Salient

Worked example · Accounting and bookkeeping

How we would stop an accounting firm chasing documents.

This is not a client case study. We have not built this for a firm yet, and pretending otherwise would be the first thing you should not trust us on. It is the architecture we would propose on day one, with the numbers we would hold ourselves to.

The example firm: eight people, about 150 monthly bookkeeping clients, a mainstream ledger, a client portal most clients do not use, and an inbox that does the real work.

Where the month goes

Not the billable hours. The hours spent getting to the point where billable work can start.

Chasing client documents20Receipts, statements, the missing invoice. In a 2024 survey of 367 firm owners, 65% named this the single biggest workflow problem, and it grew the next year.
Client questions and status9Where is my return, did you get the file, what do you need from me. Firms report about nine hours a week on client communication.
Month-end reconciliation exceptions10Transactions nobody can identify, duplicate feeds, the client who paid from the wrong account.
Onboarding new clients6The checklist, the access requests, the same questions asked in a different order.
Status reporting4Who is done, who is late, who has not sent anything. Assembled by hand.
Total, across the firm49hours per week, before the accounting starts

What is left afterwards

Chasing client documents4The system knows each client's calendar and what is missing, asks in your words, escalates by channel, and stops the moment the file arrives.
Client questions and status3Answered from the ledger and the job status, with the source shown. Anything about advice or fees goes to the accountant.
Month-end reconciliation exceptions6Exceptions arrive classified with the likely match and the evidence. A person decides; the system never posts.
Onboarding new clients2Checklist run automatically, access chased, the accountant reviews once.
Status reporting1Drafted from live job data. Read, edit, send.
Total after1633 hours a week returned to the firm

What stays human is the judgement: the transaction that could be two things, the client who needs a conversation rather than a reminder, and every piece of advice.

The architecture

01

Know what is missing

Every client has a calendar of what is due when, derived from their engagement and their history. The system knows a client is missing a September bank statement before anyone opens the file.

02

Ask like a person

Requests go out in the firm's words, per client, by the channel that client actually answers. Reminders escalate on a schedule you set. The moment a document lands, the chase stops.

03

Read what arrives

Statements, receipts and invoices are read, matched to the request, and filed against the right client and period. Unreadable or wrong-period files are flagged, not filed.

04

Grounded answers

Status questions are answered from the job and the ledger. The system never gives tax advice, never quotes a fee, and says so when asked.

05

The exception queue

Unmatched transactions arrive classified with a suggested match and the evidence. A human posts. Nothing hits the books without a person's decision.

06

Handover and audit trail

Every request, reply, file and decision is logged with its inputs. When a client asks what you asked for and when, the answer is one click.

How we would prove it works

Before it sends a single request, we replay your last three month-ends through the system and compare what it would have asked each client for, and when, to what your staff actually chased. Does it ask for the right documents, from the right clients, at the right time, at least nine times in ten?

Then it runs for one month-end on twenty clients while a person watches every message. The rest of the book comes after the numbers say so, not after a demo.

What it costs, and what it returns

Build, 4 to 6 weeks, fixed scope$18kDocument calendar, request sequences, document reading and filing, grounded answers, exception queue, one ledger integration.
Operate, from month two$3.5kPer month. Monitoring, model cost control, replay regression, small changes.
Hours returned33Per week, across the firm. About 0.8 of a full-time role.
Break-even0.8Of one role's cost, or roughly ten more clients on the same team.

Every number on this page is an assumption until we look at your month-end. The first thing we would do is replace them with yours, in a paid one-week audit, and tell you honestly if the case does not hold.

If last month-end looked like this, the call is worth 30 minutes.

Bring the list of what you were still waiting for on the fifth. If there is no real project here, we will say so on the call rather than in an invoice.

Book a strategy call
The one-week audit