Ask any partner in a UK accountancy practice where the hours go and the answer is rarely technical accounting. It is the chasing: chasing clients for documents, chasing overdue invoices, chasing HMRC acknowledgements, chasing staff to update the practice management system. A 10-partner practice running 400 to 500 active clients can spend between 180 and 240 hours a month on pure process work - sending the same emails, copying data between systems, updating spreadsheet trackers that are already out of date by the time they are saved.
That is not a staffing problem. It is a workflow design problem, and it is one that business process automation solves systematically. At Softomate we have mapped the administrative overhead across dozens of UK practices, from sole traders to 50-partner regional firms. The pattern is consistent: the same eight workflow categories account for roughly 75 to 80 per cent of all automatable time.
The table below shows a realistic time audit for a 10-partner practice. The figures are conservative - they exclude time spent correcting errors caused by manual handoffs, which typically adds another 20 to 30 per cent.
| Process | Monthly hours (10-partner practice) | Automatable % | Estimated saving per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| New client onboarding (engagement letters, KYC, AML) | 28 hrs | 80% | 22 hrs |
| Self-assessment deadline chasing | 18 hrs | 90% | 16 hrs |
| VAT return preparation and client chasing | 24 hrs | 75% | 18 hrs |
| Document requests and receipt tracking | 20 hrs | 85% | 17 hrs |
| Payroll data collection | 14 hrs | 90% | 13 hrs |
| Annual accounts deadline tracking | 16 hrs | 70% | 11 hrs |
| HMRC correspondence routing | 10 hrs | 80% | 8 hrs |
| Invoice chasing (aged debt) | 12 hrs | 85% | 10 hrs |
| Total | 142 hrs | - | 115 hrs |
One hundred and fifteen hours a month. At a blended support staff cost of £22 per hour, that is £2,530 of labour per month before you account for partner time spent reviewing status. For most practices the payback on automation investment is measured in months, not years.
Making Tax Digital is accelerating the pressure. HMRC's MTD programme is pushing practices toward digital record-keeping and quarterly reporting, which means the old manual processes that relied on an annual cycle are being compressed into four reporting windows per year. Practices that do not automate now will face a staffing crisis by 2027 when MTD for Income Tax goes fully live.
The ICAEW's practice technology guidance has consistently flagged automation as the highest-priority investment for practices under 20 partners. The barrier has not been willingness - it has been knowing which workflows to start with and how to connect the tools practices already use: Xero, QuickBooks, IRIS, CCH, DocuSign, Microsoft 365, Google Workspace.
This article covers all eight of those workflows in detail. We explain what each one does, how we build it using Make (formerly Integromat), and what a realistic time and cost saving looks like.
New client onboarding is the most complex workflow in any practice because it touches the most systems. A typical new client requires an engagement letter, identity verification documents (passport, utility bill), an AML check, a welcome pack, a record in the practice management system, and a record in the CRM. In most practices this involves five or six separate manual steps spread across two or three members of staff over three to five days. Mistakes - wrong fee schedules on engagement letters, incomplete KYC packs submitted to HMRC - are common and expensive to unpick.
The automated version works like this. When a new prospect is marked as 'accepted' in your CRM (or a new lead form is completed on your website), Make fires a sequence of actions simultaneously. A draft engagement letter is generated from a template populated with the client's name, services, and fee schedule, then sent via DocuSign for electronic signature. A secure document collection link is sent to the client requesting the specific KYC documents your practice requires. The moment DocuSign records a completed signature, Make logs the event, triggers the AML check via your preferred provider (SmartSearch, Credas, or similar), and sends the welcome pack as a branded PDF. When the AML check returns a result, the CRM record is updated automatically and the assigned manager is notified. If the AML check flags a risk, the workflow stops and creates a task for a senior partner to review manually.
The time saving is 3 to 4 hours per new client. For a practice onboarding 8 new clients per month that is 24 to 32 hours recovered. The quality improvement is equally significant: every client goes through an identical, auditable process with no steps missed.
Data protection is handled correctly throughout. Under UK GDPR, the lawful basis for processing KYC and AML data is legal obligation. The automation does not change the lawful basis - it simply ensures the data is collected, stored, and logged consistently. We build all client-facing document collection portals using the practice's own Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace environment so the data never passes through a third-party server without explicit authorisation.
The 31 January deadline for self-assessment tax returns is the single biggest cause of client friction in any practice. Late submissions are almost always caused not by client unwillingness but by clients who forgot, who thought they had more time, or who did not realise their accountant needed the information by a date several weeks before the HMRC deadline.
We build a five-touch automated sequence that runs from 12 weeks before the deadline. The contacts and their trigger dates are pulled directly from your practice management system or a Google Sheet that is updated by your team. Make handles the scheduling, the personalisation, and the multi-channel delivery.
The sequence runs as follows: at 12 weeks the client receives a friendly email explaining the deadline, what information they need to provide, and a link to the secure upload portal. At 6 weeks they receive a reminder with a checklist of documents still outstanding (populated dynamically from their client record). At 4 weeks, if no documents have been received, the email escalates in urgency and is copied to the practice manager. At 2 weeks, outstanding clients receive an SMS as well as an email - the open rate for SMS is consistently above 90 per cent. At 1 week, a final push goes out and a task is created in the practice management system for the assigned accountant to call the client directly.
Practices that have run this sequence with us have seen late client submissions fall by 60 to 70 per cent in the first year. The knock-on effect on capacity is significant: instead of a January crisis where the whole practice works weekends, the workload is spread across November, December, and early January. Staff morale improves. Errors fall. Client relationships improve because clients feel supported rather than chased.
VAT clients on a quarterly cycle create a predictable but relentless workload. When an accounting period ends, the practice needs to request the client's bank statements, purchase invoices, and any other missing data, then create a task in the practice management system, then chase if nothing arrives. Multiply that by 80 or 100 VAT clients and the administrative overhead is substantial.
The automated workflow is triggered by a date - the last day of each client's VAT quarter. Make fires a personalised email to the client explaining exactly what documents are needed and providing a secure upload link to their SharePoint or Google Drive folder. The email is populated with the client's specific VAT quarter dates, their reference number, and the name of their assigned accountant. Simultaneously, Make creates a task in the practice management system (Xero Practice Manager, IRIS, CCH, or a spreadsheet-based equivalent) and sets a chase date seven days later. If no documents have been uploaded by the chase date, a second email goes to the client and a notification goes to the assigned accountant. The workflow logs every interaction so there is a complete audit trail if the client later disputes a late filing.
This workflow integrates naturally with MTD for VAT. The MTD VAT rules require digital record-keeping and digital submission via compatible software. The automation handles the data collection and task management layer; your MTD-compatible software (Xero, QuickBooks, Sage) handles the submission. The two work together without duplication.
One of the most time-consuming activities in any practice is the manual tracking of whether clients have uploaded the documents that were requested. In most practices this involves a combination of email monitoring, spreadsheet updates, and verbal handoffs between admin staff and accountants. The result is predictable: documents arrive and sit unnoticed in shared email inboxes, accountants chase documents that were uploaded three days ago, and clients repeat themselves.
The automated version uses the client's existing cloud storage - either SharePoint (Microsoft 365) or Google Drive - as the intake point. When a document is uploaded to the designated folder, Make detects the new file via a folder-monitoring trigger. The workflow then performs three actions: it updates the relevant task in the practice management system to mark the document as received, it notifies the assigned accountant by email and Teams or Slack message, and it logs the receipt timestamp in a client activity log.
For practices that use a dedicated client portal (such as Senta, TaxCalc, or a custom SharePoint site), the same logic applies - the trigger is a portal upload event rather than a folder change. The important principle is that the detection and notification happen automatically, so no staff member needs to be monitoring inboxes or refresh portals manually.
The security posture is straightforward. All document handling stays within the practice's own Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace tenancy. Make connects via OAuth with the minimum permissions required (read new files, not modify or delete). The client never sees the automation - they simply upload to the same portal link they have always used, and the practice team receives instant notification. Under UK GDPR, this is internal processing data the practice already holds under its existing lawful basis - no additional consent is required.
Payroll is one of the most time-sensitive workflows in any practice. A payroll run that misses variable data - a new starter, a leaver, a salary change, an absence - creates a correction run that costs more to fix than the original payroll cost to process. And yet most practices still collect payroll variable data by email, with no structure and no deadline enforcement.
We build a monthly automated sequence keyed to each payroll client's run date. Seven days before the scheduled payroll run, Make sends the client a structured data collection form - built in Microsoft Forms, Google Forms, or Typeform depending on the practice's stack - covering the four standard categories: new starters (name, start date, salary, tax code if known), leavers (name, leave date, reason for leaving), salary changes (employee name, new salary, effective date), and other variable pay (bonuses, commission, statutory pay adjustments).
When the form is submitted, Make automatically populates a structured data record and attaches it to the client's payroll task in the practice management system. The assigned payroll administrator is notified immediately. If no response has been received five days before the run date, a chase email and SMS go to the client's nominated payroll contact. If still no response is received two days before the run, the practice manager is notified to make a decision about whether to run on last month's data or delay.
The saving is significant for practices with large payroll rosters. A practice running payroll for 30 clients typically spends 14 hours per month on data collection and chasing alone. Automation reduces that to 2 to 3 hours of exception handling. The data quality improvement is equally important: structured form responses eliminate the ambiguity of free-form emails and reduce payroll errors substantially.
Companies House filing deadlines are fixed and public, but monitoring them across a portfolio of 200 or 300 limited company clients using a manual system is error-prone. A missed Companies House deadline triggers an automatic penalty from £150 upward, a compulsory strike-off notice if persistent, and reputational damage to the practice. Most practices have at least one near-miss story per year.
The automated workflow maintains a deadline tracker - either a Google Sheet updated from your practice management system or a direct API connection if your system supports it - and fires a sequence of alerts when a client's trial balance has not been received with sufficient lead time before the Companies House deadline. The trigger dates are calculated dynamically: for a deadline 9 months after year-end, Make sends an initial data request 14 weeks before filing, a first chase at 10 weeks, a second chase at 6 weeks (escalated to the partner), and a critical alert at 4 weeks where the workflow also creates a same-day task for the assigned accountant to call the client.
The workflow distinguishes between clients who have provided their trial balance (task marked complete, no further chasing), clients who have provided partial information (task marked in progress, chase sequence continues), and clients who have not responded (maximum escalation). This three-state logic means your team is never blindsided by a deadline that crept up while everyone assumed someone else was handling it.
For practices using Xero Practice Manager, IRIS Practice Engine, or CCH OneClick, we connect directly to the practice management system via API to read deadline dates and update task statuses. For practices on spreadsheet-based systems, the workflow reads from and writes to the master spreadsheet directly.
HMRC correspondence arrives through multiple channels: physical letters sent to the client's registered address, messages via the Government Gateway agent services account, and increasingly via the HMRC Online Services inbox. In a practice without a routing system, these communications sit unread, reach the wrong person, or are actioned by whoever happens to notice them rather than the person responsible for that client.
The automated routing workflow operates on two inputs. For Government Gateway correspondence, Make polls the relevant inbox on a scheduled basis (or via webhook if the practice management system provides one) and routes each item to the assigned manager based on the client reference. For physical correspondence, the practice's admin team scans the letter and drops it into a designated SharePoint folder, which Make detects and routes in the same way. In both cases, a task is created in the practice management system with the correspondence type, client name, receipt date, and a copy of the document. The assigned manager receives a Teams or email notification within minutes.
The workflow also maintains a correspondence log - a running record of every HMRC communication received, by client, by date, by type. This is invaluable for compliance purposes and for defending against HMRC claims that a notice was not received. In our experience, having a timestamped, searchable log of all HMRC correspondence is one of the clearest risk-reduction benefits of automation for any practice.
Practice aged debt is a quiet drain on cash flow that most practice managers acknowledge but few tackle systematically. The typical approach - a monthly reminder email sent manually from the accounts team - is ineffective because it lacks personalisation, lacks multi-channel reach, and lacks the persistence needed to shift genuinely overdue accounts. At the same time, no practice wants to damage a client relationship with aggressive chasing.
We build a three-stage automated sequence that is professional in tone but persistent in execution. At 14 days overdue, the client receives a polite email reminder referencing the specific invoice number, amount, and due date, with a payment link if the practice uses an online payment system (GoCardless, Stripe, or similar). At 30 days overdue, a second email goes out - slightly firmer in tone - plus an SMS to the client's billing contact. At 60 days overdue, the workflow creates a task for the practice manager with a recommendation to pause non-urgent work for that client and potentially issue a formal letter before action.
The multi-channel approach is important. Email-only chasing has an effectiveness ceiling because some clients tune out practice emails. SMS at 30 days typically generates a response from clients who had genuinely lost track of the invoice. The 60-day escalation to manual review ensures that the most complex cases - disputed invoices, relationship-sensitive clients - get human judgement at the right point rather than an automated chase that could cause more harm than good.
For practices billing through Xero or QuickBooks, Make connects directly to the accounting software to identify overdue invoices, pull the client contact details, and mark invoices as 'chase in progress' so the accounts team can see at a glance what the system is handling. Average debt days for practices that have implemented this workflow typically fall by 15 to 25 per cent within three months.
For more on how we have helped professional services firms - including accountancy practices - automate client engagement, see our guide to AI chatbots for UK accountants.
The most common question we are asked is what automation actually costs and how quickly a practice gets its money back. The honest answer is that it depends on complexity, the number of systems involved, and whether the practice's data is clean enough to connect reliably. But we can give realistic ranges based on the workflows above.
All eight workflows described in this article are built on Make (formerly Integromat) as the automation platform. Make's pricing for a practice-scale implementation starts at around £29 to £99 per month depending on operation volume. The build cost is a one-off professional services fee that covers scoping, build, testing, and handover. We price individual workflows from £3,500, with bundles of three or more workflows attracting a discount. Training and a 90-day support period are included as standard.
| Workflow | Estimated monthly saving (staff time at £22/hr) | Build cost (one-off) | Payback period |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. New client onboarding | £484/month (22 hrs) | £4,500 | 9 months |
| 2. Self-assessment reminders | £352/month (16 hrs) | £3,500 | 10 months |
| 3. VAT return preparation | £396/month (18 hrs) | £4,000 | 10 months |
| 4. Document tracking | £374/month (17 hrs) | £3,500 | 9 months |
| 5. Payroll data collection | £286/month (13 hrs) | £3,500 | 12 months |
| 6. Annual accounts tracking | £242/month (11 hrs) | £3,500 | 14 months |
| 7. HMRC correspondence routing | £176/month (8 hrs) | £3,500 | 20 months |
| 8. Invoice chasing | £220/month (10 hrs) | £3,500 | 16 months |
| All 8 workflows (bundle) | £2,530/month (115 hrs) | £22,000 | 9 months |
These figures represent direct staff time saving only. They exclude the value of reduced errors (which typically cost two to three times as much to fix as the original task), reduced client attrition (clients who receive systematic, professional communication churn significantly less), and the capacity released for fee-generating work. A practice that recovers 115 hours of support staff time per month has effectively gained three additional part-time team members without adding headcount.
For practices that prefer a phased approach, we recommend starting with workflows 1 and 2 - client onboarding and self-assessment reminders - because they have the highest time saving, the most immediate client impact, and the shortest payback period. The two workflows together cost around £8,000 to build and deliver a combined saving of approximately £836 per month from day one of going live.
The second phase typically covers workflows 3, 4, and 5 - VAT preparation, document tracking, and payroll data collection. These three are naturally interconnected because they all involve the same document intake process, and building them together is more efficient than building them separately.
The third phase covers workflows 6, 7, and 8. These are slightly lower in individual time saving but disproportionately high in risk reduction. A single missed Companies House deadline, a single HMRC correspondence that reaches the wrong person, or a 60-day invoice that becomes a write-off can each cost more than the entire build cost of the automation that would have prevented it.
We work exclusively with UK practices and understand the regulatory context: GDPR, AML obligations under the Money Laundering Regulations 2017, professional indemnity requirements, and the ICAEW's practice management standards. Every workflow we build is documented with a data flow diagram suitable for GDPR Article 30 record-keeping and reviewed against the relevant regulatory requirements before handover.
Make is our primary recommendation for UK accountancy practices for three reasons. First, it has native connectors for Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, DocuSign, Xero, QuickBooks, and most practice management systems - the tools practices already use. Second, its data routing logic is more powerful than Zapier for multi-step conditional workflows, which is what accountancy automation requires. Third, Make's EU/UK data processing terms are straightforward and compatible with GDPR. n8n is an excellent option for practices that want a self-hosted solution and have in-house technical resource to maintain it. Zapier works well for simple two-step automations but becomes expensive and unwieldy for the complex, multi-branch workflows described above. We build on whichever platform best fits the practice's existing stack and technical capability.
Properly designed automation reduces GDPR risk rather than increasing it. The key principles are: process data only within systems the practice has already authorised (Microsoft 365, Google Workspace, your practice management system), document the data flows in your Article 30 records, and ensure that no client data passes through a third-party system without a lawful basis and a data processing agreement. We provide a data flow diagram for every workflow we build, suitable for use in your GDPR documentation. The AML workflow in particular requires careful design to ensure that identity document data is stored only in the practice's own tenancy and deleted (or archived) in line with the Money Laundering Regulations retention requirements. We handle this as standard.
For a single workflow, our typical implementation timeline is four to six weeks from kick-off to go-live. This includes a scoping session (typically two hours), a build phase of two to three weeks, a testing phase with the practice team of one week, and a handover and training session. For a bundle of all eight workflows, the timeline is 12 to 16 weeks because we build and test in phases to avoid disrupting the practice's existing operations. We schedule builds around the practice's busy periods - we do not start VAT workflow builds in the last two weeks of a quarter, and we do not start self-assessment workflow builds in December or January.
Yes, in most cases. IRIS and CCH both offer API access at their Professional or Enterprise tiers. Xero Practice Manager has a well-documented REST API. Make has native connectors for Xero (including Xero Practice Manager) and connects to IRIS and CCH via their APIs or, where API access is not available, via structured data exports to a shared folder that Make monitors. We always assess the specific version and tier of the practice management system in the scoping phase before confirming integration capability. In rare cases where an API is not available, we use email-parsing or spreadsheet-based connectors as an interim solution while the practice evaluates upgrading their software.
All workflows we build include error handling and alerting. If a step fails - a DocuSign API timeout, a SharePoint permission error, a client email that bounces - Make logs the error and sends an alert to a nominated practice email address within minutes. We set up monitoring dashboards so the practice can see at a glance which workflows are running normally and which have exceptions. During the 90-day support period included with every build, we respond to error alerts within one business day and resolve them at no additional cost. After the support period, we offer a maintenance retainer from £250 per month covering response to errors and minor workflow adjustments as the practice's systems or processes change.
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These solutions are specifically designed for UK SMEs. The pricing, implementation timelines and support structures are calibrated for businesses with 5-50 employees. Enterprise-grade equivalents typically cost 5-10x more. UK SMEs benefit most from the efficiency gains because they typically cannot afford the specialist staff that larger businesses use to handle these functions manually.
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