expo, Andy from Keeper demonstrated how one cloud-based practice management platform can tackle the monthly close in a streamlined, client-friendly way.

1. Streamlined Task and Project Management

A smooth month-end close starts with effective planning. Instead of juggling spreadsheets or generic project tools, Keeper lets you create recurring monthly tasks alongside ad-hoc projects (e.g., onboarding, payroll processing, sales tax). You can:

• Set Custom Frequencies: Weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, or quarterly tasks with specific due dates.
• Create Checklists & SOPs: Store all the instructions, links, and passwords your team needs.
• View Firm-Wide Progress: A central dashboard shows each client’s close status, from pre-close tasks to account reconciliations.

From an owner’s perspective, this holistic view helps ensure junior staff follow standardized procedures. No more scattered checklists; everything is tracked and auditable in one place.

2. Intelligent Review: Direct Ledger Integration

Keeper integrates with QuickBooks Online or Xero, analyzing the general ledger for anomalies and inconsistencies. It flags potential issues, such as:

• Vendors with Inconsistent Categories: If a vendor was previously coded to “Software " but ended up in “Advertising " this month, the system notifies you.
• Missing Payees or Transactions: Instantly spot missing or incomplete vendor info.
• Auto-Added Bank Rules: Verify that automated rules are accurate, reducing errors.

Changes can be made from Keeper itself—no toggling between platforms. When you recode a transaction or add a vendor, it updates QuickBooks or Xero in real-time. This ensures everyone from the bookkeeper to the reviewer is working with up-to-date financials.

3. Consolidated Client Communication

If you dread sending 40 emails to a single client each month, modern platforms offer a better way. Keeper consolidates client questions—uncategorized expenses, missing statements, etc.—into a single, branded portal. When you’re ready, you notify the client.

“Rather than sending the client 40 messages throughout the month, we wait until all our questions are ready and then let them know they have new items,” explained Andy from Keeper.

Clients click a magic link—no password needed—and land in a portal with your firm’s branding. There, they see only the transactions or questions that need attention. They can respond by typing an explanation or uploading documents. Communication remains organized with a clear audit trail, so your team can finalize the books faster.

4. Proactive W-9 Collection & 1099 Prep

The year-end 1099 season can be a scramble when you haven’t collected W-9s in advance. Keeper automates the process by:

• Tracking Thresholds: Once a vendor exceeds $600 of reportable spend, the system flags them.
• Sending Branded W-9 Requests: Vendors get a link to fill out or upload their W-9 electronically.
• Syncing Data: Submitted forms are attached to the vendor record in QuickBooks Online (or Xero).

By converting 1099 tracking into a recurring monthly task, you can avoid the January rush of incomplete or missing vendor details. Firms can even export data directly to a 1099-filing solution, turning W-9 collection into a year-round routine.

5. Receipt Management on Your Client's Terms

Receipts are one of the most common pain points in bookkeeping. Keeper’s receipt capture tools offer multiple ways for clients to submit documents:

• Dedicated Phone Number for Texting: Clients can snap a picture and text it directly.
• Magic Link Portal: They drag and drop files from a desktop or mobile device.
• Email Upload: Optionally forward digital receipts to a dedicated inbox.

Once in the system, OCR technology extracts key data and either creates new transactions or matches receipts to existing ones. This eliminates redundant steps like re-keying or reconciling bank feed entries separately.

6. Additional Features: Time Tracking, KPIs, and More

Beyond communication and transaction reviews, Keeper offers tools to centralize your entire CAS practice:

• Time Tracking & Budgeting: Set budgets per client or project. Track time with built-in timers.
• Advanced Reporting & KPIs: Customize monthly financial reports with real-time variance analysis, graphs, and even non-financial metrics (e.g., headcount).
• Inter-Company Transfers: For multi-entity clients, Keeper can sync due-to/due-from accounts across different QuickBooks or Xero files.

The result is a single source of truth for all monthly close tasks, collaboration, and data oversight.

A New Era of Month-End Efficiency

Platforms like Keeper reimagine not just client communication but the entire month-end process—reducing the back-and-forth between email threads, spreadsheets, and accounting files. From automated anomaly detection to text-based receipt collection, these solutions let accountants focus on higher-value advisory work.

Ready to streamline your month-end and client collaboration? Watch the complete Earmark Expo session featuring Keeper. You can also earn continuing professional education (CPE) credit for learning how integrated software simplifies your workflow—giving you time back to serve your clients at a higher level.

The post Earmark Expo - Keeper: Transforming Client Communication in Accounting appeared first on Keeper.

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.

But bookkeeping practice management software has become the main tool for bookkeeping businesses to manage the work across all of their clients. Keeper is quickly becoming the bookkeeping software that bookkeeping businesses use, as it is the leading QuickBooks and Xero-integrated bookkeeping practice management tool.

Read on to learn more about the software tools available to bookkeepers, and the practice management software features that every bookkeeping business needs to streamline their operations. 

What Software Do Most Bookkeepers Use?

While numerous bookkeeping software options are available, two platforms are at the head of the pack — QuickBooks Online and Xero. 

In 2023, QuickBooks Online Accountant had 7.2 million users, making it the most popular small business accounting software.

In second place was Xero accounting software, with three million users.

QuickBooks Online accounting software is the overall market leader and is especially popular in the United States. Xero, on the other hand, is often the choice of bookkeepers and small business owners in New Zealand and Europe. 

After these platforms, some other small business accounting software leaders include:

• FreshBooks (has a mobile app)
• Sage Business Cloud Accounting (has a mobile app)
• Zoho Books (has a mobile app)
• Wave (has a mobile app)
• Kashoo (has a mobile app)

These platforms run the gamut in terms of capabilities, ranging from invoicing and inventory management to payroll and financial reporting. 

Nearly all have solid customer support that can assist an accountant if they run into trouble. And some, like Zoho Books, even offer a free accounting software version. 

Bookkeeping practice management software is still relatively new, but it’s quickly becoming the norm for bookkeeping business operations. 

With benefits like streamlined workflows, increased efficiency, and automation capabilities, it’s easy to see why small business accounting software is becoming ubiquitous. 

Not to mention, the best accounting software can help bookkeepers close the books significantly quicker than using older small business accounting technology. Even if it’s free accounting software with limited features, the impact can be immense. 

Other Bookkeeping-Related Software

Besides the accounting software options just mentioned that handle accounting end-to-end, some niche platforms can be used for more specific tasks, such as payroll, invoicing, accounts receivable, accounts payable, and financial management. 

Here are some examples of the best accounting software alternatives. 

Payroll Services

• Sage 50
• Patriot Software 
• Gusto Payroll
• Paychex Payroll

Accounts Receivable

• Bill.com Invoicing
• HighRadius
• Sage Intacct Invoicing

Accounts Payable

• SAP Concur
• Tipalti
• Oracle Netsuite

Financial Management

• Wave
• Oracle Netsuite
• Sage Intacct

If you’re only looking to tackle certain aspects of bookkeeping and don’t necessarily need a comprehensive accounting solution, choosing an accounting tool like this may be a good option. 

For instance, if you need a reliable payroll solution to manage payroll for small business accounting, Gusto could be a potential choice.

You can quickly set up payroll, sync employee hours, track hours, and generate detailed reports. It’s also simple for a bookkeeper to set up payroll taxes in all 50 states, which is perfect for clients with remote workers. Just note that Gusto doesn’t have a mobile app for payroll. 

Most of these platforms have excellent customer support, and some have free accounting software features and a mobile app. 

Can You Automate Bookkeeping?

Bookkeeping is a profession that’s notorious for being bogged down with repetitive, manual tasks. From invoicing to payment reminders to inventory management to gathering W-9s, productivity can take a hit without properly streamlined workflows. 

For perspective, one survey found that more than half (56%) of today’s bookkeepers spend too much time on manual tasks like invoicing. 

Fortunately, technology has made massive strides in recent years, where bookkeeping automation is now available and can cover a wide range of tasks. 

For instance, you can use bookkeeping software to conveniently keep track of expenses without resorting to antiquated techniques like manually sorting through a box of receipts. 

Instead, a client can simply upload their receipts through a mobile app (either from an Android or iOS app). From there, bookkeeping software will automatically extract the data through the mobile app and offer coding suggestions. 

Once edited, it will automatically post to the client’s ledger for maximum efficiency and accuracy. 

As for invoicing, bookkeeping software can automate much of the process by allowing you to create customizable invoice templates to send to clients, send automatic payment reminders, and complete payment processing by integrating with invoicing software.

Helpful Bookkeeper Software Features

Modern small business bookkeeping software is incredibly comprehensive and can assist in virtually every aspect of the process. 

And the result is always the same. Increased efficiency, a quality client experience, and closing the books for a small business owner quicker — everyone from a sole proprietor to a full-fledged team.

As for specific features that can help your bookkeeping services operate at their peak, here are some to look for. 

• Automated file review - Use bookkeeping software to catch errors and increase accuracy.
• Automated expense management - Quickly and easily track expenses with small business accounting software to identify patterns and trends for better business financing.
• W-9 gathering - Determine which vendors meet the 1099 threshold and follow the steps from start to finish without endless back-and-forthing.
• Streamlined client communication - Ask questions about forms, invoicing, and more, and get responses from a single portal and automate reminders.
• Task management - Create recurring or one-off tasks and follow the status until completion.

To give you a better idea of what these bookkeeping practice management software features look like in real life, here are some of Keeper’s core capabilities. 

File Review and Automated Expense Management

Manually searching for coding errors can be a huge time drain for an accounting professional. With Keeper, however, you can automatically catch errors that could’ve led to delays in your month-end close. 

After an accounting firm team member makes corrections, the report is automatically synced with Intuit’s QuickBooks Online or Xero to drastically speed up file review and expense management. 

Also, Keeper allows you to view all uncategorized transactions directly within the platform and track a client’s response until it’s resolved — all while offering a paper trail for quick reference.

W-9  Requesting and Tracking

Collecting W-9s from vendors that meet the 1099 threshold is a critical part of accounting. It can also be incredibly time-consuming. 

But Keeper streamlines the process by automatically identifying who meets the criteria for a small business. 

Then, it lets you conveniently send requests and track responses until the form is completed.

But that’s not all. Keeper also syncs the updated data to accounting software like QuickBooks Online or Xero for maximum efficiency. 

Client Portal

Spreadsheets — also known as “dreadsheets” to some — can also be a serious time-drainer. You have to copy and paste your transaction questions, send them out, wait for responses, send reminders, and update the financial information in your accounting software. 

But with bookkeeping software for bookkeeping businesses, you can centralize communication from within a portal. 

That way, you can upload files,...

…ask questions,...

…automate follow-ups, and more without having to toggle between multiple platforms. This makes your life and your client’s life much easier while saving a ton of time. 

CRM and Client Communication

Juggling multiple clients and coordinating communication with a small business owner can quickly become chaotic for an accountant. With Keeper, you can easily manage every single client from a personal dashboard for a big-picture overview. 

You can also conveniently organize your client list and make changes as needed. You can zoom out to see your entire list of clients at a glance. Or you can go more granular with saved views if you’d like. 

And for communication, you can create accounting tasks, send files, ask questions, and follow responses without the need for multiple platforms.

Whether it has to do with invoicing, inventory tracking, inventory management, payroll, or anything else, you can stay in the loop at all times. 

Task and Project Management

Equally important as client communication for an accountant is internal team communication, where everyone stays on the same page without information breakdowns. 

With Keeper, you have an overarching view of individual tasks and collective projects at all times, allowing you to see what’s been assigned to who, when it’s due, what the status is, and when something has been completed.

There’s no bouncing around between three or four programs, as everything is included right from within the platform. 

And with workflow templates, you can create tasks to be automatically re-applied each month for even more time saved. 

Automated Report Creation

Having a crystal clear understanding of a client’s financial trajectory is essential for your accounting service. But in the past, generating this information has been meticulous. 

However, now highly detailed reports can be generated using client-friendly visuals that are easy to digest. 

You can share the vital information a business owner needs, such as total expenses, spend by category, cash on hand, sales, and much more for a high-level understanding at a glance.  

And with Keeper, reports can be published directly to the client portal for even more efficiency. 

Keeper: The Bookkeeping Software for Bookkeeper Businesses

If you’re looking for a bookkeeping workflow software that’s built specifically for bookkeepers, Keeper is right up your alley. 

It’s the first platform that integrates with both QuickBooks Online and Xero and includes all of the features listed above. Accounting firms can utilize the desktop version or mobile app to accelerate workflow and close the books quicker. In fact, many bookkeepers can slash their month-end close in half with Keeper. And with a robust help center, you can find detailed customer support to get the absolute most out of this platform.

The post The Bookkeeping Software That Bookkeeping Businesses Use appeared first on Keeper.

• Context switching is the habit of quickly shifting attention between different tasks before they’re done, leaving you feeling unproductive and stressed.
• Context switching is a necessary part of modern accounting, but when it runs rampant you pay in lost productivity, creativity, collaboration, and employee retention.
• The best way to rein in context switching is to streamline bookkeeping workflows using a bookkeeping practice management solution.

Beware the Costs of Unchecked Context Switching

• Dipping productivity. 
• Lacking creativity. 
• Uninformed decision-making.
• High turnover. 

No, these aren’t just “part of the job” in accounting firms.

These issues are what happens when context switching goes too far.

That’s right, we’re hinting at a truth that’s a bit unpopular to admit: Some context switching is a requirement for knowledge workers today. It’s just not plausible for a single tool to handle every single thing that accountants need to do. 

The problems come when it runs rampant. 

When context switching isn’t addressed, it has implications for the health of businesses and workers.

Understanding Context Switching in Accounting

Context switching — or multitasking, task toggling, etc. — occurs when you interrupt working on one task to perform another task.

In the workplace, context switching is often the result of needing to move between different applications to find the information you need to complete your original task. You may also switch contexts in the middle of a task to answer a chat, read an email, or attend a meeting. 

Think about sending a month-end report to a client and catching a transaction that seems inconsistent. Is it a coding error? Something your client needs to clarify? Gotta hop out of the report and shoot off an email. While you’re there, you might as well answer the messages that have piled up. Half-way through a reply — ping! — you got an email back from the client. Time to check that really quickly. Finally, you can make a little progress on that report. But first, have to log into QuickBooks or Xero and make that correction…

If that all seems quite exhausting, that’s because it is. And if it sounds all too familiar, that’s not surprising at all. 

Context switching is more prevalent than ever because of the way technology has become part of our lives and our workplaces. 

On average, workers today find themselves spending more time using email, more time participating in video calls, and more time multitasking. And, the pressure is on to respond immediately to notifications. 

As business reliance on tech continues to grow, the need to switch between tons of tools and tasks may become even more intense. Employees and businesses that don’t have any tactics for minimizing switching and its impact are going to feel the pain. 

4 Ways Your Business is Paying for Unchecked Context Switching

Yes, in the bookkeeping space you’re likely going to need to swap between at least a few different platforms in a day to get your job done. 

But, completely unfettered context switching happens way too often. In fact, close to half (43%) of workers report dedicating too much time to switching between company tools and apps. 

If that’s just as true at your firm as it is at many, here’s the “tax” you may be paying if unhindered context switching continues. 

Deep Work Gets Deprioritized

Deep work, characterized by immersing ourselves in meaningful work challenges, is where we truly hone our skills and create valuable output.

Unfortunately, having to move between different tools to get anything done introduces interruptions that don’t allow for work to go deep. 

An observation of one consumer goods company found that workers used 22 different applications, and switched between them 350 times, to complete a single transaction.

When that’s the state of your workplace, there’s no space left for the deep work and concentration that leads to creativity and groundbreaking ideas.

Loss of Critical Business Knowledge

Considering that 56% of workers report difficulty keeping track of business data across different apps and that they actually have to ask more than one person for help finding information — there’s no way business knowledge is being used to its full potential when it comes to client communications and making decisions that impact the future of your business.

Fatigue + Stress = Burnout

It’s really no surprise that 43% of workers report it’s tiring to have to move back and forth between apps, screens, and conversations at a fast pace all the time. 

But context switching isn’t just physically taxing, it’s also mentally taxing. Science tells us that switching between tasks takes a toll on our cognitive abilities. And, it can even cause the brain to produce the stress hormone cortisol.

Fatigue and stress in the workplace is a perfect recipe for burnout. That’s a big deal because burnout is one of the top reasons why employees leave jobs.

Collaboration and Connection Flounder 

The best solutions arise when diverse teams full of varying perspectives are able to collaborate.

However, heavy tech reliance and context switching stress makes people feel less and less connected. Close to two-thirds (62%) of workers miss being able to collaborate with their colleagues. When tooling becomes so distracting it’s actually hurting workplace culture, is it actually serving you?

Cut Down on Context Switching with One App for Bookkeeping

If you’re ready to cut out some of the email back-and-forth and adopt one app to streamline your workflows, it’s time to try bookkeeping practice management software like Keeper.

Keeper helps automate and streamline bookkeeping and accounting workflows, unite data, and make collaboration simpler both internally and with clients. 

Using Keeper’s branded Client Portal gives you a single channel to manage all client comms and get responses faster without having to switch between emails, phone calls, and texts. Smart file review tools quickly catch coding errors and integrate your workflows directly with QuickBooks and Xero, so you only need to correct files in one location for a cleaner and faster close.

And, when you are done with the review, Keeper makes it easy to craft useful reports clients actually like reading. Stay on top of all these moving parts with Keeper’s task management functionality, where you can create flows and make sure you and your team are performing at peak productivity.

At Keeper, we make it easy to actually work in your workflow software, minimizing the number of apps you need to pivot between over the course of a productive day. 

Sign up for a free Keeper trial today and experience the delight of running a bookkeeping business from a powerful platform.

The post The Context Switching Tax: What Accountants Should Know appeared first on Keeper.

• Outsourcing, offshoring, and automation will help your firm grow capacity, cut costs, and still meet client demand with high-value outcomes. 
• Use an AIOO approach to determine how to offload common accounting tasks.
• Learn how to get started with offshoring, including using practice management software.

Between… 

The well-documented accountant shortage. 

Downward price pressure. 

The need for rapid upskilling as new laws make compliance more complex — and more important. 

And of course, the existential fear that’s squeezing every industry: How is artificial intelligence going to disrupt my practice? 

…there’s a lot weighing on accountants and bookkeepers today. 

While none of us can create more time, we can increase how much we get done in the same amount of time by layering on additional resources. 

However, we usually don’t need the same amount of resources every season — and who could afford to hire all the support they actually need, anyway?! 

In 2024 (and beyond), it’s time to take an outside-the-box, yet proven, approach to overcoming capacity constraints. 

Understanding Outsourcing, Offshoring, and Automation

Outsourcing is something most people are familiar with, even if they don’t use that particular name for it. It’s simply the practice of delegating — or handing over certain tasks to another firm or individual who has more capacity, specialized expertise, or both. Plenty of service providers keep a roster of “partners” to whom they outsource jobs on the backend so that they can give clients a holistic-feeling experience on the frontend.

Offshoring just expands on this idea by contracting an overseas firm to help your team. It’s a great way to grow capacity during busy seasons and increase your range of services without burning out your core team.

Nearshoring is a form of offshoring where the outside provider is a little closer to home — such as in a neighboring country. This can help you work together more closely as you’ll be more likely to share a time zone and maybe even a common language.

And there’s one more, though not quite as popular: Onshoring. This is the practice of outsourcing tasks to a third-party in the same country you’re in. However, it may be in another state and is often in a smaller city, where you’re able to find firms with higher availability and lower rates. 

Finally, there’s accounting Automation, which is the practice of applying technology instead of additional people to help you get more done in less time.

Accounting automation tools and AI are helping firms handle the manual elements of the job, such as data entry, reconciliation, document and receipt management, elements of tax preparation, and even the simpler, repetitive customer questions you may get!  

All of these options may leave you wondering: Where can I automate, when should I engage an offshore or outsourced partner, and what would be best to keep in-house? 

The AIOO Approach to Offloading Accounting Tasks

Take a look at the workflow we chatted about with Taxplow founder and author of the Accountants In Front of AI newsletter, Marc Howard.

Called the “AIOO approach,” it’s a simple guide to help bookkeepers and accountants determine how to best handle the growing list of tasks clients come to them with:

• Automate tasks that are repetitive and require consistent execution, without much variation. For example, coding transactions.
• In-house tasks are high-value and require specialized expertise, or have high-to-medium complexity. Financial analysis and forecasting fits into this bucket in most cases.
• Outsource high-value tasks that aren't core to your business, especially if they would be better executed by specialized external entities — such as financial audits.
• Offshore those more routine and standardized tasks that don't require specialized expertise and can be executed at a lower cost in different locations. Think AP and AR management.  

AIOO In Action: A Real-Life Breakdown

While this is not an exhaustive list, we broke down many of the tasks that your firm is most likely touching, most weeks. Hopefully, this will help you start thinking through your own specific service offering, where you can niche down to provide the most impactful outcomes for clients, and what you should consider automating, offshoring, or outsourcing to protect your time and sanity. 

Bookkeeping and Accounting Tasks

• Coding transactions: automate/offshore
• Bank and transaction reconciliation: automate/offshore
• Document management (receipt management): automate
• Account payable and account receivable management: automate/offshore
• Paying invoices for clients: offshore
• 1099 management: automate
• Month-end close and financial statement prep (income statements, balance sheets): in-house
• Financial analysis and forecasting: in-house
• Customer support (triage and simple tasks): automate/offshore 
• Cleaning up books: offshore/outsource 
• Financial audits: in-house/outsource 

Tax Planning and Preparation Tasks

• Sales tax: automate/offshore
• State and income tax: automate/offshore
• Tax prep: automate/offshore
• Estate planning: in-house/outsource
• Nonprofit and foundation tax planning: in-house/outsource
• Advanced tax planning: in-house
• Entity structure review: in-house
  

Payroll Tasks

• Federal, state, local payroll tax submission: automate
• Payroll tracking: automate
• Direct deposit services: automate
• Payroll reporting: automate/offshore

Client Advisory Services

Lots of firms dream of shifting to a focus on high-value client advisory services, which they would of course want to keep in-house. Yet, less than 30% of firms are actually able to do it. 

Why? Lack of resources.

Accountants and bookkeepers don’t want to drop all the other tasks, many of which are listed above, that keep the lights on while they transition into an advisory role. This highlights the critical nature of employing outsourcing, offshoring, and automation to free up as many as 1,250 hours yearly for you to spend on much higher-impact and higher-value advisory work.

How to Start Offshoring and Outsourcing

Offshoring and outsourcing can bring numerous benefits: cost savings, access to global talent, increased productivity, and more free time so that you can focus on the services that really solve your client’s biggest pain points. 

But getting started successfully requires careful planning and consideration. Here are some essential tips to help accounting and bookkeeping firms navigate the process effectively. 

Get All Your Client Information Organized Ahead of Time

Before diving into offloading tasks onto other firms, it's crucial to ensure that all client information — data, contact details, paperwork, etc. — is well-organized and readily-accessible. 

Keeper’s bookkeeping practice management software can help facilitate a smooth transition and foster a productive relationship with your outsourcing partner.

That’s because Keeper features a branded Client Portal where you can host all client communications as well as internal collaboration. Keeper can also track your practice’s tasks, files, templates, and client information via a built-in CRM. Our automated 1099 management and receipt processing features also streamlined these resource-intensive workflows to make the load lighter on your outside partner of choice. 

Determine Where You Need Help

You also want to assess your staff's workload and capabilities as well as use the AIOO method to identify which tasks you’re already doing that are suitable for outsourcing and offshoring.

Focus on areas where an external team can provide the most significant impact, such as time-consuming but simpler tasks, to allow your in-house team to focus on high-value activities and client advisory services.

Find Your Reliable Offshore/Outsourcing Partner

Choosing the right partner is of course paramount to the success of your offloading initiatives. How do you determine a good fit? Here are the key factors to consider:

• Time in the industry
• Technological capabilities — they’ll need some tooling and technical prowess to be able to work with you remotely
• Expertise in various accounting services, especially those you are considering offloading
• Their ability to scale their own team as your needs grow — and how much it will cost you to level up
• A communication style and schedule that aligns with your onshore team
• Client reviews and testimonials (like this one for our friends at TeamUp — wow!) 

Learn how to future-proof your firm, deliver on client demands, and more: Watch our webinar with Isaac Smith, founder of the offshoring accounting firm TeamUp.

Set Up Account Managers, On Both Sides

A responsible, reliable point of contact within both firms is crucial for maintaining a successful relationship. 

Account managers will be in change of things like:

• Overseeing hiring, onboarding, and training 
• Managing any IT setup that needs to happen
• Assisting with capacity planning
• Arranging regular communication
• Translating and solving questions and feedback 
• Dispatching progress reports 
• Providing deliverables

Ensure Data Safety

Data security and confidentiality should be top priorities when selecting an accounting outsourcing partner. 

Take some serious time to inquire about a potential partner’s data protection measures, encryption protocols, and compliance with industry regulations. Additionally, discuss legal agreements and confidentiality clauses that safeguard your firm and clients in case of any data breaches or mishaps.

Develop Service Level Agreements

Establishing service level agreements (SLAs) with your new third-party provider is essential to set expectations regarding the quality of work, response times, communication channels, and performance metrics.

A well-defined SLA ensures accountability and transparency throughout the offshoring engagement, fostering a mutually beneficial relationship.

Let’s Break the Constraints Together

As you embark on your journey to leverage offshoring, outsourcing, and even automation effectively, remember that strategic planning to choose and work with the right tools and partners is key to unlocking the full potential of these solutions.

Implement the AIOO approach and adopt pro bookkeeping software to prepare yourself for engaging third-party providers to elevate your firm's capabilities, increase productivity, and focus on delivering exceptional value to your clients. 

The post How to Squash Capacity Constraints appeared first on Keeper.

Discover how to de-risk your accounting firm in 2024 and beyond with approachable strategies including managing capacity constraints with offshoring, growing into an advisory role, learning how to market to the right audience, and much more.

As the famous line goes: The times, they are a-changin’.

Hackers are getting smarter, the talent pool is growing smaller, technology is introducing new ways to work, and the powers that be never stop tweaking the rules we all have to comply with to stay on the right side of the law. 

What can accounting and bookkeeping firm leadership do to establish an enduring, resilient, and thriving practice that’s ready to withstand dynamic shifts within the industry?

To grossly paraphrase another famous song: Give us three ten steps — and we’ll show you exactly how.

10 Tactics for Modern Accounting Firms

We’ll waste no time. Here’s what every decision-maker needs to know to de-risk their firm as they move and grow through 2024 and beyond.

1. Manage Capacity Constraints with Offshoring

The process of managing capacity is work in itself. If you never take the time to go through the process of understanding your capacity and planning for it, you and your team will always feel overworked — which is not a good way to retain clients or employees. 

There are two main ways to manage capacity within your firm — do less work, or hire more folks to get the work done. 

But what about managing your capacity outside of your firm? 

Offshoring is the practice of outsourcing accounting tasks to an outside, overseas firm or individual who has the time and the experience to handle it for you. Diversifying fulfillment in this way is a lifesaver for scaling capacity quickly, increasing your range of services while still carving out time for strategic offerings (more on advisory services later), and preserving precious sanity when it comes to your in-house team.

And offshoring isn’t just for the menial day-to-day tasks. With quality-focused partners like TeamUp and Cloud Accountant Staffing, you can unlock highly-skilled and uniquely-specialized global talent.

Learn more about the future-proofing power of offshoring and how to get started when you watch our webinar with Isaac Smith, founder of offshore accounting firm TeamUp. 

2. Find Your Niche 

“Niche” is just another word for specialty. Accountants can choose to specialize in certain industries, such as tech, non-profits, real estate, specific trades, etc. They can also focus on a niche based on company size, such as owner/operator-run businesses, startups, etc. Or, you can even specialize when it comes to your services — focusing solely on offering high-value services like month-end closes, tax prep, estate planning, and more. 

Here’s why finding your best-fitting niche can help bookkeepers stay afloat and relevant in 2024 and beyond:

• Establish yourself as a thought leader: Focusing on a niche helps you become an expert, setting you apart and making you the go-to professional for clients in that niche.
  
• Demand higher rates: Specialized knowledge allows you to demand higher fees, as clients value expertise and are willing to pay for it.
  
• Optimize sales and marketing efforts: Tailoring marketing efforts to your niche ensures your messages resonate with their needs, maximizing the impact of your sales and marketing spend.
  
• Reduce competition: Narrowing your focus reduces competition, making it easier to attract clients seeking specialized services and stand out among a smaller pool of providers.

But what if you have legacy clients you want to hold onto or another reason you can’t fully focus on a specific niche? That’s the beauty of also investing in the previous strategy — offshoring. By offloading some of those tasks and services you still want to provide but don’t actually want to execute yourself, offshoring is a great way to connect with affordable specialists so you can keep your firm well rounded. 

See niching in action when you watch this special episode of our Catch up with Keeper webinar, featuring Melissa Honan — CEO of Bookkeeping for Painters, a niche firm doing $1.5 million in annual recurring revenue. 

3. Embrace AI and Automation

The past few years have seen a transformation in how most businesses operate thanks to modern technology. To keep up with client expectations as well as what competitors offer, you need to know how to adopt and embrace artificial intelligence (AI) and automation. 

Accountants, bookkeepers, and tax professionals can apply AI as an assistant of sorts, not to replace human expertise but rather to enhance it. With AI, firm owners can save time by automating simpler tasks, save costs on staffing and training, improve the speed and clarity of client communications, and provide more advanced and accurate advisory services.

Using AI to its full capacity at your firm comes down to experimenting with tools like ChatGPT, Bard, and so on to learn how to provide the clear, specific instructions it needs to  produce results. 

Once you’ve learned how to best apply AI at your accounting firm, you can start using it to: 

• Analyze balance sheets, cash flow, and income statements
• Summarize and proofread complex reports
• Extract and classify data efficiently
• Explain financial concepts to clients clearly 
• Create budgeting and forecasting templates
• Automate routine accounting tasks
• Craft compelling newsletters, emails, and website content
• Systematize operations and free yourself from repetitive tasks
• Review bookkeeping entries and code transactions
• Automate reporting (leveraging Zapier)
• Create SOPs for bookkeeping, tax, and compliance work
• Write code, Excel macros, and browser plugins
• Respond to routine client emails
• Analyze workload and recommend the best tasks to delegate

4. Prioritize Digital Security

Small businesses are frequently targeted by cybercriminals due to their often limited security measures, which makes them vulnerable to attack. Doubly so for accounting firms, as they deal in financial data that can be especially desirable to nefarious actors. 

In fact, in the first quarter of 2023 alone there were over a million victims of cyberattacks in financial services.  

Introducing a large digital aspect to your business — as many future-proofing tips will have you do — will require accountants and bookkeepers to take extra steps to ensure their digital security. 

Here are some strategies for protecting your firm’s operations and sensitive client data:

• Invest in cybersecurity insurance: Learn how to protect your business against cyber threats by listening to this podcast from AICPA & CIMA on obtaining cybersecurity insurance.
• Only use secure tools: Outside tooling can be a weak link in your security measures. Make sure any bookkeeping platforms you use prioritize security.
• Focus on password security: Use a password manager to save and share passwords, enforce complex passwords, and implement multi-factor authentication (MFA) for added protection in case passwords are compromised.
• Regularly scan for threats: Deploy malware scanners and antivirus software on all computers and devices used for client work. 
• Ensure proper employee offboarding: Thorough employee offboarding will remove terminated employees from all your systems, preventing sabotage as well as unmonitored accounts that are easier to hack.
• Provide security training: Educate your team on security threats upon onboarding and  regularly thereafter. You can keep it simple — share articles and videos that warn of the most common hacks to look for and how to avoid them.
  
• Encrypt your hard drive: Protect sensitive files in case of device loss or theft, using a tool like Bitlocker on Windows or FileVault on Mac. 
• Consider outsourcing: If you don’t feel comfortable securing your firm, employ a specialized third-party firm to handle your security needs. 

You can check out more strategies in our webinar with Chris Burns from Techie Gurus.

5. Market to a Lucrative, Aligned Audience

Many accounting firms don’t actually need more clients. 

What they need is better clients. 

Your role as a firm leader is to fill the limited capacity you have with the best-fitting, most-profitable clients possible. 

What makes for suitable, lucrative clients? According to Jason Staats, they have to acutely experience the problems you solve, and solve well.

So, how do you connect with these clients? Sorry to say it, but it all comes down to marketing. 

Here are three approachable but key strategies Jason shares for putting your firm out there in a way that makes you magnetic to your ideal audience: 

• Build an easy marketing channel to share your expertise: Your current clients know how awesome you are, but what are you doing to make sure potential clients do as well? This is critical to helping people make the jump from kicking the tires to signing the contract. An easy way to generate, warm, and convert leads is to build a regular email marketing campaign that speaks to your ideal audience’s needs. Replace those “hire us now” website buttons with a link to sign up to your newsletter and build your roster of potential clients. 
• Share hyper-specific content: We mentioned niching down in your focus as a firm. Well, that niche should be just as apparent in the content you craft for that email marketing campaign you just built above. Remember, it’s all about relieving a very strong, very specific pain point. Are you an expert on tax preparation for freelance poodle groomers in the state of Colorado? Let it be known, and watch the right audience gravitate toward you like dog hair toward your couch. 
• Take your time: If getting better, more aligned, more lucrative clients is your ultimate goal as a firm owner — doing one-on-one work can no longer be your main priority. You need to spend more time engaging in marketing that actively attracts your ideal clientele. So take your time with the new marketing channel and high-value content you’re creating to build your dream roster.

Together, what this marketing strategy does is transcend the traditional marketing funnel. It inspires trust and helps potential clients build a relationship with you via the value-adding content you’ve given them. So when they’re ready to finally make the jump over to your firm, it’s more of a trust fall and less of a terrifying leap.  

Need help maintaining and furthering those relationships you’ve built once you’ve signed your dream clients? Keeper's Branded Client Portal stands out in this regard. Move away from trying to handle client relationships via messy Excel or Google Sheets documents and into our smooth practice management solution that streamlines and organizes client communication, details, and documents. 

6. Expand Into Advisory Services 

In the increasingly-intricate business landscape, the demand for accounting client advisory services (CAS) is on the rise. They need to future-proof their businesses just as much as you do.

Clients want tailored analytics, reporting, and advice and accountants — with access to deep financial and operational documentation — are well-positioned to answer this call and expand their offerings. 

The benefits of positioning yourself and your firm as a data-driven advisor are big: you can diversify your services to stand out against competing firms, there’s an opportunity for major revenue growth through this lucrative income stream, and clients simply want it! The majority of firms agree that client expectations are changing, and that advisory expertise is now in high demand.

What areas can you provide advisory services on? Opportunities include:

• Business planning
• Process improvement 
• Change management
• Sustainability reporting
• Advanced tax planning
• Entity structuring 
• Estate planning 
• Financial analysis and forecasting

By leveraging both mother technology and offshore resources to handle transactional and compliance tasks, accountants can free up time and resources to focus on more strategic advisory work. This shift not only adds value to clients but also positions accounting firms for long-term success in a dynamic and evolving industry.

7. Become a Regulation and Compliance Go-To

Ask anyone outside of the field — or within it, for that matter — what an accountant does and you’ll find out how dynamic the landscape is. 

With that complexity comes a whole host of regulations, changes to which seem to be happening at an ever-increasing frequency. In fact, keeping up is now a major challenge for modern accountants.

Staying in “the know” when it comes to compliance will keep you in good standing, boost operational efficiency, and make your firm a consistent go-to for clients. 

Here are some tactics for becoming the knowledgeable champion and expert clients crave:

• Make sure to attend the large annual conferences and other events that address accounting in general as well as your niche.
  
• Engage in local meetups, webinars, associations, and other groups that have a focus on regulatory compliance in bookkeeping as well as in your area(s) of speciality.
  
• Build a professional network made up of other accountants in your field who can help you stay abreast of changes, both offline and online through platforms like LinkedIn.
  
• Once you’re well-versed in the latest on compliance, audit your firm to proactively identify issues and gaps and maintain compliance. 
• Make sure the accounting software and services you’re using automatically adjust to regulatory changes. This should not be your main source of news when it comes to compliance, but it’s helpful when it’s readily updated to help keep you above board.

8. Focus on Internal Retention 

In the world of accounting, client retention often takes the spotlight. However, the current accounting talent crisis brings to the forefront the importance of internal retention — aka, holding onto the precious employees who make your firm tick. 

Some reasons for this shortage? A perception of looong work weeks, lower compensation in relation to workload and education requirements, and lacking diversity across many firms. 

To build, nurture, and retain a talented team, consider these factors:

• Competitive compensation: Offer attractive compensation packages including competitive salaries, bonuses, and benefits like health insurance and retirement plans. Consider features like profit-sharing and ongoing education to set yourself apart from other hiring firms.
  
• Work-life balance: Promote work-life balance with flexible hours, remote work options, and generous vacation policies.
  
• Career progression: Provide clear career paths, regular performance reviews, and opportunities for professional growth.
  
• Inclusive company culture: Foster an inclusive, supportive, and positive environment to increase job satisfaction and loyalty among employees.
  

Prioritizing these aspects of internal retention can future-proof accounting teams and ensure success in the evolving industry landscape.

9. Pursue Value-Based Pricing

Understanding how to price your services is critical to your survival in accounting. As such, it’s time to move away from the antiquated structure of pricing based on hours worked and move to pricing that accounts for value provided. 

To do so, it’s important to realize that value doesn’t equate to hours worked, it’s measured in outcomes. The more value you’re able to create for clients — no matter how long it takes — the more you should charge for a successful outcome. 

Determining the cost of the tiers or packages for your value-based pricing strategy will likely require some trial and error. You can survey existing clients to see what they’d be willing to pay. You could also take a look at how competitors price similar offerings and set yours accordingly. 

We recommend setting yourself up for success when it comes to making any pricing changes by establishing a track record of clear and regular communication with clients, including price adjustment clauses in all contracts, and depicting the “why” behind pricing changes using real data. 

With value-based pricing, you may be able to enhance client loyalty, better prioritize your time on client tasks, and set a precedent for price increases as outcomes improve over time. However, don’t forget that it requires you to be able to really sell your value up front, and can be complex to implement if you already have a firm full of clients on a different pricing plan. This is good to keep in mind as you expand your bookkeeping services list.

10. Watch Out for What’s Next in Accounting

Staying ahead in the accounting industry requires a forward-thinking approach that anticipates and prepares for upcoming trends. First-movers, who consistently outpace competitors, prioritize keeping abreast of what's next.

Here are some tips to develop the “super power” of predicting what’s coming in accounting and de-risking your decisions as you move into the future:

• Study industry leaders: Pay attention to what big firms and leaders in your niche are doing. Their strategies and innovations often set the tone for upcoming trends in the industry.
  
• Stay connected: Maintain a strong network and get active at industry events. Networking and staying informed about industry discussions can offer valuable insights into emerging trends and developments.
  
• Monitor competitors: Keep a close watch on your competitors' offerings, marketing campaigns, etc. Understanding their moves can help you anticipate shifts in the market and adjust your strategies accordingly.
  
• Analyze internal data: Look closely at data within your own firm to see what’s next on a local scale versus a global one. Identify which services clients are most interested in, which industries they belong to, which marketing strategies are yielding the best results, and which features of your bookkeeping technology are most utilized. This data can reveal patterns and trends that indicate what your target audience wants and where the industry is headed.
  

Ready to Future-Proof Your Firm?

There are a few commonalities that many of the above strategies share — active participation in the industry to stay on top of developments, a supply of reliable data for informed decision-making, and modern technology with the power to streamline operations so you have more time to pursue future-proofing. 

In fact, more than 75% of accountants already say that tech has helped them save time.

But of course, those savings only kick in once you’ve founded and transitioned to your tooling of choice — which can be an overwhelming task that keeps many time-strapped firms from completing their future-proofing mission. 

However, that’s not the case when you choose Keeper as your practice management solution of record.

At Keeper, we personally help new clients onboard onto our platform, so they can enjoy AI-powered 1099 management and receipt processing features; flawless client communication; and optimized internal collaboration capabilities that include tasks, files, and even client information management via a built-in CRM. 

Get started today to see how Keeper can help you de-risk your growth strategy and thrive in a shifting landscape.

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