Playbook, accounting firm
A prospect wants a meeting. Which meeting, and can it happen this week?
Meeting is one word covering a short scoping call with somebody who has not decided anything yet, a year end accounts meeting that cannot usefully happen until the records are in, and an advisory hour that is chargeable under the engagement letter. They are arranged differently, they are worth different amounts, and in the fortnight either side of a filing date only one of them is realistically getting into anybody's diary.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for appointment booking holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- A practice diary is not a grid of interchangeable slots: the accountant who can answer a limited company question is not the one who runs payroll, and the person asking has no way to know which of them they need.
- The year end meeting has a prerequisite standing in front of it, because there is nothing to go through until the bookkeeping records are in and somebody has worked them, so booking it early produces a meeting that gets cancelled.
- Whether a meeting is chargeable is decided by the engagement letter rather than by its length, so an existing client on a fixed monthly fee and a prospect who has signed nothing are asking two different questions in the same words.
- Demand collapses into the weeks before a filing date, which is exactly when nobody has an hour spare, so the honest reply in that window says what can be arranged after it rather than pretending the diary looks the same all year.
How it arrives
- can i book a call with an accountant
- is the first meeting free
- how soon can someone see me before the deadline
- do i need to bring my records to the first meeting
- can i speak to whoever does payroll
- how long does a year end meeting take
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Which meetings you offer, and which accountant takes each | A scoping call for a prospect, a year end accounts meeting, a payroll query, an advisory hour. Name them the way the practice names them internally, because a visitor asking for a meeting is otherwise routed to whichever one your material happens to describe best. |
|---|---|
| Whether a meeting is chargeable, and on what terms | Which conversations sit inside the fixed monthly fee and which are billed as advisory time. This is the sentence that stops a client arriving at an hour they thought was included and leaving with an invoice for it. |
| What has to be in your hands before a meeting is useful | Bookkeeping records for the period, the last filed accounts, payroll figures. A year end meeting booked before any of it arrives spends the one resource a practice cannot make more of near a deadline. |
| How the diary changes across the compliance year | The weeks when nothing is available, the period you keep clear for filing, and what you do still offer during it. Publishing the pattern is more use than publishing a booking link that shows no availability. |
The reply
It depends which meeting you need. A first conversation about taking you on is arranged through the enquiry form on our contact page, and we will ask what entity you are and what is outstanding before putting a time on it [1]. A year end meeting is arranged once your records are with us, because there is nothing to go through until then [2]. I cannot see the diary or book anything. Leave me your name, an email and roughly what you need, and the team will come back with a time.
It sorts the request before it answers it, because the two meetings behave nothing alike and a prospect cannot tell them apart. Saying that the year end meeting waits for the records reframes a delay as a sequence, which is the version clients accept. The limit on the diary is stated before the handover is offered rather than after it, so nothing in the reply reads as a booking.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor names a day, asks whether anything is free before a filing date, or asks for a particular accountant by name or by the work they do.
I cannot see anybody's diary or hold a time. Leave me your name, an email and what the meeting is about, and whoever handles that work will come back with what is genuinely available.
It stops answering before it guesses, says who will pick it up, and asks for the one thing that makes a reply possible. Nothing about it reads as a dead end.
Never say this here
Out of bounds
- Never say a meeting is booked, held or confirmed, because nothing in this conversation reaches a diary.
- Never say a named accountant is free, since availability in a practice is decided by what is being filed that week.
- Never tell a prospect the first meeting is free unless your own terms say so, because the answer differs for advisory time.
- Never promise somebody can be taken on and filed for before a deadline, since identity checks and agent authority sit in front of the work.
Questions
- Could it book meetings if we connected our calendar?
- No. It has no write access to anything and never sees a diary, so a booking always finishes on your own form or with somebody ringing back. What it removes is the exchange about which meeting is wanted, which is most of these messages.
- Should it admit we are full in the run up to a filing date?
- It should say what you can offer instead. A prospect told plainly that new work is being taken on for after the filing period, with the reason attached, usually waits. A prospect who hears nothing for two days does not.
- How do we stop it pricing an advisory hour?
- It answers only from what you index. Publish which conversations sit inside the monthly fee and which are billed, and keep the rate for individual advisory work out of the index if you would rather a person quoted it.
Keep reading
- Everything for a accounting firmDeadlines drive the volume. What an accountancy practice can automate, and why no answer may touch a caller's own numbers.
- Handling appointment booking in generalIt cannot write into a calendar. The job is removing every reason not to book, then handing over with the details already gathered.
- 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.
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