Accounting Pros Share Tips for Tech Adoption and Client Collaboration
It’s 2024, and CPAs across the United States are looking for strategies to achieve their priorities for their accounting firms while balancing the stress of tax season. For many, improving client communication remains at the top of the list of first concerns.
If you’ve been thinking about how to enhance communication with clients at your tax practice and build better relationships, it often helps to know what colleagues with the same goal are doing. In a recent webinar, SmartVault spoke with Caleb Jenkins, EA, CQP, RLJ Financial Services, Inc., Nick Boscia, CPA, EA, Owner, Boscia & Boscia P.C, and Karina Khatanova, Administrative Assistant, Goldstein & Loggia CPAs to get a sense of not only why client communication is so crucial, but also how they’re using cutting-edge technology to reach their objectives.
Each of these accounting professionals represents a different segment of the field of accounting and finance in terms of their approach to technology. Caleb, a self-described “early adopter,” is proactively on the hunt for new tech and eager to try the latest and greatest, while Nick’s approach has been progressive but slower, representing the group of accountants that’s extremely technology aware and open to tech but not quite an enthusiastic expert. Finally, Karina represents the group of professionals who have been slower to adopt technology while they’ve been busy running a business, but who are interested in doing so and who have really begun to see the benefits of tech recently. In other words, there’s something in this conversation for everyone.
Why is client communication so important to your accounting practice?
Let’s start with why client communication is a priority for so many accounting professionals in 2024. As you’ll see, this often-used, slightly general term is actually crucial to many areas of practice, from actively growing a client base to building long-term relationships with current clients.
Karina: For us, communication is definitely one of the major tools we use not only with new clients, but with everyone. The ability to communicate financial information is essential to building trust and establishing long relationships. We use tech like SmartVault to ensure clients securely receive sensitive information in real time.
Caleb: Over the last couple of years, one of the key drivers of growth at our firm has been people reaching out saying their prior accountant wouldn’t communicate. They tell us, “My accountant wouldn’t respond to my messages. They won’t answer my emails.” People are looking for someone to be proactive. We can solve so many of the last-minute problems that come up by proactively talking to them about new tax laws or letting them know ahead of time that they need to take action rather than waiting for them to come to us to ask what to do. If we wait on them, they don’t send anything until deadline day, and by deadline day, we can’t respond to all those messages. Proactive client communication is important so we can be in the driver’s seat rather than being in the back seat just hitting “respond” to every message that comes in.
Nick: When we implemented SmartVault, it allowed us to grow our firm exponentially. When I took over our legacy firm, it was paper. With SmartVault, we could surpass the bottleneck that being a paper practice had created. SmartVault allowed us to reach out to our clients in bulk, and the integration with our tax software was helpful. We were doing 700 tax returns before we implemented SmartVault in 2019, and with it, we were able to more than double to 1,800 clients. We could never have done that without communicating with clients on a mass scale.
How did technology help you improve client communication?
Nick: I’m all for technology. As I said, I run a legacy firm that didn’t start with tech. Implementing tech is always a constant project, but the first piece we implemented was SmartVault. This was the initial change that helped our firm grow. With it, we improved efficiency. Clients don’t like change, and I imagine a lot of accountants feel the same way. In the first year, only about 50% of our clients got on board with the tech changes. But the next year, COVID happened. You couldn’t go into the office anymore. Fortunately, we had SmartVault in place already. People were just able to use it. Now, about 95-98% of our clients are using it. Every year we try to implement something new. Once you do the initial setup, it takes off.
I think the reason we had such a high adoption rate is you don’t realize you have an old model where we were doing things with paper. Additionally, younger clients were more open to using SmartVault. It was the older clients who were more hesitant. Someone on the border might say, “Oh, I don’t have to drive to your office anymore? Or go to the post office?” People are realizing there are tools to make their lives easier. But not everyone sees the value right away. That’s why, during year one, half of the people switched. Older clients had more trouble. But next year, as I said, everything shut down. Once they were forced to use it, clients realized how easy it was. They don’t have to call me anymore. They can just upload documents and I get automatically notified. Most people are open to tech. Some people need a little more hand holding and explanation. We explained to them that using these tools makes communication more secure. Unlike with email, they don’t have to worry about cyber issues.
Caleb: We use Lacerte for our tax product, and the integration between Lacerte and SmartVault is incredible. We don’t have to duplicate client information since it’s automatically synced. The bulk print capability from Lacerte into SmartVault is even better. We can just bulk print all the data into SmartVault for final storage or to send it out to our clients. We can bulk print our organizers into SmartVault, too. It’s pretty powerful. That piece of SmartVault is fantastic. We use Liscio for client communication, and it’s also connected with SmartVault. Liscio is a better form of communication. It’s mobile app based, and clients can just click the app and send us a message. It’s very simple and secure. Pulling communication out of email removes the risk of phishing emails and other security issues. Everything is communicated via a secure, encrypted platform. I’m a first adopter of technology. I’ve got lots of different apps or technology tools.
Even accounting professionals who are just starting in the tech market have questions about how to cut through the noise. With this in mind, it was helpful to find out: What factors do early adopters tend to look for in new technology? Do they think about firm needs first, or what’s not working with their current tech stack, or something else?
Caleb: I’m constantly looking at what’s on the market. I do a lot of webinars and conferences each year. The key thing at conferences is building relationships. I also roam the exhibit floor. I try to hit every single exhibitor at the conference. I’m not always successful, depending on how large the exhibit floor is, but that really helps me understand what tech is available today. In terms of what I look for in the app itself, I ask: What is it accomplishing? Is that a need our firm has? Is it replacing another app our firm already has? Will it just be one more app and add to clutter? We do use quite a few apps in our firm today, and I am looking to reduce some of those. But I’m looking to reduce it with apps that are all-encompassing and have a great solution, so we’re not reducing our capabilities. So if it is a new app, does it integrate with our existing software? I also look at the security of the app by looking at their SOC 1 or SOC 2 reports to see if they have good security protocols and practices, and I look at the vision of the app to see where they’re headed in the future. Do they have a good roadmap for the next six to twelve months or three to five years? I look at both roadmap and vision. I don’t want someone to just have a big glorious idea for ten years from now. But I also don’t want them to just be responding to customer feedback. I want to see they are leading the way with their key program that I’m looking at.
How do you foresee client communication helping you grow your practice in 2024?
Karina: We just integrated with SmartVault last year. To add more pressure, it was January. Being that it was busy, I had to figure out this whole new app and train 25 employees. Then I have over 2,500 clients that I had to send an email to. Can you imagine all the calls? My boss who started the firm was very big on paper files. It was a big change for us. SmartVault really helped us gain new potential clients. When you have a client whose business is making millions, asking them to send an email with all their sensitive financial history information is not very secure for them. Having SmartVault now is really cool because I receive all their information instantly. And it’s always there and available. They can go back and look at documents they provided for me. I can provide them with a quote easily. That’s definitely a big plus for us.
