Accounting practice management tools are specifically designed to solve common practice management frustrations that accounting, tax, and bookkeeping firms face, such as capacity planning, and maintaining visibility across a remote accounting team, tasks and projects, and client communication.
Accounting practice management software is used by accountancy practices to manage and streamline each part of their operations—including capacity management, internal and client communication, workflow management, and more.
The benefits accounting firms receive from implementing accounting practice management software are transformative:
Full Stop has completely eliminated internal emails.
Tennick Accountants have overhauled low quality data and implemented data heath processes to forecast more accurately.
Without a strong accounting practice management solution, you’re missing out on untapped potential to scale your operations and grow your firm.
Here’s what you need to know when considering your accounting practice management software options.
Features to look for in an accounting practice management solution
Not all accounting practice management solutions are created equal. For example, some are built with either small or large firms in mind, and the price and features reflect that. So it’s crucial that you understand your own firm’s specific needs and challenges, and carefully choose the practice management solution that will best meet those needs and solve those challenges.
According to Karbon’s 2022 Practice Excellence Report, leading accounting firms—those excelling in the key areas of firm strategy, growth, efficiency and management—are leveraging tools that directly feed into their firm’s productivity and profitability.
The basic features to look for in an accounting practice management solution to similarly boost your practice’s performance include:
Cloud-based: Cloud accounting means you and your team can securely work from anywhere.
Internal and client communication: Email is embedded in your workflow, team and every client and job, not locked away in individual inboxes.
Workflow and project management: Align your team to the same goals, adjust priorities and have confidence that nothing will fall through the cracks. Automation: Automate common, time-consuming tasks (like data entry and manually updating spreadsheets) to allow your team to focus on more valuable work and provide higher quality service to clients.
Client management: CRM capabilities, including a client database, activity timelines and client groups.
Client portal: Send client tasks, engage with your clients, and securely share information with ease.
Business analytics: The insights you need to guide critical decisions and improve efficiency at your accounting firm.
Document management: The ability to store documents or connect your document management system, and manage client work files from a single source of truth.
Work templates: Pre-built and customisable workflow templates so you can standardise your firm’s processes and scale.
Time tracking and billing: So you can plan your team’s capacity, track hours spent on projects and clients, and charge clients accurately if you bill against time.
Integrations with other accounting apps: A practice management solution must be able to integrate with other accounting apps to enable you to create a connected tech stack.
What’s the difference between practice management and project management?
Practice management
Practice management focuses on running a professional services business, like an accountancy firm. Everything practice management software offers should work towards improving efficiency, communication and profitability across the entire firm.
You can expect to see features like a CRM, client portal, embedded communication, and billing and payments in practice management software.
Project management
On the other hand, project management is all about getting a specific project over the line. It focuses on the processes and execution of workflows.
If practice management was a house, then project management is just one room.
The 7 best practice management solutions for accounting practices in the UK
Karbon
Karbon is the award-winning, collaborative practice management platform for accounting firms and the category leader on software review website, G2.
Karbon’s capacity management dashboard
Who is Karbon best suited for?
Karbon is built for accounting, tax and bookkeeping practices with teams of 5+ members that are looking for a cloud-based practice management solution that meets the operational and strategic needs of their firm.
What do Karbon customers say?
“It’s the consistency and the certainty that Karbon affords us that allows us to be bold, and facilitates us to deliver what we promise to our clients.”
Firms under 50 users can choose either a Team or Business plan and the total cost is simply the number of users multiplied by the subscription per month (paid monthly or annually).
Karbon is the only accounting practice management solution that allows you @mention colleagues and comment on emails, turn emails into tasks, and assign emails to colleagues, and client and project timelines
CRM capabilities allow you to track your practice’s relationship with every client and deliver the service you promise
Reveal insights to guide critical practice decisions and improve efficiency with Karbon Analytics
Built by a team of accounting professionals and those with experience in the industry
Highly customisable to match your practice’s workflow
By centralising practice and client data, your client experience and client relationships are enhanced
Cons
Onboarding may require more time to be set up effectively compared to basic alternatives, because it is a robust solution
Functionality is geared towards teams, so may not be suitable for sole practitioners or teams of 2-3 staff
Why Karbon?
To better understand the benefits of using Karbon, you can calculate your firm’s ROI using Karbon’s ROI calculator.
For example, if your practice has 10 employees, you would:
Save 858 hours per year, per employee
Save £33,000 per employee
Increase revenue by £91,000 per year
Karbon’s ROI calculator
Learn how Karbon can give you the practice management confidence you need. Book a demo.
Pixie
Pixie is a practice management solution that primarily focuses on smaller firms across the UK.
Work view in Pixie
Who is Pixie best suited for?
Pixie is a solution to consider if your firm is small (1-3 employees) and you don’t yet require robust functionality that can handle complex requirements.
Pixie pricing
Pixie’s pricing is based on the number of clients you have and includes unlimited users:
BrightManager is an accounting practice management system that specifically deals with markets in the UK and Ireland. Formerly AccountancyManager, in 2022, it was acquired by Bright, a UK tax, payroll, HR, and bookkeeping software group.
Task list in BrightManager
Who is BrightManager best suited for?
BrightManager is best suited for small firms that don’t need robust workflow automation but do require AML checks.
BrightManager pricing
Accountancy Manager starts at £33.60+VAT/month per user (billed annually), with Enterprise pricing available for firms with 12+ users.
Comprehensive client portal with built-in document storage and eSigning
Built-in SMS functionality provides an additional way to contact your clients
Unlimited document storage with the ability to extract text from documents and generate documents in-app
Cons
Visibility is limited at the task level, which means you can’t get a high-level view of your firm when you use Senta
No ability to use @mentions for internal collaboration
Outdated and counterintuitive user interface
Being part of IRIS Elements means that Senta is not suitable for accountancy firms that aren’t already using IRIS or that want the flexibility to pick and choose the tools that they use
Glide is a UK-based practice management tool used by accountants as well as other professional service providers. It began as a workflow management tool and has since added new functionality more in-line with a practice management platform.
Glide's dashboard view
Who is Glide best suited for?
Glide is best suited for solo accountants or small accounting firms (2-3 employees) that don’t require robust collaboration features.
Affordable pricing (however the primary user must sign up to an annual subscription)
Cons
TaxDome has a large amount of features, which makes it difficult to do them all well—this means they generally feel underdeveloped
No budget vs. actual reporting
No high-level visibility across your entire firm’s work (limited to each ‘pipeline’)
No built-in reporting and analytics or customisable business insights dashboards
No free trial
Karbon vs. TaxDome: which practice management solution is right for your firm?
Client Engager
Client Engager is one of the newest practice management tools on the market. Because of this, it’s relatively lean in what it currently offers. It was started by Andy Wainwright, Managing Director at Liverpool-based practice Wainwrights Accountants.
Client Engager dashboard during ademowith Director Johann Goree
Who is Client Engager best suited for?
Because Client Engager charges by number of clients, it’s suited for small accountancy firms just getting started with practice management and those that don’t mind using a very new product.
Client Engager pricing
Client Engager pricing is based on how many clients you have and includes unlimited users:
0-10 clients: £9/month
11-50 clients: £19/month
51-100 clients: £29/month
101-250 clients: £49/month
251-500 clients: £99/month
501-750 clients: £149/month
751-1000 clients: £199/month
1001+ clients: custom pricing
Features
Keep in mind that because Client Engager is new to the market, some of these features—although listed on their website—may not have launched yet:
Ability to create and set custom countdowns on your dashboard
28-day free trial
Cons
Email integration is limited to Microsoft Office 365 users
New product that is just getting started, so there’s a lack of public user feedback and reviews
Limited workflow templates
Try Karbon for free
Now that you have a clearer understanding of the accounting practice management tools on the market, you should have an idea about which options best-suit your firm.
If that’s Karbon, you can learn more and book a demo.
If you need more convincing, you can explore the Karbon Effect. It shows that Karbon firms save every employee 18.5 hours each week, on average.
How do you know what to focus on to grow your accounting firm? Start here: 10 key activities and metrics that leading accounting firms are investing in.
Accounting practice management software can save your firm thousands of dollars per year per employee. Find the best practice management platform for your company.
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G2.com
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