Playbook, accounting firm
Publishing hours when the working week changes with the calendar
A practice can publish a set of office hours and still be unreachable for a fortnight, because in the run up to a filing date the people who answer questions are the people doing the filing. Meanwhile the payroll cut off takes no notice of the office hours at all, and a client who misses it by an hour has a problem nothing on the contact page warned them about.
Why this is not the general answer
The handling pattern for opening hours holds across every trade. What follows is the part that does not.
- The hours that matter to a client are rarely the door hours: they are the payroll submission cut off, the date records have to be in by, and the last day work can be accepted for a filing period.
- For a fortnight around a filing date the phones are effectively unattended by choice, and saying so with an alternative attached is more useful than a set of times that is technically true.
- A practice usually has parts keeping different hours, because payroll runs to a processing calendar that ignores everybody else's diary and does not move for a public holiday.
- The quiet stretches of the year are genuinely quiet, which can mean reduced hours or a closed office during a period when clients assume an accountant is always at a desk, and almost nobody publishes that.
How it arrives
- what are your office hours
- is anyone there this week or are you all filing
- what time do you need payroll figures by
- are you open between the holidays
- when is the last day i can send my records in
- can i drop paperwork off on a saturday
What has to be indexed for this to work
| Office hours, and separately the hours somebody answers the phone | The two are not the same at a practice in filing season, and a client who rings a published number and gets nothing concludes you are unresponsive rather than busy. |
|---|---|
| Your payroll processing cut offs | The day and time figures have to reach you for each pay frequency, and what happens when they arrive after it. This is the hardest deadline a practice runs and it does not belong buried in a general opening times paragraph. |
| The dates around a filing period | When you stop accepting new work for the period, when records have to be with you, and what happens to anything arriving after that. Publishing the internal cut off is what stops the carrier bag turning up with days to go. |
| Closures and reduced hours across the year | The holiday closedown, any quiet period on shorter hours, and how genuinely urgent matters are handled during them. This is the material clients most often find missing at the moment they need it. |
The reply
The office hours are on our contact page [1]. Two things matter more than those. Payroll figures have to reach us by the cut off for your pay frequency, which is on the same page and does not move [2]. And in the weeks before a filing date the team is working through returns, so email gets a reply faster than the phone does. I cannot check whether a particular person is in. Tell me your name, an email and what you need and I will pass it on.
It answers the question asked and then gives the two facts that will actually catch the client out, which is the entire point of the page. Saying that email beats the phone in filing season is honest and it protects the people doing the filing. It does not pretend to know who is at a desk.
Where it stops
The trigger. The visitor needs to reach a specific person, says something has to happen before a date, or has missed a payroll or records cut off.
I cannot see who is in or get a message to somebody directly. Leave me your name, an email and the date you are working to, and I will pass it over so it can be picked up in the right order.
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 somebody will call back today, since near a filing date the team is unreachable by design.
- Never treat a payroll cut off as flexible, because a late submission has consequences the practice cannot undo.
- Never state hours for a part of the practice the material does not cover, such as bookkeeping or payroll.
- Never say the office is open on a date the published closure list does not confirm.
Questions
- Should we admit we are hard to reach in filing season?
- Publish it with an alternative and it reads as competence. Leave it out and every unanswered call gets filed by the client as being ignored, which is the version they repeat to other people.
- Can it tell a client whether their accountant is in today?
- No. It cannot see a diary, a rota or anybody's availability. It repeats the hours you publish and takes a message, and that is the honest limit of it.
- Where should the payroll cut off live?
- On the page the assistant reaches for hours questions, not inside a payroll document. It is the deadline clients ask about most and the one they cannot recover from.
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 opening hours in generalHolidays, seasonal variation, last orders and multiple sites. Keeping one source of truth so the assistant and your map listing agree.
- 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.
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