Accountants play a crucial part in the financial markets. They are responsible for measuring, processing, and communicating financial information of a company, sector, industry, or economy. They work across almost every sector, within businesses, as a freelancer, or for governments. Accountants are used in fashion, travel, hospitality, construction, and pretty much any business where goods and services are sold. Accountants, over time, can therefore build up an extensive database of customers, so they must implement a robust customer relationship management (CRM) system to nurture existing clients and follow up on new leads. We have outlined some of the top CRM software for an accounting firm in this article.
Top 6 accounting software’s for an accounting firm.
- Pipedrive – best for prioritizing your workload
- Bonsai – Best For Updating Clients With New Information
- Liscio – best for sharing documents with clients
- Insightly – best for learning more about your customers
- Senta – best for managing the customer lifecycle
- Bitrix24 – best for overall business management
1. Pipedrive – best for prioritizing your workload
Pricing: starting from $16 per user/per month. 14-day free trial offer
Pipedrive has been created by salespeople for salespeople. Accountants, like any other business, are selling their accountancy services, so they need a CRM system that is suitable for managing customers. Pipedrive allows you to organize each of your customers into different “pipeline stages” to view of all your tasks and decide which customer to prioritize. In addition, the software also allows you to build a “pipeline” of all your customer profiles, which will then give you reporting to help you make informed business decisions.
Key features:
- Create different “pipelines” for each customer
- Keep up to date with all your tasks
- Learn about your customer preferences by viewing their activity history
- Combine all your new leads in one place
- Create custom reports on your customers, finances, and performance
Reasons to buy:
- Quickly identify and follow up with new leads
- It has been reviewed across the internet as “easy to use”
- Keep track of your workload and prioritize your daily tasks
- Make decisions to improve your performance using data and analytics
- Work on your mobile on the go
- Ideal for visual learners
Reasons to avoid
- It may be too rigid for people who prefer to organize their tasks in a different way
- Additional add-ons start at $35 extra per month
2. Bonsai – Best For Updating Clients With New Information
Pricing: The lowest starting price of Bonsai is $17, which is charged as a one-time payment annually.
Enjoy communicating with your clients by using the robust customer portal system of Bonsai. You will never have to worry about losing messages in your inbox due to the efficient tagging option of this software. The platform allows you to separate client messages based on their importance and project deadlines.
Adding internal notes under every customer profile is also easy with this software. These will help you remember specific guidelines by the client and ensure all project requirements are met. The best thing is that this portal also allows you to communicate with your customers by sending messages or sharing documents.
Key Features:
- Create a unique profile for clients based on the rates you are charging them
- Track billable hours for receiving accurate payments from clients
- Offer your customers an easy way to communicate with your workers
- Share information with team members to make the customer experience seamless
- Allows clients to have control of their projects and manage contracts
- Get information about new and potential customers through forms and questionnaires
Reasons To Buy:
- It has many CRM and accounting features, such as expense tracking
- You don’t have to worry about a great learning curve
- Automatic trackers ensure you don’t have to make much effort to track time
- Never miss a deadline by adding important tasks to the active tasks list
- Offers a fast way to update clients with new information
- Let your customer see project goals under their profile to easily track progress
Reasons To Avoid:
- Extensive CRM features are mainly offered under Professional and Business plans
3. Liscio – best for sharing documents with clients
Pricing: starting from $50 per month.
Liscio helps improve communication between accountants and their clients. It is a secure, file-sharing platform that allows both parties to share documents via a mobile app. The idea is to reduce the time you spend chasing clients for copies across different platforms, simplify the process and make it easier to share sensitive information. The software allows you to learn more about you customers and keep track of your work with them.
Key features:
- Speak with clients via smartphones
- Securely send confidential documents between both parties
- Track all your tasks for each client
- Send automated mobile updates to clients
- E-signatures are built into the app to make it easier for digital signing
Reasons to buy:
- Improve the relationship between yourself and your clients
- Quicker response times
- Save time by not having to chase clients
- Easy to use for both parties
- Affordable pricing
Reasons to avoid:
- Lack of marketing activities integrated into the software
- It is for existing clients rather than for chasing up new leads
- No reporting tools to improve performance
4. Insightly – best for learning more about your customers
Pricing: starting from $29 per month. 14-day free trial offer.
Insightly can do precisely what is suggested in the name. It can give you more insights about your customers and what they are looking for. By tracking every interaction each customer has with your business, the software helps you build a picture of your customers, so you can target them with personalized marketing to drive revenues. Insightly allows you to align your team around a central source of customer data to ensure that everyone is equipped to build a good working relationship.
Key features:
- Find new leads and manage existing clients
- Learn more about who your customers are
- Create personalized marketing campaigns for specific customer groups
- Real-time dashboards and customized reporting
- Integration with a variety of other software
- Compatible on Android, iOS, and desktop
- Workflow tools to automate tasks
Reasons to buy:
- Lots of features to understand more about your customers and interact with them
- In-depth reporting and analysis to improve your service
- Complex workflows to automate emails when a customer interacts with your business
- Create tailored marketing campaigns to encourage sales
- Multi-layer security to protect sensitive information
Reasons to avoid
- Additional cost to use the marketing features
- The software provides lots of data and insights which may take time to analyze thoroughly
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5. Senta – best for managing the customer lifecycle
Pricing: starting from $36 per month. 30-day free trial offer.
Senta is a CRM system specifically for accountants who want to create a seamless journey for their customers. The software enables users to engage with clients from the start of the lifecycle when they are simply a prospect, onboarding and then recurring clients. The software ensures that accountants have one system to communicate and work with clients.
Key features:
- Combine all your client information into one central location
- Automate emails to clients
- Create lists of clients and prospects to keep track of your audience
- Real-time view of the financial data of your client
- Build an individual record and activity history for each client
Reasons to buy:
- Monitor new leads and engage with existing customers
- Send personalized content to different groups of clients
- Save time by automating repetitive emails
- Create forms for new clients quickly and send them directly
- See your clients’ live financial records
- Integrates with a variety of third-party software
Reasons to avoid:
- The design isn’t as clean and modern as other CRM systems
- You cannot organize your workload and schedule tasks
6. Bitrix24 – best for overall business management
Pricing: starting from $0 per month. Paid packages from $49 per month.
Bitrix24 is software designed to be an “ultimate workspace.” The software combines CRM with task management, communication, website maintenance, and HR all in one platform. The CRM capabilities allow users to manage new leads and deals and process invoices, payments and automate email communications.
Key features:
- Manage new leads and add them automatically to the CRM
- Run marketing campaigns within the software
- Automated workflows to trigger emails when a customer interacts with your business
- Online collaboration with colleagues through email, phone calls, and web hat
- Securely store and upload documents and co-edit with colleagues
- Task management, automation, and schedules
Reasons to buy:
- A one-stop-shop for managing CRM, marketing, sales, and projects
- Communicate with clients quickly and automate repetitive emails
- Keep a record of all customer interactions with your business
- Use reports to understand more about your customers
- Keep in regular contact with colleagues and have a view over each other’s projects
Reason to avoid:
- It has been reviewed as quite complex to set up
- There are a lot of features to learn and navigate around
- The professional package increases to $159 per month
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Why do accountancy firms need CRM software?
Accountancy firms, just like any other business, sell a service to customers. Accountants are needed in all industries, which means they need a robust customer management system to maintain relationships and offer excellent service. Accountants are typically very hectic day-to-day, so having a CRM in place to automate repetitive tasks can keep you on schedule and ensure that you follow up with any potential new customers. CRM software can help you to build an image of who your customers are and what they want from you, which allows you to create tailored and professional service.
What is the main difference between a lead and a client?
A lead is a potential customer who has expressed some interest in your business. A lead can come from various places, email, website, social media, or word-of-mouth. A client is a paying customer who you have engaged with, onboarded, and are now using your service.
How can a CRM help an accountant gain more clients?
CRM software can help you keep track of your new leads and provide you with information on who they are and what they like. You can reach out to new leads, often with one-click or with automated emails. You can create customized marketing campaigns depending on trends you have seen in your reporting and analytics tools to encourage your leads to buy from you. The more personalized your marketing is, the more likely a prospect will turn into a client.
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