A practice with forty clients spends the first ten days of every month asking people for things. Nobody bills for it, everybody finds it unpleasant, and it happens again four weeks later.
The work itself takes a fraction of the time. The asking is the business.
Who currently does the chasing
Usually the most senior person, because they know what is missing and because it feels like a relationship matter. It is the most expensive possible use of that time.
What the chase actually consists of
Remembering who has not sent anything, working out what is missing, composing a message, sending it, waiting, and repeating. Four of those five steps do not need a person.
Redesign it around a fixed date
The same day each month for every client. A practice chasing on a rolling basis is managing forty separate schedules and remembering none of them.
Automate the first reminder
Before the date, not after. It is a scheduled message, it goes to everybody, and it converts a substantial share of clients without anybody doing anything.
Make the ask specific
Not a general prompt. The three things outstanding, named. Clients respond to a list and ignore a reminder, which is the ground in what an accountant needs from you each month.
Automate the second reminder
A few days later, listing what is still missing. Two automated prompts remove most of the manual chasing entirely.
Escalate only what survives
By then it is a handful of clients rather than forty, and a person spending twenty minutes on five clients is a completely different cost.
Track who is consistently late
Because it is usually the same four clients every month, and they need a different arrangement rather than a monthly reminder that does not work.
Change the method for the persistent cases
A different submission route, a collection, a weekly prompt or a conversation about what would actually work for them, as in receipt and record questions clients ask all year.
Price it honestly
Where a client's habits genuinely cost more, say so and reflect it. Published in advance it is a fair term, and it changes behaviour more than any reminder.
Make sending easier than not sending
One route, on a phone, in under a minute. Friction is the reason clients delay and removing it is worth more than any amount of chasing.
Tell clients what late records cost them
Not a telling off. What it means for their figures, their fee and their year end. Clients respond to consequences rather than to requests.
Review it quarterly
Which clients improved, which did not and what changed. It is a process to manage rather than a recurring irritation, which is the boundary thinking in what a bookkeeper does and does not do.
Measure what it currently costs
Most practices have never counted the hours spent asking people for things, and the figure is usually startling once somebody does. Recording it for a single month turns an accepted irritation into a number that justifies changing the process rather than tolerating it for another year.
Know what to automate and what not to
The prompt and the list can be automatic. A conversation with a client whose business is struggling cannot, which is the judgement in when not to use a chatbot and what to do instead.
Getting started
Set one monthly date, automate two specific reminders and escalate only what remains, then answer record questions at any hour. SpideyChat for accountants and bookkeepers answers from your published pages. Try SpideyChat on your own site, or read about reminders on the features page.