Chasing clients for documents: how accounting firms get year-end and tax records in on time
Most accounting firms collect year-end and tax documents the same way: a request email, then a follow-up, then a phone call, then a spreadsheet tracking who's sent what. Typically one person spends several hours a week on it in the run-up to every deadline, and the work still starts late because the documents arrive late.
Chasing is the most common complaint we hear from accounting and bookkeeping firms, and it's understandable. It's repetitive, it's awkward (nobody enjoys nagging a client they like), and it decides whether the actual accounting starts on time. This guide is written for firms of 10-60 people - a people business, meaning a business that sells its people's expertise and time, such as accountants, lawyers, agencies and consultants. It covers the free and low-cost fixes first, then what a custom build looks like for firms that have outgrown them.
Why it happens
Clients don't hold back documents to be difficult. They hold them back because the request is unclear, the upload route is awkward, or the document lives in someone else's inbox. On your side, chasing gets hard because the request, the documents and the status all live in different places.
In a typical firm:
The request
goes out as an email, or as a request list in a practice tool such as Karbon or TaxDome.
Receipts and bills
come in through Dext or Hubdoc, connected to Xero or QuickBooks.
Bank statements, payroll summaries, P60s, 1099s, mileage logs and loan statements
arrive as email attachments, in a shared drive, or on paper.
The status
who's sent what, who's missing what - lives in a spreadsheet someone updates by hand.
So when a manager asks "what are we still waiting for from the Patel account?", someone has to check four places. And because no single system knows the full picture, no single system can send the right reminder.
The fix with what you already have
Most firms can halve their chasing with tools they already pay for, if they set them up properly.
- 01
Send one request list per client, not an email
Both major practice tools support structured requests. Karbon's pricing page lists client requests on all plans and automatic client reminders on its Business plan. TaxDome's pricing page lists a client portal, intake forms and ready-made automations on every plan. A request list means each item can be ticked off, and the client sees what's left.
- 02
Turn on automatic reminders and set a rhythm
A sensible default: a reminder three days after the request, another a week later, then a named person calls. Write the reminder text yourself, in your firm's voice, and keep it short: what's missing, why it matters, and the deadline.
- 03
Split recurring documents from year-end documents
Receipts and bills should never be part of the year-end chase. Give each bookkeeping client their Dext or Hubdoc email-in address and ask them to set up a forwarding rule for supplier bills, so those documents flow in all year.
- 04
Tailor the list to the client
A sole trader with a rental property needs a different list from a limited company with payroll. Build three or four standard lists rather than one long one that clients give up on halfway down.
- 05
Ask for access, not copies, where you can
Bank feeds in Xero or QuickBooks, payroll provider access and read-only logins mean fewer documents to chase every year.
- 06
Track it in one view
If your practice tool shows request status across all clients, use that view in your weekly meeting instead of a spreadsheet. Our free hours lost worksheet will help you measure how much time chasing takes before and after.
Setting it up in the apps you already have
Menus move between releases and plan tiers, so check each vendor's help pages for the exact location. The order of work matters more than the clicks.
Karbon
Build your three or four standard request lists as templates first, with each document as its own item and a one-line explanation of what it is ("your mortgage interest statement, usually sent by your lender in April"). Attach the right template to each recurring year-end or tax job, so the request goes out automatically when the job is created. If your plan includes automatic reminders, set the rhythm once at template level rather than client by client. Then build a saved view of open requests across all clients, sorted by job due date, and make it the first thing on the weekly meeting agenda.
TaxDome
Set up an organizer or request template for each client type, and link it to the pipeline stage where document collection starts, so moving a job into that stage sends the request. Ask clients to upload through the portal or mobile app, and set reminders to repeat until the request is complete. Make sure someone owns the job's stage, so a job with every document in moves straight to the person preparing the return.
Dext and Hubdoc
Send each bookkeeping client a short welcome note with their email-in address, a one-line instruction for setting up a forwarding rule in their own email, and a reminder that photos of paper receipts work too. Set supplier rules so recurring bills are coded consistently. Check once a month which clients have sent nothing; silence usually means the forwarding rule broke, not that the client stopped spending.
Xero and QuickBooks
Connect bank feeds for every account the client uses, including credit cards and secondary accounts people forget about. Each feed connected is one fewer statement to chase at year-end. Where your client agrees, invite them to approve read-only access for their payroll provider too.
Ignition
Write document collection into the engagement letter: what the client must send, by when, and what happens to the deadline if documents arrive late. It turns an awkward chase into a reminder of something already agreed.
Checklist: a request list clients actually finish
- Under 15 items, tailored to the client type.
- Each item named in the client's words, not yours, with where to find it.
- Items you can get yourself - bank feeds, payroll access, last year's figures - removed.
- One upload route, made obvious, that works on a phone.
- A clear deadline, and why it matters to the client (their payment date, avoiding a penalty).
- A named person at the firm they can call if they're stuck.
- Already-received items ticked off before the first reminder goes.
Writing reminders people respond to
Short reminders get answered; long ones get filed. A good reminder says what's still missing (by name), when you need it, and the one easiest way to send it. Change the tone as the deadline gets closer - friendly at first, clearer about consequences near the end, and never sarcastic. If a client has had three reminders and sent nothing, the fourth step should be a phone call from someone they know, not a fourth email.
For example: a week of chasing at a 20-person firm
For example, picture a 20-person firm with 300 personal tax clients and 120 limited companies, six weeks before the January deadline.
On Monday, the practice manager opens the saved view of open requests. 90 personal tax clients still have items outstanding, sorted by how many and how long. She sees that 25 are missing only one item, usually a bank interest statement, and asks an admin to call those first because each call is quick and closes a job. On Tuesday, the automatic second reminder goes to everyone else. Four clients reply to the email with attachments instead of using the portal; the admin files them against the right items and replies with the portal link for next time.
On Wednesday, a bookkeeper notices that one company client's Dext inbox has been silent for two months. She calls, finds the client changed email provider and lost the forwarding rule, and talks them through resetting it. On Thursday, the manager flags eight clients who have sent nothing at all and assigns each to the accountant who knows them best for a personal call. One is dealing with a family illness and gets an agreed extension plan; the firm is glad it called rather than sent a fifth reminder. On Friday, the weekly meeting takes ten minutes on chasing instead of forty, because everyone is looking at the same view.
Common mistakes
One giant list for everyone.
Clients see 40 items, assume most don't apply, and send none.
Chasing what you could fetch.
Every bank statement you ask for that a feed could supply is a reminder you didn't need to send.
Reminders that keep going after the client has sent everything.
Check that ticked items stop the chase, and test it on a dummy client before busy season.
No named escalation.
If the rhythm ends in "someone calls", nobody calls.
Changing the process in December.
Set it up in the quiet months, so clients learn it before the deadline.
Leaving the engagement letter silent.
If the timeline isn't agreed upfront, every chase feels personal.
What good looks like
In a firm that has this working, most clients finish their request list after one or two automatic reminders. Phone calls go to the small group who genuinely need them, made by someone who knows the client. Anyone in the firm can answer "what are we waiting for from this client?" in seconds. Year-end and tax work starts earlier each year, and the deadline crunch is spread across the team rather than landing on the same few people.
When that stops working
These fixes work until your client list or your services get more complicated. Watch for these signals:
Your team still sends chasers by hand
because the automatic ones go out at the wrong time or say the wrong thing.
Clients reply to the reminder email with the document attached
, so it bypasses the portal and lands in someone's inbox.
You can't see the whole picture in one place
, because receipts are in Dext, the year-end list is in Karbon and the payroll documents are in a shared drive.
Reminders don't stop when they should
, so a client who sent everything still gets chased and calls to complain.
Escalation depends on memory.
Nobody knows which client needs a phone call because nothing flags it.
Year-end work starts late
for the same clients every year, and the deadline crunch lands on the same few people.
Your practice tool's request feature is on a plan tier
you'd have to upgrade every seat to get.
When the problem is that the pieces don't talk to each other, more settings won't fix it.
What a custom build looks like
A custom document collection build connects the places documents already arrive and gives your team one view of what's missing. It's one of the most common builds we do for accounting firms.
For a typical firm, it looks like this:
- One link per client, per job. The client sees a branded page with exactly what's still needed for this year-end or tax return, and uploads straight to it from a phone or laptop. It uses the same building blocks as the client portal we built for a podcast agency, shaped to your request lists.
- Every route counts. If a client emails the document instead, the build files it against the right item. If Dext has the bill, it's ticked off.
- Chasers that think. Reminders follow your rhythm, change tone as the deadline nears, stop the moment an item arrives, and hand over to a named person when a phone call is the right next step.
- One status view. Every client, every job, what's in and what's missing, sorted by deadline - inside the practice tool you already use where possible, so nobody learns a new app.
- A person decides. The build prepares the chase and flags the stubborn ones; your team decides who gets the call.
Typical market prices for a portal or document system run $8,000-18,000 to build, plus ongoing support; our client portal development cost guide breaks this down. Forge's prices are published on the pricing page: a two-week ops audit at $2,500 (£2,000), credited to your first month, then a monthly plan at $2,000, $3,500 or $7,500 a month (£1,600, £2,800 or £6,000), with your first build included. The software runs on your own accounts, so you own it and pay those tool costs directly. We train your team, roll it out with them so clients and staff actually use it, and keep it monitored and fixed, especially through busy season.
Weighing a full client portal instead? Our guide to client portals for accounting firms compares buying and building fairly.
Rolling it out and training the team
Start in your quietest months. Pick one client type - say, personal tax clients with straightforward affairs - and run the new request list and reminders for that group first. Ask the admin who does most of the chasing to own it, because they know which wording confuses clients and which items always come in last.
Train in short sessions on real client work: how to build a request from a template, how to file an emailed document against the right item, and how to read the open-requests view. Write down the escalation rule - who calls, after which reminder - and pin it where the team works.
Tell clients what's changing before the first request arrives: a short email explaining the new upload route, why it makes things easier for them, and who to call with questions. Clients who understand the change finish their lists; clients who are surprised by it email attachments to whoever they last spoke to.
After the first cycle, ask the team and a handful of clients what was confusing, fix the list wording and reminder text, then widen to the next client type.
Measuring whether it worked
Track a few numbers, the same way each cycle:
Hours spent chasing per week
, logged by the people doing it, before the change and during the next busy season.
Reminders per completed request.
If most clients need four or more, the list or the upload route needs work.
Days from request to complete
, especially for your slowest quarter of clients.
Phone calls made
, and whether they went to the right clients.
Jobs started on time
the share of year-end and tax jobs where preparation began on the planned date because the documents were in.
Compare like with like: this January against last January, not against a quiet month. If chasing time has dropped but jobs still start late, the problem has moved from collection to capacity, and that's a different conversation.
Who gets time back, and what they do with it
Chasing usually falls on an admin, a practice manager or a junior bookkeeper, and in the weeks before a deadline, on managers too.
When the routine chasing runs itself, your admin spends the time on the clients who genuinely need a person - for example, the elderly client who finds uploads confusing, or the business owner who's behind because something's gone wrong at home. Those calls are where trust is built, and they're usually the first thing to slip when the inbox is full of chasers.
Your bookkeepers start year-end work earlier, because documents arrive earlier. Your managers stop asking "what are we waiting for?" in every meeting, because they can see it. And your partners get fewer awkward calls from clients who were chased for something they already sent.
Questions, answered plainly
How do accounting firms get clients to send documents on time?
Send a short, tailored request list instead of an email, make uploading easy from a phone, set automatic reminders on a clear rhythm, and escalate to a named person after the second miss. Collecting recurring documents like receipts all year also shrinks the year-end list.
Do Karbon and TaxDome send automatic client reminders?
Karbon's pricing page lists client requests on all plans and automatic client reminders on its Business plan. TaxDome's pricing page lists a client portal and ready-made automations on every plan. Check the current plan pages before you rely on a feature.
What should be on a year-end document request list?
It depends on the client type, but usually bank and loan statements, payroll summaries, sales and purchase records not already in the ledger, asset purchases, and anything unusual that happened in the year. Keep separate lists for sole traders, companies and landlords.
Should we use Dext or Hubdoc for year-end documents?
They're best for recurring receipts and bills. Use them all year so those documents never join the year-end chase, and keep year-end requests in your practice tool or portal.
How much does a custom document chasing build cost?
Typically $8,000-18,000 on the open market for a portal or document system, plus ongoing support. With Forge, a two-week ops audit is $2,500 (£2,000), credited to your first month, then $2,000, $3,500 or $7,500 a month (£1,600, £2,800 or £6,000) with your first build included.