Monday.com for accounting firms: Is it the right practice management tool?

While Monday.com has impressive workflow management features, it lacks in areas necessary for managing the work accounting firms do day-to-day. 

And that’s not surprising when you consider the fact that it’s not actually a practice management tool, let alone a practice management tool designed for accounting firms.

Here’s a deep-dive into Monday.com’s pros and cons in relation to accounting, tax, CPA and bookkeeping firms:

Is Monday.com right for accounting and bookkeeping firms?

What is Monday.com?

Monday.com is a project management tool, designed to help you manage your tasks and streamline your workflows.

It’s similar to other project management software solutions like Asana, Trello, ClickUp and Wrike. Like these alternatives, Monday.com focuses on appealing to a large audience across a variety of industries.

How does Monday.com work?

Monday.com organizes work into ‘boards’. These boards house your workflows. In the free version of Monday.com, you can view them as:

• Kanban boards: View, sort and drag-and-drop your workflow in easy-to-read sections

• Table: View your workflow in a structure similar to a Microsoft Excel Spreadsheet

• Cards: Each task is turned into a card that displays high-level information

Other ways to visualize your work in Monday.com (via the paid plans) include:

• Calendar: Shows your single workflow in a calendar view

• Timeline: A linear visualization of your workflow grouped by person

• Gantt chart: A linear visualization that highlights dependencies and milestones

• Chart view: A real-time representation of your data as charts

An impressive Monday.com feature is the ability to customize these views. Visualize your board's data with powerful dashboards or create an overall dashboard that visualizes data across several boards.

Example of the dashboard view in Monday.com

Use case: Using Monday.com to manage your weekly payroll processing workflow

Just like other generic project management tools without an industry focus, Monday.com doesn’t offer any accounting-specific, pre-built templates.

To demonstrate how to use Monday.com, let’s use a template from Karbon’s template library that has been specifically designed for accounting and bookkeeping firms: Weekly payroll processing workflow.

When you create a board in Monday.com, your workspace’s default view is the Main Table, which groups your tasks into customizable sections. In this example, each section can represent each stage of the workflow.

If you choose to view the work as a Kanban board, which groups your tasks into statuses, you might also consider creating a status called ‘Waiting for client’ given there is client involvement at both ends of the project.

Payroll processing workflow example in Monday.com (Kanban board view)

Then, in either of these views, you would create a task for each step the process using the following:

• Assignments
  (It’s important to note that the free version of Monday.com only offers up to two seats. So for team collaboration, you will need a paid version.)

• Colored status labels

• Card due dates

• Automations
  (Only available in paid plans.)

Payroll processing workflow example in Monday.com (table view)

Once you’re happy with the workflow, you can then easily turn it into a template. Turning it into a repeating workflow for recurring work involves setting up a custom automation in the Automation Center. This, again, requires a paid plan.

Because Monday.com appeals to so many different industries and work types, there isn’t a specific set of pre-created automations applicable to workflows typically used in accounting firms. So you’ll need to spend some time creating them from scratch when getting started with Monday.com.

The limits of Monday.com for accounting and bookkeeping firms

Monday.com is one of the most versatile workflow management tools available. While this flexibility can be viewed as a positive, none of the flexibility is specific to accounting workflows. 

This means that if you use Monday.com, you’ll have plenty of options and settings to choose from—but none will truly satisfy your specific needs.

Based on the example above for a common payroll processing workflow, here are some glaring limitations:

1. There is no way to send automatic reminders to your clients in Monday.com

While the client chase can’t be completely eliminated, there are ways to reduce the pain. Unfortunately, Monday.com doesn’t offer a way to automatically send your clients reminders via email.

With workflows that begin with your clients providing information, such as the week’s updated timesheets, you will need to constantly request that information manually until you receive it when you use Monday.com.

2. There are no CRM capabilities in Monday.com

Think about how efficient it would be to automatically and directly link this particular weekly payroll processing task to your client so you can visualize all their information, work and communication easily.

For Monday.com users, this efficiency is not a reality. You’d need to consult your separate CRM tool and your email inbox to find client information like:

• Name, address, etc.

• Email and communication history

• All client work: previous, current and completed

• All associated documents

Now think about an accounting practice management tool with a direct email integration. Enticing, isn’t it?

3. No way to budget your team's time in Monday.com

While Monday.com does offer a simple time tracker, it doesn’t do much in the way of budgeting your team’s time.

In the weekly payroll processing workflow example, the time budget is 1 hour for your payroll specialist. Pretty straightforward. But for more complicated workflows that cross multiple team members, like onboarding new clients or complicated tax return processes, it’s difficult to see your team’s time expenditure. This makes it difficult to plan your team’s capacity.

4. Monday.com doesn’t directly integrate with accounting software

Another indication that Monday.com isn’t specific enough for accounting and bookkeeping workflows is a lack of integrations with the tools you use day in-day out.

There’s no native way to integrate with your GL, proposal software, or any other accounting ecosystem tool. If you use Monday.com, you’ll need to use Zapier to set up these basic integrations.

On top of that, integrations are only available with a paid plan on Monday.com.

5. Monday.com doesn’t have a client portal

Another red flag is that Monday.com doesn’t offer a specific client portal. Instead, you would need to adjust permission settings for particular pieces of work at a granular level and then share those links with your clients.

It’s a solution that might work well for marketing agencies that are sharing creative pitches, but not for accounting professionals requiring a secure and scalable alternative.

6. Customer support isn’t specific to your priorities

If Monday.com is designed to appeal to a wide range of varying industries, how can you expect their customer support team to deeply understand the unique nuances of accounting and bookkeeping workflows?

You can’t. It’s simply not realistic.

So unfortunately, if you use Monday.com and have questions about making it work to your very specific needs, you’re unlikely to find someone on their customer service team with specific accounting knowledge.

Monday.com alternatives for accounting and bookkeeping firms

Here is a compilation of Monday.com alternatives that specialize in accounting and bookkeeping firms.

Karbon

Karbon is practice management for accounting, tax, CPA, and bookkeeping firms. By focusing on you, your industry, your clients, and all your unique requirements, Karbon is built specifically for you.

It enables intuitive communication and seamless workflows so you know who is doing what, when, why, and how.

And as a practice management solution, project and task management is only one aspect of the wider Karbon offering.

Karbon’s capacity management dashboard

Benefits of Karbon

• Direct email integration (Gmail, Microsoft Outlook and Microsoft Exchange)

• Built-in CRM

• Automatic client reminders and client tasks

• Client portal

• Collaborate in context with @mentions

• Accounting template library with 250+ accounting-specific templates

• Time and budget tracking

• Native document management and document management system integrations (Dropbox, OneDrive/Sharepoint, and SuiteFiles)

• Invoicing and payment processing

• Karbon AI: GPT-powered artificial intelligence built into email and workflows (currently in beta)

• Engaged user community with 3,000+ members

• Integrations that make sense for you (i.e. other leading accounting software, including Xero Practice Manager)

Limitations of Karbon

• More expensive than generic solutions like Monday.com

• Requires more time setting up and implementing, because it is a more robust solution

• Functionality is geared towards teams, so may not be suitable for sole practitioners or teams of 2-3 staff

Learn how Karbon can give you the practice management confidence you need. Book a demo.

Canopy

Like Karbon, Canopy is a practice management tool for accounting and bookkeeping firms.

Client view in Canopy

Benefits of Canopy

• Tax resolution cases and integration with IRS (paid add-on)

• Flexible document and file management functionality (paid add-on)

• Time, billing and invoicing capabilities

Limitations of Canopy

• Key product features are only available at additional costs (e.g. workflow management and document management)

• Complicated and expensive pricing (pay per client, per add-on module, per user)

• Limited workflow templates

Compare Karbon vs. Canopy

Jetpack Workflow

As its name suggests, Jetpack Workflow provides workflow management for accounting firms. It’s important to note that Jetpack Workflow is not a practice management solution.

Jetpack Workflow dashboard view

Benefits of Jetpack Workflow

• Affordable pricing for simple workflow management

• Time tracking capabilities

• Useful dashboard with a high-level overview of work and your firm

Limitations of Jetpack Workflow

• No email integration

• Limited automation

• No client portal

Compare Karbon vs. Jetpack Workflow

Pixie

Pixie is a practice management solution that primarily focuses on smaller firms across the UK.

Work view in Pixie

Benefits of Pixie

• Affordable solution, especially for small firms with 1-3 employees

• Flexible recurring work functionality

• Best-practice template library

Limitations of Pixie

• Limited collaboration functionality (unable to tag colleagues in comments or notes, making teamwork difficult)

• Limited automation

• No time and budget tracking

Compare Karbon vs. Pixie

Aero Workflow

Aero Workflow is another solution that provides workflow management capabilities for accounting firms. Again, it’s important to note that Aero Workflow is not a practice management solution, so it does lack in areas you need to manage your firm overall.

Team capacity view in Aero Workflow

Benefits of Aero Workflow

• Library of pre-built workflows

• Ability to create and store detailed procedure guides

• Automatic timer that begins when you open a task (although this may be a downside if you’re opening a task before you’re ready to actually begin work)

Limitations of Aero Workflow

• Not a practice management solution

• Lack of direct integrations with accounting-specific software (limited to QuickBooks and QuickBooks Time only)

• Limited automation

• Not suitable for firms with 3 or more staff

Is Monday.com right for accounting firms?

Here’s an important question: Is Monday.com the right solution for accounting firms?

Monday.com may be a solution to consider if you operate as a sole practitioner and if you have the time to spend customizing it to suit your needs.

If you’re looking for a free work management solution, keep in mind that with Monday.com, you will be limited to two seats and will be restricted from many core workflow management features, like automation to help you complete repetitive tasks.

As your firm grows, you will quickly outgrow Monday.com, especially as your firm starts to demand features of a practice management tool (rather than a project management solution), like capacity planning and sophisticated automation.

An accounting-specific practice management tool will grow with you, your team and your firm, helping you get work done the way you need to.

Take Karbon, for example. Accounting firms using Karbon save an average of 16.5 hours per employee each week, giving them more time to focus on client relationships and growth activities.

Average time and money savings for firms using Karbon

To better understand the benefits of using a practice management tool like Karbon, you can calculate your firm’s ROI using Karbon’s ROI calculator.

For example, if your firm has 20 employees, you would:

• Save 858 hours per year, per employee

• Save $29,824 USD per employee

• Increase revenue by $455,000 USD per year

Karbon’s ROI calculator

For a more in-depth understanding of how Karbon can impact your firm’s profitability, book a demo.

Choosing an accounting practice management solution that's right for your firm has the potential to be one of the most important decisions you can make. It’ll either set your firm up for scalable growth, or simply add to the problems you already have. 

To ensure the former, start with a practice management tool that makes sense to you, your team, your firm, and your vision.