Developing a successful relationship with clients as a bookkeeper, or anyone providing bookkeeping services such as a CPA, depends on having a robust onboarding process.
Even if your firm uses offshore bookkeeping to keep on top of the workload and maintain a steady flow of satisfied clients, the onboarding process must still be detailed and enable you to optimize every engagement with a new client.
To help you successfully onboard bookkeeping clients, here’s what your checklist should include:
A welcome email that includes essential information
Sending each new client a welcoming email that tells them how much you value their custom, is a great way to kick things off. Attach an engagement letter, overview of services, and a detailed proposal; serving as a formal introduction to the processes and protocols of your firm.
Onboarding questionnaire
A comprehensive questionnaire can help make the onboarding process more streamlined, and should include the following:
- Contact information, both business and personal
- All relevant financial account details
- Access info for digital tools and platforms as needed
- A detailed description of the clients’ goals and expectations
Document confirmation and first payment
It’s important that all necessary contracts are fully signed and that initial payments have been made before work begins. This makes the engagement formal and sets up boundaries both of a financial and legal nature.
Team member assignment
Whatever your client’s specific needs or industry may be, you will need to assign them the relevant team members, so that you work on building trust, while demonstrating a commitment to providing them with a highly personalized service.
Set up timelines and milestones etc
Take the data accumulated in the onboarding questionnaire, and configure it to set up timelines, tasks and milestones for your client’s project.
Introduction and initial meeting
At this stage, your client should be introduced to the team members you have assigned to work with them, and goals, processes and preferred methods of communication should be discussed, clarified and documented. It’s important that at this stage, any doubts or concerns raised by the client, are addressed and resolved to help strengthen the future relationship.
Set up communication schedule
However your client prefers to be communicated with, be it by email, phone or video call, or in-person, arrange to check-in with them at their preferred times, and schedule meetings and updates as appropriate.
Set up a feedback loop
To maintain a successful relationship with your new bookkeeping client, you should put a feedback in place, so that both your team and the client can share their insights as to what is going well, and where any improvements might be made. Doing this will help keep the onboarding process refined, and keep your clients satisfied on a long-term basis.
Adopting an onboarding approach that’s comprehensive and similar to the one outlined above, even when using offshore bookkeeping services, can help make the entire process a lot smoother, more streamlined, and highly refined for both parties. Regularly refreshing your onboarding checklist and adapting it as and when needed, will give your clients an even more fulfilling experience, and help you build a more robust and enduring long-term relationship.
