ClickUp for accountants: flexibility vs capability for accounting firms

Your firm is growing, but your team can’t handle any more clients. Everyone’s working overtime to hit deadlines; they’re busy juggling requests, chasing documents and resolving errors. Where do you find the extra capacity for business growth?

Many accountants turn to ClickUp, hoping to automate repetitive tasks and improve productivity.

It’s a flexible project management system, but can it make the most complex accounting workflows more efficient? Let’s break down the pros and cons of ClickUp for accountants and explore the best alternatives.

What is ClickUp?

ClickUp is a project management system that helps teams and individuals manage workloads.

Calling itself “the everything app for work,” it’s built for maximum flexibility — but that same flexibility turns into ClickUp’s biggest limitation.

As a general-purpose tool, ClickUp excels at organizing projects and large volumes of tasks. But accounting depends on specialized workflows and complex interactions between teams, clients, and regulatory bodies.

The question is whether a platform built for everyone can ever meet the needs of accounting firms.

How ClickUp can be used in an accounting workflow

ClickUp’s core features can help accounting teams handle everyday tasks:

• Project management: manage teams, tasks, responsibilities, and workloads with the freedom to invite clients as team members
• Knowledge management: create and manage documents, wikis, and other resources for onboarding, training, and process documentation
• Collaboration: work with team members, communicate via email and chat, edit docs in real-time, and set up time tracking for tasks
• Automation: automate repetitive tasks and create custom workflows to automate processes
• Customization: create custom dashboards, reports, and workflows, or edit templates from ClickUp’s built-in library

If this is your first productivity platform, you’ll get a quick efficiency boost with task management and team collaboration. Think of this as the honeymoon period of ClickUp for accountants.

The problem is, you reach its limits without making a real dent on the tasks that eat up most of your time: client interactions, customizing documents, chasing signatures, etc.

You can customize ClickUp to make some progress with these workflows, but you’ll never truly automate them.

Where ClickUp falls short for accounting and bookkeeping firms

ClickUp is a great project management tool for many teams, but it isn’t built for the complex needs of accountants. Sure, you can automate task workflows, but you can’t capture client signatures in bulk and get them authenticated on autopilot.

You can’t automate client onboarding, so they provide all the information you need up front — and pay their first invoice — before your team uses any of their valuable time.

ClickUp simply doesn’t support the end-to-end interactions accountants need to complete services as efficiently as possible and satisfy client expectations every step of the way.

Want to know what clients expect from their accountants?

The biggest limitations of ClickUp include:

• No native accounting integrations: you have to use third-party apps like Zapier to integrate with QuickBooks and other accounting tools
• No built-in client portal: you can add clients as members, but you don’t get a secure client portal for managing every stage of the client experience
• No built-in CRM: you have to integrate with a CRM platform or accept the limited capabilities of ClickUp’s CRM template
• Lack of accounting workflows: ClickUp includes very few automation workflows and templates specifically for accounting processes
• No end-to-end pipeline automation: ClickUp lets you automate task-level actions, but it can’t fully automate complex accounting pipelines — eg: every stage of tax preparation or bookkeeping services
• General customer support: ClickUp’s team isn’t trained to understand the complexities of accounting, or the pressures you face ahead of deadlines
• Heavy customization required: customizing ClickUp for accounting workflows requires a lot of time and work, while purpose-built tools provide the features you need out of the box
• Insufficient security: accountants need to keep firm and client data 100% secure, and you’re not getting this guarantee from a project management tool

ClickUp was never meant to be a practice management system for accountants, so you can’t expect it to handle complex accounting tasks. Firms looking to scale must look for tools that are designed to manage the unique workflows of growing accounting practices.

So, what are the top firms using instead of ClickUp?

The best ClickUp alternatives for accountants

ClickUp and other project management systems laid the foundations for workplace productivity tools. They didn’t solve accounting’s biggest challenges, but they paved the way for a new generation of specialized tools that can.

Here’s how ClickUp compares to our favorite alternatives for accountants and bookkeepers.

You can see why most accountants outgrow ClickUp once they reach the limitations of project management and basic automation. Now, let’s take a closer look at the top alternatives to ClickUp for accounting firms.

TaxDome

TaxDome is the #1 end-to-end practice management system for accounting, bookkeeping and tax professionals.

This isn’t a general-purpose project management tool. It’s a comprehensive system designed to tackle the complex, day-to-day needs of accountants and support their growth throughout the years — whether they’re operating with five employees or 500.

TaxDome key features:

• Project and task management
• Full accounting workflow automation
• Team collaboration
• Unlimited CRM
• Client portal
• Top-rated client mobile app
• Complete communication system with secure chats, email and SMS
• Secure document storage
• IRS-compliant e-signatures
• SOC 2 Type II certification
• Time tracking
• Billing and payments
• The option to lock deliverables to invoices for reduced AR
• Website builder and branding
• AI-powered reporting
• Automated document renaming with TaxDome AI

TaxDome is the most complete practice management system on the market. It integrates extensive toolkits for firm management, client management, revenue operations, and managing client relationships.

It comes with a built-in CRM, a robust client portal, a top-rated client mobile app, a secure document management system, with a PDF editor and IRS-compliant e-signatures, and much more in a fully customizable system for every type of firm.

Where most providers focus on either firm or client management, TaxDome was built from the ground up to be the only practice management system you’ll ever need.

Karbon

Karbon is a collaborative practice management system built for accounting teams. It’s great for collaborative teams, but it’s still heavily focused on internal operations.

This is a good example of a provider that places more emphasis on firm management than client relationships.

Karbon key features:

• Project management
• Workflow automation
• Client portal
• Integrated email inbox
• Billing and payments
• Time tracking
• Document management
• Accounting integrations
• Reporting and analytics

Karbon is an upgrade from ClickUp for accountants, but it doesn’t provide the same end-to-end practice management system as TaxDome.

You won’t find a built-in CRM, branded client portal, client mobile app that clients rave about, or native chat tools — so much of the client experience still relies on workarounds or third-party tools.

Canopy

Canopy focuses heavily on client engagement, but it also packs plenty of automation features to help accountants manage workloads more efficiently.

It’s a serious step up from ClickUp, and it offers more on the client side than Karbon. That being said, Canopy doesn’t support client chat, two-way SMS, Wiki pages (SOPs), or global client communication.

Key Canopy features:

• Client management
• Client portal
• Workflow management
• Accounting automation
• CRM
• Document management
• Time and billing
• Tax resolution

Make sure you understand Canopy’s pricing structure before signing up, as this is a common complaint from customers. 

Although you get a built-in CRM, it only covers you for 2,500 contacts until you have to pay extra for additional clients. Also, some features — including time and billing, and advanced automations — require paid add-ons.

Meanwhile, TaxDome gives you unlimited CRM contacts, document storage, and advanced automation as standard.

Financial Cents

Financial Cents is one of the most affordable practice management tools on the market. It’s a relatively moderate price increase from ClickUp, but does it deliver a meaningful upgrade in terms of features?

Key Financial Cents features:

• Team management
• Team collaboration
• Workflow automation
• Client management
• Document management
• CRM
• Integrated email
• Time tracking
• Billing and payments

Financial Cents is fine for smaller accounting firms, but its limitations can hold you back. Above all, a lack of SOC 2 Type II Compliance is concerning for any platform handling sensitive data.

Elsewhere, key features like the CRM, workflow automation, and document management don’t offer the same depth as alternatives like TaxDome or Canopy.

Financial Cents can take accounting firms further than ClickUp, but if you’re looking to grow and scale, you’ll outgrow it fast and end up having to switch to another platform.

Pixie

Pixie is a powerful, easy-to-use practice management system for smaller accounting firms. Your team will learn the platform in no time, even if it doesn’t have previous experience with practice management software.

Key Pixie features:

• Team management
• Task management
• Workflow automation
• Client management
• Document management
• CRM
• Email integration
• Reporting

Pixie’s simplicity comes at a cost, though. It doesn’t include a built-in client portal, and the automation features aren’t as sophisticated as TaxDome or Karbon.

You do get a CRM, but this raises another cost to consider. Pixie’s client-based pricing model makes it relatively expensive, even for smaller accounting firms.

Jetpack Workflow

Jetpack Workflow is an automation system designed for recurring accounting and bookkeeping tasks. So, this isn’t a practice management system comparable to TaxDome, but it does offer some valuable upgrades from ClickUp.

Key Jetpack Workflow features:

• Project management
• Task management
• Capacity planning
• Workflow automation
• Team collaboration
• Client task management
• Custom reports

Although Jetpack Workflow lacks features outside the scope of project management and workflow automation, it covers unlimited projects and clients at an excellent price point.

Aero Workflow

Aero Workflow automates accounting processes, competing with Jetpack Workflow more than the other ClickUp alternatives in this article.

Key Aero Workflow features:

• Task management
• Accounting workflow templates
• Client vault
• Client advisory system
• Integrated email
• Time tracking
• Reporting
• Accounting integrations

Despite the dated interface, Aero Workspace is a worthy alternative to Jetpack, not to mention ClickUp. It also covers you for unlimited customers and tasks, but it offers more features for client management.

• Explore our deep-dive comparisons: see how TaxDome stacks up against ClickUp and the top alternatives for accounting firms.

Final thoughts: Should you use ClickUp in your accounting firm?

ClickUp is great for organizing tasks, but it has a limited impact on the accounting tasks eating into your schedule. It helps you manage teams and workloads, but doesn’t remove the bottlenecks that stop you taking on more clients with existing resources.

That’s why more firms are switching to platforms built to tackle the intricate challenges of accounting — the most repetitive tasks slowing you down every day.