How to Simplify Practice Management

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When you run your own accounting firm, you face a mountain of operational tasks every day. Between generating new business, negotiating contracts, and billing clients, managing administrative tasks can take a significant amount of effort and leave you with less time to get your real job done. Implementing the right tools and strategies in your business will not only lighten your workload and free up time, it can also lead to improved customer communication, increased sales, and more on-time payments.

Let’s take a look at some of the tools and strategies you need to streamline business operations, improve the customer experience, and regain time to focus on growing your business.

Operational tools every accountant should have in their back office

There are a few basic operational tools that every accounting firm should have at their disposal.

Customer relationship management software
Customer management is an extremely important part of running an accounting firm, but it can get complicated quickly. Having a single source of truth can help you manage customers, build relationships, and drive repeat business in the future. A simple CRM tool like Square Customer Directory can be an invaluable resource for storing all of your customers’ contact and payment information, service history, and preferences.

Plus, a CRM tool helps you keep track of all of your client communications. When you start talking to a prospective customer about a job, you can add their contact information to your Customer Directory and use Square Messages to keep communication and planning organized. Square Messages keeps all your customer emails and text messages in one place, so you can see the complete conversation thread anytime.

Digital contracts and estimates
Before starting work, you might want to get a signed commitment from your client to avoid any potential disputes later. Square Contracts offers a library of pre-written clauses to help you set clear expectations up front and secure a digital signature in a polished, professional format that fits your firm.

If you are making a proposal for a client to consider, digital estimates are an easy way to clearly outline the services that will be provided and the associated fee before your client agrees to work with you. With Square Invoices, you can create multi-package estimates to present clients a few options at once with different price points per package. Clients can easily review and approve the one that best fits their needs, and you can convert that approved estimate into an invoice with just a click.

Cloud-based invoicing software
Speaking of invoices, offering clients an easy way to submit payment is essential for saving time on administrative tasks. Cloud-based invoicing software like Square Invoices is not only easy to use for you and your clients, but it connects with Square Contracts and Square Estimates to create one seamless workflow from start to finish.

You can create professional, branded invoice templates ahead of time so that when it’s time to bill a client, you’re ready to go. You can customize invoices with your company’s logo, brand colors, and business information or add custom fields for additional information like terms of service, your cancellation policy, and more. Creating a few unique templates for frequently invoiced services is a strategic way to maximize your productivity.

Flexible payment options
When you wrap up a job, the main objective is to get paid as quickly as possible. Offering your clients multiple ways to submit payment helps you get paid faster and improves the client experience. With Square, you can send invoices from anywhere via email or text, or manually by sharing a payment link with your client. You can also use Square Virtual Terminal to record credit card payments over the phone on your computer.

For in-person situations, the Square Point of Sale app allows you to easily check out a client from your mobile phone or one of several portable hardware solutions Square offers. And in the office, you can wirelessly connect Square Terminal to your computer for seamless in-person payments. Customers can tap, dip, or swipe their card and print a receipt with Square Terminal’s built-in printer.

Strategies for streamlining the billing process
Streamlining your billing is an important part of keeping your back office simple. The way you bill a client can depend on the scope and complexity of a project. That’s why Square Invoices makes it easy to create a custom payment schedule for each project, track the status, and send automated reminders to ensure you’re paid on time.

Here are three ways to streamline your billing process:

1. Collect deposits up front
Collecting a deposit at the beginning of a new job can help with cash flow management and ensure your client is committed to the work. With Square Invoices, you can request a deposit up front and create a separate due date for the remaining balance. This way you can keep track of multiple payments for a project from a single invoice.

2. Set up recurring payments
If you regularly provide a service, it is essential to automatically bill repeat customers with a recurring invoice to increase efficiency. Saving the customer’s card on file is another strategic way to get paid faster and improve service quality for your clients.

3. Schedule payment installments
For longer or complicated projects that require more planning, you can use Progress Invoices to schedule multiple payments based on specific milestones or phases of the job. This helps you track payments from one invoice and stay in control of your cash flow.

As a small business owner, it’s easy to become overwhelmed with the operational aspects of running a business. But incorporating new tools and strategies into your back office will make running your business easier, improve client experiences, and leave you with more time to focus on the work you love the most.

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