How to Scale Your Business for Long-Term Growth For anyone who’s started a business, you know that it can be challenging to go from start-up to scale-up. As a start-up, you simply do what you need to survive, with your primary focus on adding customers and revenue any way you can. But as you scale […]
Resource Category: Blogs & Articles
10 Benefits of eSignature
Convenience is king for most people. We can access all sorts of data right from our phones, and we don’t like waiting around. So, in this digital age, why make your accounting clients print something to sign it? Modernization and mobility are pushing eSignature adoption for accounting practices. Here are 10 benefits of including eSignature […]
Deep in the Heart of Taxes
Did you know SmartVault is located in Houston, TX? We love working with our customers all over the world, but it’s always extra special to work with clients in our great home state. In honor of our 10th birthday, we decided to ask tax firms located all around Texas for their take on the profession, […]
Create Your Firm’s Disaster Recovery Plan in Five Easy Steps
As accountants, most of us like dealing with certainty. As business owners, however, we have to be able to handle a certain degree of uncertainty, including situations over which we have no control at all: disasters like hurricanes, floods and fires. That’s where a disaster recovery plan (DRP) comes into play. Creating a disaster recovery […]
Online Security for Bookkeepers – Safe Email Handling
If you’re working via the Internet to provide bookkeeping services for your clients (as opposed to going on-site to their offices), you’ve found a highly efficient, convenient, and more profitable way to run your bookkeeping practice. But with online services comes online security concerns. Has this ever happened to you? You request needed information from […]
App Backwards: The #1 Mistake to Avoid
If you’re a bookkeeper who’s committed to increasing your efficiency with bookkeeping apps and automation, here’s a mistake you’ll want to avoid. While it may seem a bit counterintuitive, to avoid this mistake you’ll need to do the opposite of what nearly everyone else is doing! What is the mistake? Using an “app backwards” approach […]
How to Get the Info You Need from Your Clients More Quickly
Getting clients to give us the information we need in a timely way is one of the biggest workflow challenges bookkeepers face. But there’s a reason why this is often a difficult chore. Why Clients Are Slow to Respond The truth is, clients hire a bookkeeper to relieve the administrative burden of keeping updated and […]
4 Things I Hate About You: When to Rid Yourself of Toxic Clients
How do you feel about the prospect of firing clients? For many firm owners the process can be intimidating. It can also be difficult to determine whether you should fire a client or try to salvage the relationship with some frank discussion about what needs to change if you are going to continue to work […]
Using the Right Tech to Build a Better Bookkeeping Business
By Gabrielle Fontaine In our last post, I discussed the fact that one of the keys to having a successful bookkeeping business is to be able to get the information you need from your clients in a timely way. Depending on clients for this is one of the biggest challenges many of us face—so how […]
How to Stop Clients from Killing Your Bookkeeping Business
There’s a reason why most of us professional bookkeepers love what we do—it’s because we have the opportunity to make a positive impact on the lives of our clients. In the ideal client relationship, we can alleviate significant stress and free their time so they can focus on building their business or doing other things […]
Six Online Security Tips for Virtual Bookkeepers
Are you a virtual bookkeeper, or are you thinking of taking your traditional bookkeeping practice to the cloud? Then there’s something you need to pay attention to so you don’t put yourself at risk. It’s online security — secure handling of sensitive electronic information. What do I mean? Well if you’re working with your clients’ […]
How I Use SmartVault to Save Time and Protect Client Data
SmartVault is THE most important app (besides QuickBooks) for over 7 years now in my freelance virtual bookkeeping practice. Why? Because it both saves me time by helping me streamline my bookkeeping workflow, as well as giving me top-notch protection for my clients. Since I also teach other freelance bookkeepers how to work virtually, I’m […]
How to Help Clients Clear the Four Key Hurdles of Technology Adoption
Client portals, cloud-based document management and collaborative workflow solutions are important tools that increase your firm’s efficiency—but what if your clients are reticent to use them? It’s likely that both your firm’s productivity and the quality of your overall client experience will suffer. Tax season can be a painful reminder of this, especially if your […]
Protect Your Data: Learn to Spot a Phishing Scam
Phishing (pronounced “fishing”), is a form of social engineering that happens online. It’s the practice hackers employ to trick you into giving out your credentials, credit cards or other sensitive information. Especially when handling sensitive data such as client tax documents, you need to be extra diligent about protecting yourself (and your clients) from scammers. […]
Building the Ideal Tech Stack for Better Bookkeeping Workflow
In our last blog post “Whose Tail is Wagging Your Dog? Five Strategies You Can Adopt Now to Make Your Business More Efficient,” we talked about five key strategies that your firm can implement to create the efficient workflow necessary for scalability and growth. In this post, we’re going to drill down on the “super […]
Whose Tail is Wagging Your Dog? Five Strategies You Can Adopt Now to Make Your Business More Efficient.
Def. tail wagging the dog: a situation where a small part is controlling the whole of something. Recently, experts from GrowthForce, a provider of cloud-based bookkeeping, management accounting and controller services and SmartVault, an online document management and client portal platform designed for accounting professionals, teamed up to discuss tips for speeding up and simplifying […]
5 Tips for Choosing a CRM
Most small business owners would agree that their customer and vendor relationships are vital to their success. Higher client expectations and economic demands are causing firms of all sizes to reevaluate these relationships and determine how technology can help them strengthen and grow their businesses. A well-chosen Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is the key […]
Enhance Your Workflow with Client Portals
Intuit® recently made the decision to sunset its current DMS offering, in favor of partnering with SmartVault and offering a connected service that extends the capabilities of the Lacerte® and ProSeries® desktop to deliver more robust document management capabilities, as well as a fully integrated, secure client portal to share files with clients. Known as […]
The Power of Integrated CRM
While every company has different needs, an integrated CRM solution is the answer for most organizations that are looking for a convenient way to centralize operations across an organization. Integrated CRM goes beyond simple contact management and becomes a central information hub that saves time and money, increases cash flow and improves business relationships. Today’s […]
Think Before You Sync
Syncing files from a local computer or device to the cloud is a common business practice in today’s mobile-driven world—as common as the Internet, specialty coffee, the App Store, and all the other day-to-day “Can’t-Live-Withouts.” In fact, it is probably the best example of the consumerization of IT for the small business owner. Apps like […]