Alex Wells
10 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 ten tools — and summarized their main features, pricing and client feedback below.
Benefits of Accounting 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. To enhance consistency and accuracy, consider implementing systems that automate accounting workflows instead of relying on manual efforts.
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 10 Workflow Management Software for Accountants in 2024
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. 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.
Proposals and engagement letters: you can create and customize proposals and engagement letters to pitch your services, secure on-time payments and more.
A full suite of communication tools: you can meet clients at their preferred method of communication with secure chat, email and SMS all on one platform.
*Only for firms with Stripe as default payment provider
Pricing
TaxDome offers one paid plan: TaxDome Pro, which starts from $50 per month, suitable for sole proprietors and 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 $45 per user per month. The only other tier is their Scale plan, which is an easy-to-upgrade to $49/user/month. The enhanced plan includes more team management functionality.
Should you need help setting up JetPack Workflow, it won’t be free: the Kickstarter service package costs $299. More advanced plans, Fast Track and Done For You, 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 30-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
Financial Cents offers a $39/month (per user) Team Plan and $59/month (per user) Scale Plan.
Free trial
There’s a 14-day free trial available.
Reviews
Capterra rates it 4.8 out of 5 based on just 106 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 250 client contacts.
If you want additional functionality from Canopy, like its workflow ($45), document management ($40), time & billing ($35), 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 4.8 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 4.7 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 eighth entry on our list. 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 165 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.
9. Pixie
Pixie is a platform offering various features to help accounting firms streamline their workflows, spend less time on admin and organize client data – ultimately to save time and get things done faster. In its own words, Pixie is designed to help firms run operations like clockwork.
Key features
Pixie’s key features include workflow automation—for example, for recurring jobs—custom fields for clients and a document portal, live chat support and community-made templates for applying accounting best practices into your operations right off the bat.
What also stands out about Pixie is that pricing is tailored to scale with businesses. You will pay a monthly subscription fee based on the number of clients you manage, and there’s also a free trial to take advantage of if you want to test the software for its suitability.
Pricing
Pricing for Pixie is based on the number of clients you have. For teams with less than 250 clients, Pixie costs around $125 per month. For 251–500 clients, it’s around $190 per month, and for 501–1000 clients, it’s around $317 per month. For more than 1000 clients, Pixie is priced on application (POA).
Free trial
Pixie’s free trial lasts 30 days. All you have to do is create an account to trial the software.
Reviews
Capterra users rate Pixie 4.8 out of 5 from a total of 32 reviews. Positive user reviews state that Pixie is great for organization and is easy to set up and use, but negative user reviews state that Pixie lacks a dashboard and client portal, with an inability to add internal notes to workflows and emails.
10. Aero Workflow
Aero Workflow calls itself a workflow management tool for accountants, designed by accountants. It lets you create checklists for any accounting or bookkeeping process, set up one-time and recurring tasks, track work and staff, and get insights into your firm with customizable reports. It also offers several integrations – including QuickBooks Online.
Key features
Aero Workflow is a great platform for basic accounting and bookkeeping processes. It offers all the right tools and features that most accountants look for when it comes to streamlining their workflows, from client onboarding to organizing and tracking tasks.
It also offers a template and procedure library to help with best practices, plus useful integrations that include QuickBooks, Office 365, Zapier and more. On top of that, Aero Workflow offers a free White Glove Onboarding service to help firms fully set up new workflows.
Pricing
Aero Workflow offers three paid plans: Startup for 1–5 users, Growth for 6–25 users and Scailng for 26–50 users. Per month, these cost $135, $250 and $365 respectively.
There is no real difference between the plans except for the price you’ll pay based on the number of users.
Free trial
Aero Workflow offers a 30-day free trial for each plan.
Review
On Capterra, Aero Workflow has a rating of 4 out of 5, based on 16 reviews. Pros that users mention include the layout of the tasks and subtasks, plus how straightforward it is to organize teams and projects. However, several cons stated difficulty of use, a dated interface and unhelpful customer service.
Comparison of workflow management software
We’ve covered a lot of ground in this article, so to help you make the right choice, here’s a simplified chart of how these ten solutions compare on customer satisfaction, pricing, support and more.
*Canopy has a modular pricing structure, with each module priced individually.
**On the enterprise pricing plan only.
Case study: a real-life example of accounting workflow management software in action
To help you get a feeling for the transformational effect accounting workflow management software can have on your firm, let’s take a look at a real-life example.
Sydney H. Highly CPA is an accounting and bookkeeping firm based in California. With tax season looming, the firm was looking for a solution to help streamline their tax return workflow, increase efficiency and improve the client experience. They settled on TaxDome.
Implementation
Implementing TaxDome allowed the firm to automate large parts of the tax return workflow, including client communications, document gathering and invoicing.
At the same time, TaxDome’s pipelines simplified team management, providing complete visibility into who’s working on what and where each job is on its journey to completion.
Results
Thanks to TaxDome’s automated workflows, Sydney H. Highly CPA was able to complete more tax returns than ever despite limited staff resources. Not only did the team manage to unlock new levels of efficiency, but they also ensured that clients were kept in the loop throughout the tax return process.
Here’s what Sydney H. Highly had to say about his experience working with TaxDome:
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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