Introducing: Financial Cents & SmartVault Integration

Accounting teams shouldn’t have to manage closely related processes, like workflows and documents, in separate apps.

There are productivity apps for almost any accounting or bookkeeping task. But as helpful as that is, using them in isolation overwhelms your staff and makes them less productive than you might imagine.

The secret to maximizing your accounting tech stack is integration, so your tools can talk to each other without anyone logging into each one separately.

From listening to accounting firm owners, we’ve found that firms whose tech stack doesn’t integrate suffer from almost the same issues as firms without those tools at all. They struggle with:

Lost revenue opportunities.
Clients who want live access to their data (which SmartVault’s client portal offers).
Ineffective client interactions, especially during document collection.

The good news: Financial Cents now integrates with SmartVault to solve these challenges, so accountants and bookkeepers can reach the apps that matter to their workflows from inside Financial Cents.

This integration lets you use SmartVault’s document management features inside Financial Cents.

Here’s everything you need to know about it.

Features of the Financial Cents and SmartVault Integration

1. Access SmartVault in Financial Cents

This integration lets you access your clients’ SmartVault profiles while you work on their projects in Financial Cents.

That means your team doesn’t need to keep opening SmartVault every time they need a client’s document.

How to access SmartVault in Financial Cents

You can access SmartVault in Financial Cents from two places.

From the Integrations section of the client’s profile:

Click the Clients section.
Select the client whose information you want to see.
Click SmartVault Integration in the bottom-right corner to open the client’s SmartVault profile.

From the client’s files:

Click the Clients section.
Select the client whose information you want to see.
Click Files.

Click SmartVault in the bottom-left corner.

The SmartVault button in a client’s Files tab in Financial Cents

2. Automatically create clients in SmartVault when you create them in Financial Cents

This feature saves you from re-entering a new client’s information in SmartVault after you’ve already created them in Financial Cents.

That spares your team the time, stress, and errors of entering the same client information in two platforms.

How to automatically create clients in SmartVault

After enabling the auto client sync, open Financial Cents and create a new client:

Select Manually Enter Information.
Enter the client’s information and click Save to create the client in Financial Cents.
Right-click anywhere in the client profile and select Refresh.

Click the SmartVault button in the bottom-right corner, and you’ll go to the client portal that was just created automatically in SmartVault.

3. Easily import or link clients from SmartVault to Financial Cents

Every shortcut or automation that helps your team avoid manual work is a potential growth opportunity.

This integration saves your team the time, effort, and human error of copying client information from SmartVault into Financial Cents.

How to import clients from SmartVault

First, export your client list from SmartVault as a CSV file. Then import it into Financial Cents in three steps:

Select the green + Create button.
Select Clients.

Creating a new client from the Create menu in Financial Cents

Click Upload to import the client list as a CSV file.

Uploading a CSV client list into Financial Cents

Benefits of the Financial Cents and SmartVault Integration

Access SmartVault directly from client projects

This integration doesn’t just give you access to SmartVault; it lets you open it directly from a client’s projects, which is faster than going through the integrations section. That may not matter when you have time to spare, but when your schedule gets busy, like during tax season, every click in your workflow software has to count.

Each project in Financial Cents can take you to the client’s profile in SmartVault, so you no longer need to search your client database for client information.

You can request client documents, check their vault to see what they’ve uploaded, and make sure the right team members can find client information from anywhere, at any time.

For clients who aren’t familiar with SmartVault, you can request documents from Financial Cents and store them in SmartVault. Set SmartVault as the upload destination when you send the request, and the client’s documents go straight to SmartVault when they upload them.

Improved consistency

The Financial Cents and SmartVault integration helps your team complete projects without second-guessing themselves, because the process is the same every time.

Without this kind of systemization, which defines and shortens your accounting processes, most accounting teams never realize their earning potential because they’re overwhelmed with mundane tasks.

Take Dawn Brolin. She used to spend 65% of her time on administrative tasks, even though she was the firm’s top earner. It wasn’t until she offloaded those duties that she could maximize her earning capacity for the firm.

Consistent processes will reduce the administrative side of your client onboarding significantly. I am the highest billable person in my firm, and I used to do admin work with 65% of my time.”

Dawn Brolin, CEO, Powerful Accounting

Improved client collaboration

Without the processes and technology to back you up, you can’t get clients to work with you or send documents the way you prefer.

That leaves them free to send documents however they like, and email will be their go-to, even though it’s less secure than accounting CRMs and document management software like SmartVault.

So decide on the best way to collaborate with your clients, and use the Financial Cents and SmartVault integration to put it in place.

Reverse engineer your workflow based on what you need (and how you need it), not necessarily what the client thinks they need and the way the client thinks they want to work (and collaborate) with you.”

Dawn Brolin, CEO, Powerful Accounting

Better client retention

When your document collection process is mapped out with tools like Financial Cents and SmartVault, clients find sending documents more secure and convenient. Their confidence in your firm grows, and they’re more likely to stay.

The SmartVault integration is one more step toward helping your firm go fully paperless, from document collection to long-term storage.

How to Set Up the Financial Cents and SmartVault Integration

The Financial Cents support team can set up the SmartVault integration for you. Schedule a call with our customer support team.

They’ll connect your Financial Cents and SmartVault accounts and organize everything so you can access both apps from your workflow tool.

Start Using the Financial Cents and SmartVault Integration to Collect and Store Client Documents

SmartVault is both cloud file storage software and a client portal. It stores your documents, whether they’re files you share with a client at the end of a job or final documents you keep in long-term storage.

Financial Cents is end-to-end accounting practice management software that keeps work and client information from slipping through the cracks, while built-in time tracking helps you stay profitable.

Together, they let you fetch and process SmartVault documents from inside Financial Cents, so you can focus on meeting evolving client needs, like offering accounting advisory services.

Start using the Financial Cents and SmartVault integration to manage documents better. Schedule a setup call, start a free trial, or book a demo.

Shahram Zarshenas

Shahram Zarshenas is the co-founder and CEO of Financial Cents. A former investment banker for software companies, he has helped thousands of accounting and bookkeeping firms document their workflows, organize their teams, and scale.

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