Alex Wells
15 Min
Choosing a workflow management software app for accountants comes with several asterisks. First of all, it has to help navigate a firm’s day-to-day processes — as any workflow management tool should. More importantly, it should help maintain great relationships with clients. A workflow management solution that works for a firm in another industry may not work for an accounting firm.
A hallmark of a great workflow solution is whether it helps unburden your team. Time tracking, billable hours, client communications, calendar overview and to-do lists all fall into that category. Finally, a workflow management tool should offer a high standard of security, because accountants often deal with sensitive, even personal, client information.
For all those reasons we went ahead and looked at the best solutions on the market. We picked out eight tools — and summarized their main features, pricing and client feedback below.
Benefits of Workflow Management Software
Day-to-day task tracking. Accountants often handle a large volume of documents and complete numerous repetitive tasks manually. This approach is inefficient in itself — and increases the chance of error.
Time management. Accountants need to stay on top of deadlines and manage their time effectively. Missing a deadline or dropping a client project can have lasting consequences for both client relationships and the firm’s reputation.
Client communication. Chatting with clients is integral — but it can also become disruptive and messy, when trying to remember which piece of information is where – with emails, phone calls and text messages. Workflow management software can automate a good number of those.
Data security. Accountants deal with sensitive and personal client information — as a result data security and confidentiality become integral.
Output analytics. Working with many clients and a ton of documents can be cumbersome. For this reason, tracking billable hours solves the issue.
Key Factors in Selecting Workflow Management Software
Your organization’s needs determine which tool suits your firm best. A small firm would be overwhelmed with the pricing structure and functionality of software intended for a larger company.
Here are some questions to consider before settling on one platform:
- How many firm members will use it?
- Should these users have different levels of access?
- How many clients does the firm handle?
- What sort of clients are those? Are they small businesses? Corporations? High-net-worth individuals?
- How does the firm track time? Billable vs. actual hours?
- What sort of work does the firm do? Accounting, bookkeeping, audit, tax prep, financial advisory, or a combination?
Answer these questions to help you determine which software solution fits your firm best.
Top 8 Workflow Management Software for Accountants in 2023
1. TaxDome
TaxDome is a CRM and accounting practice management tool rolled into one. It works for accounting practices of all types, including payroll, tax preparation and bookkeeping.
Key Features
What sets TaxDome apart is that it’s a platform you can use both externally — to manage your clients — and internally — to organize your team, documents and projects. It also offers some of the heavyweight perks right away, with the most basic paid plan. These include unlimited cloud storage, adding as many clients as you need, and leveraging e-signatures to go paperless. Let’s look at some of the other core features in more detail.
Project and task management: TaxDome offers ready-made templates for all common accounting scenarios. This means accounting firms don’t have to invent internal processes from scratch, making implementation a breeze.
Workflow automation: you can automate client communication (e.g. sending emails and text messages, setting reminders) and unburden your team members from having to follow up with multiple clients.
Document management: you can store as many documents as you like using TaxDome’s cloud storage. Getting docs from clients — as well as sharing your work with them — also becomes simple.
E-invoicing: you won’t have to worry about typing and mailing invoices anymore — nor reminding clients to settle them. Invoices can be sent through the platform, they can be made recurring (and settled automatically*), while reminders can be set without your teammates lifting a finger. You can also lock documents to invoices: clients can view and download the results of your work only after they’ve paid for it.
Integrations: you’ll find the usual suspects — such as QuickBooks Online and Zoho Books — and a lot are also available through Zapier.
*Only for firms with Stripe as default payment provider
Pricing
TaxDome offers two paid plans: Lite is $33 per month and suits sole proprietors best. Pro is priced at $50/user/month, equally accessible to firms regardless of size. The Pro plan comes with several advanced automations and features, such as PDF Editor and Organizers, which gather info from clients.
Free Trial
TaxDome offers a 14-day free trial.
Reviews
Capterra rates TaxDome 4.7 out of 5 stars. Users say TaxDome is “very powerful” in their businesses and “a fantastic experience.” The fact that everything is in one place is the biggest selling point for users.
Looking for an all-in-one solution to manage documents, clients and track your team’s work? Join our demo and see why you don’t need to look any further.
2. Jetpack Workflow
Jetpack Workflow is a way for accountants to juggle multiple clients, coordinate personnel for big projects, and ensure that clients and team members stay on the same page. It includes templates, integrations, and real-time project updates.
Key Features
Jetpack has an extensive template library for just about anything you need: emails, to-do lists, project workflows and more.
Jetpack Workflow is a good to-do list: you can have an overview of what your employees are working on or apply filters. Jetpack Workflow integrates with 2000+ apps that accountants might need— but these integrations are not direct: they are only available through Zapier.
Unlike many other options, Jetpack offers unlimited storage on all plans. Whether you have the basic plan or the premium one, you get unlimited cloud storage for your business needs.
Pricing
Jetpack keeps pricing simple. The basic plan, Organize, sets you back $36 per user per month. The only other tier is their Scale plan, which is an easy-to-upgrade to $39/user/month. The enhanced plan includes more team management functionality.
Should you need help setting up JetPack Workflow, it won’t be free: white-glove support packages start at $299. More advanced plans stand at $749 and $1,499, respectively.
Free Trial
Jetpack offers a 14-day free trial, no card required. They do not have a free version you can use.
Reviews
According to Capterra, Jetpack scores high with users. Its rating is currently a 4.8 out of 5.
Positive reviews focus on ease of use and increased firm organization and efficiency.
The biggest complaint is that some users had outgrown the software and needed to find an alternative, but most other cons focused on small issues.
3. Financial Cents
Financial Cents’ sole focus is getting work done. Their subtler promises are cost savings ($19k per employee every year), and time savings (14 hours per employee weekly). There’s also a 90-day money back guarantee.
Key features
You have the run-of-the-mill workflow templates, but there’s a twist: you can upload your own or use AI to create some for you. You can set up recurring tasks, discuss work with your team members inside the workflow and generally track projects’ progress.
What we liked most is the smart way Financial Cents enables you to handle emails from clients. You can create a separate inbox for work-only emails from clients, track communication history within each task, pin important messages to the top and, most impressively, turn emails into projects and track their status.
On the downside, there are no e-signatures available, nor can you rely on a built-in cloud storage to organize documents. QuickBooks also seems to be the only integration Financial Cents offer.
Pricing
There’s a single plan: you can shell out $49/month, or spend less, at $39 per user/month — if you pay for a full year right away.
Free trial
There’s a 14-day free trial available.
Reviews
Capterra rates it 4.8 out of 5 based on just 87 reviews. Positive reviews mention the lightning-fast speed of customer service and ease of implementation. Negative ones talk about the lack of reporting and trigger events for the workflow not functioning properly.
4. Trello
Trello is a workflow organization software for solopreneurs and small teams. It is not specifically designed for accountants, but could work well for a small accounting firm or a small team within a larger organization.
It allows every team member to see what tasks are in progress, which ones are in the backlog, and – most importantly – when each task is due.
Key Features
Trello is a to-do list app that includes team communication capabilities. Your team members are assigned, or can pick, tasks from a Trello board. You can also add custom labels to tasks, to determine urgency, or highlight anything else you might need.
What differs based on the level of your subscription is the way you can visually organize work processes. The Free and Standard plans come only with the bog-standard Kanban view. More advanced options offer Timeline, Table, Calendar, Dashboard, Map and Workspace views.
Trello includes templates from the company and the Trello community. These offer a way out if you don’t want — or simply don’t have the time — to tinker with processes and build them from scratch.
Trello has its own AI assistant — Butler — for workflow automation. However, the number of automations is limited — and dependent — on the plan you use. Trello is also integrated with many apps you’re used to, such as Slack, Zoho, Gmail, and more.
Pricing
Trello has 4 plans — Free, Standard, Premium and Enterprise — priced at $0, $5, $10 and $17.5 per month, respectively. The paid plans include more advanced functionality, such as unlimited boards for larger teams, higher storage limits, and different views (on top of the usual Kanban).
Free Trial
In addition to the free version of the software, Trello also offers a free 14-day trial of its paid subscription.
Reviews
Capterra rates Trello a 4.5 out of 5 stars. Most users rated it as excellent for collaborative projects, especially remote ones. The negative reviews focused on minor UX issues.
5. Canopy
Canopy is a management software platform designed with accounting firms in mind. Canopy includes tools for client and project management, document organization and sharing, time tracking and billing. As the name suggests, it brings all the tools a firm needs under one canopy.
Key Features
Canopy offers impressive functionality for automating your workflow. You have your usual tasks and sub-tasks for team members and a bunch of tools (such as organizers) that help clients — and can be sent automatically
You can also rely on ready-made templates to streamline internal work processes, track billable hours and, perhaps most impressively, leverage in-depth reporting. It helps you get an overview of the status of the tasks, who’s doing what, and how these processes can be made more efficient.
Pricing
Canopy’s “base” tool is its client management tool. It is free for up to 500 client contacts.
If you want additional functionality from Canopy, like its workflow ($35), document management ($40), time & billing ($25), you’ll have to pay more — on a per-user-per-month basis.
Free Trial
Canopy includes a 15-day free trial.
Reviews
Capterra’s reviews rate 4.5 out of 5. Most of the negative reviews focus on the cost and pricing model. It is priced for larger firms that have the revenue to support expensive software. On the positive side, the reviews say it does a good job streamlining firm operations.
6. TaxFlow
TaxFlow, as the name implies, is a workflow software specifically made for tax professionals. Instead of being a full-fledged CRM, it is a tool which focuses solely on tracking tax returns through the stages.
While it won’t suit all accountants, tax preparation is such a key piece of the work many accountants perform for their clients that we feel it merits a spot on our list.
Key Features
TaxFlow allows accountants and tax preparers to monitor work status, check which tax preparers worked on each return, and make notes inside each return as it moves through stages.
Unlike other tools on the list, you cannot visually assess the work of your employees. The default screen is a list of clients your firm handles. Only when you click on a separate client (i.e. their return), can you create checklists with tasks, attach notes, add labels and more.
Pricing
TaxFlow’s pricing model is straightforward: $20 per user per month if billed annually and $25 per user per month if billed monthly.
Free Trial
TaxFlow offers a 14-day free trial. There’s also the lure of a free set-up and free training for your employees.
Reviews
TaxFlow is rated 4.9 out of 5 on Capterra, but there’s a catch: there are only 8 reviews in total.
Most users were upgrading to TaxFlow from Google Sheets, so it’s easy to see how it was an upgrade. Customers also appreciated the price point: TaxFlow is aimed at firms with 10 or fewer users, and it is priced accordingly.
7. Firm360
Firm360 is an accounting firm workflow management software that includes document, project, and client management, as well as time tracking, billing, and productivity management.
Key Features
Firm360 positions itself as specialized software for accounting practices. You’ll find the usual package under the hood: client and project management, document management, time & billing and advanced reporting.
However, the pool of integrations is unclear: QuickBooks online, MS Office and Adobe Acrobat are mentioned, with “1,000s more available through a Zapier integration.” Another potential downside is that Firm360 only supports Stripe as a payment provider. It does have the e-signature feature built into Firm360.
Pricing
There are 3 options: Basic, Standard and Premium, currently priced at $49, $79 and $99 per user per month. We say “currently” because Firm360 is in the middle of a sale, knocking $20-$30 off the price as part of a promotion.
Another important consideration is the structure of the plans. You won’t have project management features on Basic, as well as integrations — while e-signatures will come at an additional charge.
Free Trial
Firm360 does not have a free version or a free trial.
Reviews
Capterra rates Firm360 4.6 out of 5. Some users mention that implementation was confusing. On the whole, most users were satisfied with the value provided for the asking price.
8. Karbon
Karbon is the final entry on our list — but it’s in no way a reflection of its usefulness when compared to other picks. One of Karbon’s main selling points is a promise to unite an accounting practice wherever its users might be. We won’t name it a unique proposition though: many similar tools offer that benefit as well. In a more interesting twist, Karbon vows to save every employee at your firm 16.5 hours weekly with its automations.
Key features
Karbon’s workflow automation unites its top features under one roof. You have the usual client portal, workflow templates, Kanban boards to visualize work and automatic reminders to save your employees time chasing clients.
What makes Karbon stand out is the “My Week” feature, which promises to organize your team members’ weekly schedule.
On the downside, there’s no mention of a built-in cloud storage for documents (instead Karbon promotes its Dropbox and OneDrive integrations) and no e-signatures. The pricing is also pretty steep.
Pricing
There are 3 plans: Team, Business and Enterprise. Only the former two have a fixed price: they currently cost $59 and $79 per user per month if billed annually. Enterprise is a custom plan — you’ll have to contact sales to figure out your unique pricing structure.
Free trial
Apparently there is one, but it’s unclear how long it’s for. There is no free version of Karbon.
Reviews
Capterra users rate 4.7 out of 5, with a total of 161 reviews. The positive ones focus on time-saving, ability to overview work and workflow templates you can customize. The negative ones mention exorbitant fees per user, and messy to-do lists.
Conclusion
A workflow management tool is a solution that helps optimize your firm’s internal processes. It provides an overview of where things stand and helps identify weak spots. If such a tool comes with automations, they can significantly unburden your team from routine tasks.
Workflow management tools offer day-to-day task tracking, time management features, data security perks, client communication means and output analytics for optimization purposes.
When choosing one tool over another, consider the size of your firm, your client base and the specifics of your services. These answers will filter out many options right away.
Finally, keep in mind that different tools are aimed at different firms. If you need a simple and cost-effective Kanban board/to-do list, go with Trello. If you need a straightforward upgrade on Google Sheets for your tax return, TaxFlow is your buddy. Canopy will hook you up with some serious analytics of internal processes. Meanwhile, TaxDome is a powerful and comprehensive solution that helps manage clients, employees and documents from one platform.
Want an overview of TaxDome’s capabilities? Join our demo below and discover the many ways it can benefit you in 30 minutes.
Alex Wells
Alex is a content writer at TaxDome with a background in e-commerce and email marketing. He digs deep to understand the nuances of accounting, tax and bookkeeping practices and breaks down complicated tax code language to produce helpful content for TaxDome clients. In his spare time, Alex watches The Big Bang Theory, listens to Muse, and enjoys reading about the latest marketing trends.
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