Playbook, accounting firm
Handing over when the numbers arrive
The questions that need a person at a practice do not announce themselves. They arrive as general enquiries with one specific fact attached, and that fact is what turns them into advice: not can I claim for this, but can I claim for this given that I work from home two days a week. The assistant has to notice the shift, and because this trade's traffic is driven by a calendar, it also has to capture how much time the person has, so the practice can sort the queue by something better than arrival order.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for asking for a person holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The boundary is crossed by a detail rather than by a topic, so the same question is answerable in one message and a handover in the next, and what matters is facts appearing rather than keywords.
- Handovers here arrive with a deadline attached, and capturing which deadline is what lets the practice triage the queue rather than working through it in order.
- Advice given on incomplete facts in this trade does not stay a conversation, it becomes a submission to an authority with the client's name on it.
- A frightened caller holding a penalty notice wants reassurance more than information, and reassurance is precisely what the assistant is least able to give.
How it arrives
- can i claim for my car if i use it for work sometimes
- should i register as a limited company or stay a sole trader
- i have had a penalty notice can someone call me today
- how much tax will i owe on this
- can i speak to an accountant and not a chatbot
- is this payment i received taxable
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Who picks up an enquiry, and how quickly | Which accountant handles which kind of enquiry, the response time you actually meet, and what changes in the weeks before a deadline. The handover message can only promise what your process delivers, especially in the period when every practice is promising the same thing. |
|---|---|
| Your deadline calendar, on a page you maintain | Personal returns, corporation filings, payroll submissions, sales tax periods. The assistant uses this to explain what is coming rather than to tell anybody what applies to them, and it should point at the page you update rather than a copy of it. |
| How urgent matters are escalated | What counts as urgent in your practice, the route it takes, and whether there is a number for somebody holding a notice. An enquiry about a penalty that waits three days for an email reply is a client lost during your busiest month. |
| Your statement that the assistant does not give tax advice | Written for a worried client rather than for a regulator, and worded so it explains why rather than just refusing. This is the sentence that appears most often on an accountancy site, so it is worth writing carefully. |
The reply
That one depends on the rest of your position, so it needs an accountant rather than me, because an answer based on part of the picture is the kind that causes trouble later. We do handle exactly this. If you leave your name, your email and the deadline or date you are working towards, I will pass it straight over, and we will treat it as urgent if that date is close.
It explains the refusal in terms of the client's own risk rather than the practice's, which is why it does not read as a brush off. Asking for the deadline rather than for details gives the practice the one piece of information that lets it prioritise, without inviting the facts the assistant must not take. Confirming that the practice handles this is the reassurance it can honestly offer.
Where it stops
The trigger. Any figure, date or circumstance from the visitor's own affairs appears in the message, or the message concerns something an authority has already sent them.
Once your own figures are in the question I have to pass it to an accountant, because the answer depends on the full picture. Leave your name, email and the deadline you are working to and somebody will come back to you.
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 whether an expense, payment or transaction is allowable or taxable.
- Never estimate what somebody will owe, or whether a refund is due.
- Never say a penalty can be appealed, or that a reasonable excuse is likely to apply.
- Never reassure a client that they are probably fine while an authority is asking them questions.
Questions
- How does it know the question stopped being general?
- It does not reason about that on its own, which is why the caution level and the material matter more here than the wording. Keep advisory content out of the index entirely, set the threshold so a fact laden question falls below it, and the refusal is what appears.
- Why capture a deadline rather than the details?
- Because the deadline is the only thing the practice needs in order to sort the queue, and it is the one piece of information that is safe to take. The details belong in a conversation with an accountant who can ask follow up questions.
- What about somebody who just says they want a person?
- It should offer the form immediately rather than trying one more answer first. It recognises a request for a person and collects a name, an email and a message, which is emailed to whoever you nominate and stored, so nothing is lost in the week when everything else is.
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 asking for a person in generalThe design question at the centre of a support assistant. Offer early, offer once, collect what a reply needs, promise a time you can keep.
- 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.
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.