Month end without the chase: records that arrive on time because software did the reminding, report packs that assemble themselves, an inbox that sorts itself before the team sits down. Built on the practice systems you already pay for, and approved by your people before anything leaves the building.
In a practice, AI and automation take over the chasing and assembly around the work: reminding clients for records and invoices, collecting and filing documents, building month-end and year-end report packs, and triaging the shared inbox. Accountants keep the judgement and the client relationship; software absorbs the follow-up.
Records, invoices, missing bank statements: the requests are identical every time, and the deadline pressure lands on your team rather than the client. It is the most automatable work in the practice.
The numbers already live in the ledger; the pack is still built by hand. Exports, formatting, boilerplate commentary: the same steps every period, for every client, forever.
Every message is a claim on attention: some urgent, most routine, all mixed together. Triage is judgement work at the top and pure sorting underneath, and the sorting half can be handed over.
The working pattern suits any regulated practice: software drafts, chases and files; your team approves. On real practice processes:
By hand todayReminders typed one client at a time
With softwarePolite, persistent and automatic; replies reach a person
By hand todayAttachments hunted across an inbox
With softwareRequested, received, checked and filed by software
By hand todayAssembled by hand every period
With softwareBuilt on a schedule, reviewed before they go out
By hand todayFirst come, first served
With softwareSorted and routed; people handle what needs them
By hand todayTyped up later, if at all
With softwareCaptured and filed the same day
The builder should have builds to show. These are live systems, not slideware:
The full showcase, with live links, is on the Labs page; the system behind all of it is the Software Factory.
Practices hold other people’s financial lives, so every build starts with the data questions: what the tool may touch, where it is stored, who can read it, whether a provider may train on it (no), and what the audit trail shows. GDPR and professional confidentiality duties are design inputs, not a checklist at the end. The homework, free:
When the win is proven there are retainers to keep it compounding, the Software Factory for custom systems, and Managed Websites for the whole web presence, run for you.
The knowledge base exists so you can check my thinking before we ever speak. Start here:
Almost certainly. The default is to build on what you already run: Xero, Sage, QuickBooks, your practice management tool and Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace, connected by automation rather than replaced by it. Where a ready-made connector does not exist, one can be built.
That is decided by design, not luck. Client data stays inside services under your control, encrypted in transit and at rest where it matters, with AI providers configured not to train on it. Where the data goes, who can read it and how it is deleted are agreed in writing before anything is built.
They will notice the reminders are timely and polite. Messages go out in your voice and your branding, on a schedule you set, and anything a client replies goes straight to a person. The point is persistence, not pretending to be human.
Small practices often gain the most, because one person wearing five hats loses the most time to chasing and assembly. Start with one process at a fixed price and judge the whole idea on the hours it returns.
Chasing is the usual answer: invoice and records reminders are high relief, low risk and quick to ship. Sift, the free scorer on this site, ranks your own processes in a few minutes; the Automation Audit maps the whole practice formally.
Sift is free and runs in your browser: list the jobs that eat your team’s week, answer four quick questions about each, and leave with a ranked shortlist of what to automate first, and what to leave alone.
Get my automation shortlistPrefer to talk it through first? Book a free 30-minute call.
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