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Stop losing new clients to a missed call in filing season

For accountancy practices where four MTD quarters a year turned document chasing into a job nobody has the hours for, whatever practice software you run today.

Read the workflow step by step

Filing-season switchboard

  1. A missed new-business call receives a bounded question and an introductory meeting is booked.
  2. A routine client question receives the practice-approved checklist.
  3. A refund question stops as advice and is routed to the client manager; routine drafts remain for a person to edit and send.

What gets missed in a normal week

The operational pressure is different in every sector. The pattern is the same: a genuine enquiry meets a team that is already with someone else.

New-business calls hit voicemail during the busiest weeks

January self-assessment, VAT quarters and now four MTD quarterly deadlines a year mean the phone rings hardest exactly when nobody can pick it up. A new enquiry that reaches voicemail usually goes to the next firm on the search results.

Routine client questions eat hours that should be chargeable

What do I need to send you, when is my filing due, has my return gone in, what do you still need from me for this quarter, can I get a copy of my accounts: the same questions arrive by phone and email all day, and partners and seniors end up answering them between actual work.

Website and email enquiries sit unanswered for days

A prospect who fills in your contact form is comparing firms that morning. A reply that arrives three days later reads as an answer in itself, and it is not the one that wins the engagement.

Accountancy team working together in a client meeting room

The first safeguard is a clear hand-off

Left unaddressed, missed calls and slow replies become lost engagements, and routine client questions keep pulling qualified staff away from chargeable work. MTD's quarterly cycle means that second cost is no longer confined to January: it recurs four times a year and grows as the income threshold drops in 2027 and 2028. Both are measurable from your own phone and inbox data, which is exactly why they are worth fixing rather than accepting as the cost of a busy practice.

Weekly enquiry digest

Mon 3 – Sun 9 August

New enquiries answered 17
Meetings booked 9
Routine questions handled 41
Waiting on a person 2

Where we'd probably start

Confirmed on the fit call: this is the shape of the work.

From the first call to a working boundary

The delivery sequence stays simple on purpose: validate the platform and the transfer points before any automation is built.

  1. 1

    Fit call

    A short, no-cost call to confirm your practice tools and phone systems can actually support what you're asking for, before anything is proposed.

  2. 2

    AI Opportunity and Vendor Review

    A fixed-scope diagnostic comparing what your existing tools already do natively against named alternatives, ending in a plain buy/enable/configure/integrate/build recommendation, not an assumption that something needs building.

  3. 3

    Build, with advice and complaint escalation gates

    Every workflow that touches a client has a defined human transfer point: anything resembling tax or accounting advice, complaints and anything urgent always reach a person.

  4. 4

    Handover, training and ongoing monitoring

    Staff are trained, a written playbook is left behind, and monitoring covers support and a capped or metered level of usage.

Built around your day-to-day

  • Independent accountancy practices with 5-50 staff, serving sole traders, contractors and small businesses
  • Running Xero, QuickBooks, Sage, Karbon, TaxCalc or another practice stack, or considering a change
  • A partner or practice manager who wants routine enquiries handled without a client ever getting advice from a machine

Works with what you already run

Integration access is checked before it is proposed: never assumed from a vendor logo.

  • Xero, QuickBooks, Sage: client-facing answers never touch ledger data; the assistant handles enquiry and admin questions only
  • Karbon, TaxCalc, IRIS (formerly Senta, now IRIS Elements) and other practice management tools: capability and API access checked per platform before anything is proposed
  • Whichever phone system you run today: missed-call recovery works alongside it rather than replacing it

Check the opportunity with your own figures

Two short calculators turn call and appointment patterns into a starting estimate before the fit call.

What it never decides

Stated upfront, not discovered mid-project. Automation handles the administrative path; people retain judgement and responsibility.

  • Any tax, accounting or financial advice, ever: administrative and routing only
  • Automated outbound voice calls of any kind, ever
  • An outbound document-chase or deadline-reminder campaign: the products here catch and respond to enquiries that come in, and help staff draft replies faster. They don't proactively message clients about a deadline. If you want that, it's a separate scope, not part of what's included today
  • Any outbound contact with someone who is not already your client, or who has not opted in: cold outreach is never in scope for the customer-facing products on this page
  • Access to client ledgers, tax returns or working papers
  • Practices on a platform with no usable API for the chosen product, flagged on the fit call rather than discovered mid-build

Questions, answered directly

Could a client end up getting tax advice from a bot? No.

No. It answers a short list of admin questions your practice has approved: deadlines, which documents to send, office details, booking a meeting. Anything that looks like advice, judgement or a specific client's figures goes to a person, and it has no way to do anything else.

We don't run everything through Xero. Does that rule us out? No.

No. We work with whatever you already use, and the first thing we check is what it can do on its own before anyone suggests something new. Where a system will not let anything else connect to it, we say so on the first call rather than after you have signed.

Will clients know they're talking to a machine? They will know, because every call and message says so at the start.

They will know, because every call and message says so at the start. That is a rule we do not bend: being caught pretending does far more damage to a practice's name than simply saying it upfront.

Does Making Tax Digital change any of this? It changes how much of this you need rather than what it does.

It changes how much of this you need rather than what it does. HMRC's timetable, checked August 2026, brings qualifying income above thirty thousand pounds into MTD for Income Tax from April 2027 and above twenty thousand pounds from April 2028. Nothing here files anything or gives advice: it answers routine questions and passes everything else to a person.

Will it have access to our clients' financial records? No.

No. Everything on this page deals with enquiries and admin. Nothing reads or writes ledgers, returns or working papers, and anything that would need that access is flagged as out of scope on the first call.

Our clients' information is confidential. Where does it actually end up? The only information involved is what a caller or enquirer chooses to tell it, handled under a written agreement, and we name the companies in the chain before anything goes live.

The only information involved is what a caller or enquirer chooses to tell it, handled under a written agreement, and we name the companies in the chain before anything goes live. The security page sets out what is confirmed today and what is still being worked on, including the parts that are not finished yet.

Will it chase clients for their paperwork? Not at the moment.

Not at the moment. What is on this page answers the people who contact you and helps staff draft routine replies faster, rather than going out to your client list. Chasing and deadline reminders are a separate piece of work, and we would walk you through what can and cannot be sent automatically before anything goes out.

What are we actually going to pay each month once it's running? The build is a one-off fixed fee and every figure is on the pricing page.

The build is a one-off fixed fee and every figure is on the pricing page. After that you pay the call and message charges at what they cost us, with nothing added on top, plus an optional monitoring plan if you want one.

How the numbers work for a 12-person practice

A 12-person practice missing around 20% of inbound calls in January and around each MTD quarterly deadline, with a contact-form inbox that gets answered in batches twice a week and seniors fielding the same document-checklist and filing-status questions daily.

Catching even a modest share of those missed calls as booked consultations, alongside same-hour replies to web enquiries and a staff toolkit that drafts the routine answers, wins engagements that were previously simply gone and returns chargeable hours to the people billing them. The practice's own phone and inbox data turns that share into an actual number within the first month of monitoring.

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