By business type
Where an accountancy practice can let an assistant answer
An accounting practice has a workload shaped by the calendar, and so does its inbox. Enquiries spike in the weeks before a filing deadline and again when a penalty notice lands, and almost all of them are the same handful of questions asked in a hurry. Those are worth answering automatically. The ones with somebody's actual figures in them are not.
What people actually type
Not the questions on your FAQ page. These are the phrasings that arrive in a chat window, lowercase and unpunctuated, and the material has to answer them in those words rather than in yours.
- how much do you charge for a self assessment
- when is the filing deadline
- do you do fixed monthly fees
- what do i need to send you to get started
- can you take over from my current accountant
- how much for annual accounts for a small limited company
- do you do payroll as well
- i have had a penalty notice can you help
- do you charge by the hour
- can you register me for vat
- what is included in the monthly fee
- how quickly can you take on a new client
What to feed it
In rough order of how much work each one takes off the front desk. Every one of these is a document you almost certainly already have.
| Your fee packages, priced by client type | A sole trader, a landlord with two properties and a limited company with payroll are three different prices, and prospective clients cannot tell which one they are. Publish the packages with the client profile each is built for, and the assistant can route somebody to the right number instead of the lowest one. |
|---|---|
| Fixed fee scope, and what falls outside it | The most damaging fee dispute in this trade is not about the price, it is about what the price covered. Index the exclusions as carefully as the inclusions: an enquiry from the tax authority, a late set of records, an extra return, a company formation. The assistant should be able to say what triggers an additional fee. |
| The filing deadline calendar you publish | Personal returns, corporation tax, payroll submissions, sales tax periods, confirmation filings. Deadlines are the seasonal driver of every enquiry you get, and they are also the material most likely to go stale, so point the assistant at the page you actually maintain rather than a document you will forget to replace. |
| Onboarding requirements | Identity verification, proof of address, the authority you need to be appointed as agent, and the professional clearance letter that goes to the outgoing accountant. New clients consistently underestimate this and then blame the delay on you, so setting it out at the enquiry stage is worth real money in the busy season. |
| Your engagement letter terms in plain language | Billing frequency, payment terms, what happens if records arrive late, and the notice period to leave. Not the letter itself, which nobody reads, but the summary the assistant can answer from when somebody asks what they are committing to. |
| Service definitions in the client's vocabulary | Bookkeeping, management accounts, statutory accounts, tax return, tax planning, payroll, sales tax filing. Clients use these interchangeably and wrongly. Your own definitions are what let the assistant work out that somebody asking for accounts wants a return. |
What has to reach a person
Any question with the caller's own numbers in it
Whether an expense is allowable, whether they should incorporate, whether a payment is taxable, how much they will owe. These arrive worded as general questions and are never general questions, because the answer turns on the rest of a set of facts the assistant cannot see.
Tax advice given on incomplete facts is wrong roughly as often as it is right, and it is relied on either way. The assistant should say that the answer depends on the full picture, and offer to arrange a call with an accountant.
Anything that has already gone wrong with an authority
A penalty notice, an interest charge, a compliance check, a missed deadline. People asking these are frightened and want reassurance, which is precisely why the assistant must not offer any. It cannot know whether an appeal is available, whether a reasonable excuse applies, or how much time is left.
The right handling is to acknowledge the urgency, confirm that the practice deals with this kind of matter, and get the enquiry in front of a person the same day.
Quoting a fee for work that has not been scoped
A published package price assumes a client who fits the package. Somebody with three years of unfiled returns, a property abroad, or a set of records in a carrier bag does not, and a number quoted to them will be treated as binding.
Give the published range, say clearly that the fee is confirmed once the practice has seen the position, and offer a scoping call.
Anything about an existing client's file
Whether a return has been filed, what the liability came to, whether a refund has arrived. The assistant has no practice management access and must not imply it does, particularly in the week when everybody is asking.
The wording when it cannot help
This is the message the assistant returns when nothing in the material covers the question. It is written by you rather than generated, which matters here more than anywhere: it is the sentence a stranger reads at the worst moment.
I cannot give tax or accounting advice on your own position, because the answer always depends on the full picture. I can explain our fee packages, what each service covers, the deadlines we work to and what we need in order to take you on. Leave your name, email and a short note and one of the accountants will come back to you.
It names what it cannot do, gives the route that can, and offers to take a message. A refusal that only apologises leaves the person exactly where they started.
Rules and duties that shape the answer
Tax advice is regulated or restricted in most markets
Many jurisdictions restrict who may represent a taxpayer or hold themselves out as a tax adviser, and professional bodies impose their own conduct rules on members. An assistant giving a view on somebody's tax position is doing regulated work with no qualification behind it and no professional indemnity cover that would answer for it.
Anti money laundering supervision applies to the practice
Accountancy practices are supervised for anti money laundering purposes in most markets, which makes client identity checks before acting a legal requirement rather than an internal preference. The assistant should present the checks as a mandatory step, and should never suggest work can begin while they are pending.
Rates and thresholds change, sometimes mid year
Allowances, bands, registration thresholds and filing dates are revised on a political timetable, not a convenient one. Indexed material quoting a figure will be quoted back long after the figure changed, and in this trade a stale number reads as advice.
Prefer material that explains how something works over material that states this year's number, and where a number is unavoidable keep it on a page you maintain rather than in an uploaded document.
Never, whatever the documents say
Out of bounds
- Whether a particular expense, payment or transaction is allowable or taxable.
- How much somebody will owe, or whether a refund is due.
- Whether to incorporate, register for sales tax, or change structure.
- Whether a penalty can be appealed, or whether a reasonable excuse applies.
- Anything about an existing client's return, liability or filing status.
Playbooks for this trade
One page per recurring question, written for a accounting firm rather than in general. Each carries the phrasings, the material that answers them, a reply worth copying, and the line where it has to stop.
- Publishing accountancy fees so the assistant routes to the right packageFixed monthly packages against hourly work, priced by client profile, and why the answer changes in the weeks before a filing deadline.
- Why the package price is not the quote for the person askingCatch up years, records in a carrier bag and income from abroad all break the published package. How the assistant gives a range and stops.
- Fee queries from existing clients, answered from the engagement termsAdditional fee queries answered from the engagement terms: what triggered a charge, when the practice invoices, and where the query goes next.
- The onboarding steps that decide how fast a new client gets movingIdentity checks, agent authority and the professional clearance letter, explained at the enquiry stage rather than during the delay.
- Handing over when the numbers arriveA general question stops being general the moment somebody supplies their own facts. The trigger, the wording, and the deadline to capture.
- A prospect wants a meeting. Which meeting, and can it happen this week?Which meeting is being asked for, why the answer changes near a filing date, and why nothing here can put anything in a partner's diary.
- Why a practice cannot agree to erase a client fileRetention duties, working papers and the identity records kept after a client leaves. What may be explained and why a person still decides.
- The client who wants to stop paying with the accounts half draftedNotice, the annual fee spread across twelve payments, and the handover to the next firm. What can be explained and what cannot be ended here.
- A client wants their fees back after the work has startedThere is nothing to send back and the work is partly done. Why a fee refund at a practice is a scope conversation, not a returns one.
- Publishing hours when the working week changes with the calendarReception hours are the easy half. What to publish about the weeks nobody can come to the phone and the payroll cut off that never moves.
- The arrival question at a practice is usually about carrying somethingWhere to park to carry a year of paperwork in, whether anything can be posted, and what happens to originals left at a door.
- Routing an accountancy complaint without conceding anythingSorting a service complaint from a claim about the work, and why nothing may concede whose deadline was missed.
- Adjustments a practice can make, and the one it cannotPaper accounts, a wet signature, a family member helping, and where an adjustment collides with the identity checks.
- When the security questionnaire is about somebody else's financial dataAssurance questions arriving from a client's own auditor or biggest customer, and why the assistant may only point at what is published.
- The monthly payment failed and nobody noticed until it matteredWhy a bounced monthly payment matters more near a filing date, and the confusion between paying the practice and paying the authority.
- A client cannot get in to approve their accountsPortal sign in, agent authority and a shared login are three different problems. What the assistant can explain and what needs a person.
- The questions people are too embarrassed to ask before a first meetingHow long it takes, who is in the room, whether it is chargeable, and what to bring when the records are in no state to show anybody.
- Eleven at night, and somebody wants an accountant by morningNothing can be taken on overnight and pretending otherwise costs more than saying so. What to publish for the late panic enquiry.
Questions
- The weeks before the deadline are the only ones that matter. Does this help then?
- That is when it earns its keep. The deadline period brings a high volume of identical questions (what do you need, what does it cost, can you still take me on) from people who go elsewhere if nobody replies for a day. Answering those without interrupting the people doing the filing is the whole case for it.
- Can it tell a prospect what their return will cost?
- It can give the published package price and the client profile that package assumes. It should not price an individual position, because the things that move the fee (unfiled years, foreign income, the state of the records) are exactly the things a prospect does not mention up front.
- What should we index first?
- The fee packages with their exclusions, the onboarding requirements, and the deadline page. Those three cover the overwhelming majority of enquiry traffic and all three already exist somewhere in the practice, usually in a document only staff can find.
Keep reading
- For a law firmFee structures, consultation terms and onboarding checks are answerable. Anything applied to a caller's own facts is legal advice.
- For a insurance brokerProduct information is safe ground. A personal recommendation is regulated, and no assistant may confirm whether a loss is covered.
- For a mortgage brokerProcess, documents and fees are safe to automate. Rates go stale fast and affordability cannot be answered generically.
- Every business typeWhat an assistant has to know before it can answer for a trade.
Try it on your own material
Upload a document or point it at your site, paste one line of HTML, then ask it something only your business could answer.