How to use Accounting CRM Software to Build Strong Client Relationships

Using Accounting CRM Software to Build Stronger Relationships with Your Clients

Building stronger relationships with your clients is only possible when you:

• Use Client Database to Collect and Store Tiny but Important Client Information

Knowing what makes your clients tick depends on how much information (beyond the basics like location, contact details, etc.) you can collect and store.

Nayo Carter-Gray is one accountant that has figured out the strategy to endear her firm to her clients well.

She said,

She could do this because she has a system that enables her to collect, store, and access this information when needed. This would be impossible if they kept their information everywhere in spreadsheets, documents, email, Slack, and text.

In accounting CRM software like Financial Cents, you get a hub for every client-related information like phone number, email address, EIN, entity type, and social security number (SSN).

Nayo’s team has also found a way to maximize the Entity Type feature.

If she didn’t have this small but important information in one central location, her team would need to come to her each time they needed it, and that would be if she could remember the information in the first place.

Here are some of Financial Cents’ (CRM) features you can use to store and organize your client information in one place and make it easier for your team to build rock-solid client relationships.

Custom Fields to store information that is unique to each client. This could be their business anniversary, birthdays, child’s graduation, personal milestone, and other information that your brain would not remember but can improve your services and client satisfaction significantly.

Upcoming Projects: to help you schedule work ahead of time.

The Relationships Tab to connect with more people from your client’s organization.

Client Groups to filter and differentiate clients by the type of services you provide for them.

• Use a Client Dashboard for Full Visibility into Client Work and Data

The dashboards in accounting CRM software help with presenting all client information in one view.

In Financial Cents, each client profile displays the most important client information at a glance. These include the clients’:

• Contact details: email address and phone number
• Contract Renewal Date
• Formation date
• Marketing source
• Entity Type (to understand the kind of service they need now and in the future).

If you need more information about the client, you can click their names to see:

• Their current projects and upcoming projects.
• Relevant notes your team has written about the client.
• The client tasks you’ve set up for them.
• The recent documents they sent to your firm
• Other people in the client’s business
• Relevant client notes
• Team members assigned to the client’s work.

All of this is to connect your firm by giving you visibility into each client’s work and information and to enable you to make informed client-related decisions.

• Streamline and Keep Track of Conversations with Clients

Since communication is a huge part of any relationship, your client management software should enable you to unite your client communication efforts, so that you do not need to go into several platforms to track client communication.

Financial Cents helps you do just that. It integrates with Outlook and Gmail to bring your emails into Financial Cents.

What that means is that you will see all the emails your clients send to any of your email accounts (personal or business) inside one focused folder in Financial Cents.

This feature has helped Gerry Anderson of Blue Canyon CPA cut down the time his team spends finding client conversations via email.

He said “We now get so buried in Financial Cents that we don’t check our email often, which is nice. Our email traffic has dropped by sixty percent (60%), so I’m now focusing on the sales, marketing, and innovation aspects of my firm.”

Financial Cents accounting CRM feature also has the Activity Tab which keeps a record of your firm’s contact with your clients.

Here, you can see when a client was last contacted, who contacted them, and their attitude when they were last contacted.

• Get Documents from Clients Faster Through Automation

The days when accountants have to drop everything they are doing to chase clients for the documents they need to complete the client’s work are quickly passing.

Automation is the order of the day, and that is largely possible because of the client portal feature in accounting CRMs.

The client portal provides a safe place for business owners to upload the documents their accountants are requesting at their convenience.

In Financial Cents, accountants use the Client Task feature to set up requests for their clients.

Here’s how you can do that:

• Click Client Task in the client’s project
• Click Add Task
• Describe what you need with the Description button
• Specify your preferred upload destination with the Manage Client Uploads button
• Add Due Date
• Click the “+” sign to add it

More Features to Speed Quicken Client Response in Financial Cents

➔ Client Reminders

Beyond sending a one-time notification to your clients, you can set up reminders so that your team can get to work on other clients’ work while waiting for the client’s response.

Once you set up the task reminders, the client will be reminded to send the file at whatever date and intervals your team specifies.

But while at it, your team members can attend to their other tasks.

➔  Recurring Client Tasks

Client tasks repeat with recurring projects. That means that every month those projects recur, the accompanying client tasks will automatically be sent at the set date.

This will further save you the stress of remembering the things you need for the project so that when you sit to complete the project for the next period, you won’t find that you don’t have up-to-date files or information to complete it.

➔   SMS Notification

Apart from email notifications, you can also notify your client about their tasks by text message on their phone (provided the client has activated the option).

Your client will get a text message on their phone saying that your firm has requested information from them and directing them to their email to upload it.

The SMS feature helps to prevent a backlog of client work, because the more your clients are stalling on sending the files you need, the more the volume of work on delay.

Use Financial Cents CRM to Build Strong Client Relationships

You don’t need accounting firm CRM software to manage one (or two) clients because it’s much easier to keep up with most, if not all, of their information and interactions. But as your company grows, you need a system to organize each client’s information to keep things from slipping through the cracks and employees are overwhelmed.

CRM software solutions like, Financials Cents, are designed to help you track and manage your clients’ projects, information, and interactions with your firm so that your team can use it to complete their tasks in the calmest possible way.

 Join Gerry and a host of other accounting firm owners to start cultivating better client relationships today.