Running the financial aspects of businesses usually involves performing manual tasks, but if accountants and bookkeepers learn how to use Zapier then many of these can be streamlined and eliminated.
We asked a few accountants and bookkeepers how they use automation to make their businesses more productive and efficient. We were delighted with the responses as they provide some really ingenious ways of using Zapier.
Many time-consuming tasks can be replaced by automations, including client onboarding, creating tasks for the team automatically and even creating a web shop by connecting different apps.
Hopefully the ideas below will inspire other accountants and bookkeepers to try out Zapier and see how it can transform their business!
Onboarding new clients
Brian Clare is a partner at Blueprint Accounting in Ontario, Canada. His favourite use case for automation is the firm’s client onboarding workflow. They use Practice Ignition, which is just one of over 6,000 apps which can be connected using Zapier, for proposal and invoice management.
Once a client has accepted a proposal then the following workflow is triggered:
- Use Formatter by Zapier to split out the first and last names.
- Add the client to an onboarding drip campaign in Active Campaign.
- Mark the deal as closed / won in Hubspot.
- Send an email using Microsoft Outlook to their admin assistant with the proposal PDF attached, to save it in Hubspot.
- Add the new client info to a Google Sheet.
- Add the new proposal information to Airtable.
- Send a message in Microsoft Teams to notify the team that they have a new referral or client, along with a GIF (the GIF is created with Giphy).
- Create a channel in Microsoft Teams based on the client type.
- Use Paths by Zapier to send the information through a ‘new client’ or ‘renewal client’ path.
Serena Shoup, founder of the Ambitious Bookeeper programme also uses Zapier for onboarding tasks. If someone books a call then she automatically creates a folder in Google Drive, adds them to her email list and creates tasks in Asana.
Using automation to build a lite e-commerce shop
Heather Smith is an accountant, author of Xero For Dummies, and hosts the Cloud Stories podcast – the world’s coolest accounting podcast, according to one of its listeners!
Heather has a lite e-commerce shop on her website where she sells her books, and this is all powered by automations:
- When a customer purchases a book, the data is captured using Gravity Forms and an invoice is automatically created in Xero.
- When the customer pays via Paypal the invoice is marked as paid.
This saves Heather using a separate plugin for the shop as she was already using Gravity Forms on her website. Using fewer plugins means that her website will run faster and she won’t have to worry about keeping unnecessary plugins up-to-date.
Heather also runs events using Eventbrite, and when an attendee registers they are tagged as such on Mailchimp. This ensures she keeps track of who has attended and can be useful for training events or meetups.
Our founder, Kelly has appeared on Heather’s podcast recently too, talking all things automation, and you can catch it here to find out why accountants and bookkeepers should embrace Zapier, or watch it on YouTube below:
Responding to new leads
Jennie Gillam is an accountant and founded Red Fish Accountancy. She uses Zapier for several tasks including:
- Automatically responding to new client enquiries
- Automatically setting up new leads and clients in Practice Ignition and Quickbooks.
- Running self-billing invoicing, posting into two separate accounting files, including the creation of new customers and suppliers.
The self-billing and accounts posting automation alone saves her team two days every month, a huge time saving!
Creating tasks automatically
Kyelie Baxter, of IQ Accountants uses Zapier for a range of workflows but her favourite everyday process is to create tasks in Slack. This happens automatically when various forms are completed, including those which capture data about new clients and tax checklists.
Find out more
Check out our other blog posts
Our blog has many different examples of how you can automate finance processes, such as:
- Automatically thank customers for paying their Xero invoices
- How to send a Slack message with a daily digest of paid Xero invoices
- How Xero automation saves time and reduces errors
- How to automate add contacts and invoices to Xero from Pipedrive
Free e-books
Our free Introduction to Zapier e-book explains the benefits of business process automation, how Zapier fits in and examples of automations for each department within your business.
We have a free cheat sheet with a checklist of Zapier’s inbuilt function which can supercharge your automations.
Automate It with Zapier book
If you’d like to find out more, with examples of finance and operations automations which can really streamline your business then our founder, Kelly’s book, Automate It with Zapier, is available on Amazon and through the publisher Packt. It includes some ready-made templates for various examples so you can get started really quickly.
The book is perfect for new Zapier users as well as seasoned pros. Here are links to Amazon (.co.uk) and Amazon (.com) to get yours now.
Solvaa: Strategy, Solutions, Support, Education
UK-based Solvaa® is a systems, process and automation consultancy specialising in improving business workflows. Solvaa® works with SMEs worldwide to implement digital tools, better processes, use business process automation and generative AI to boost productivity, enhance lead management, and remove unnecessary time, costs and hassles from stretched business owners’ days.
We help you simplify and streamline existing processes, integrate your business tools to make data transfer more efficient, and automate manual tasks. Our business process automation specialists have extensive experience using multiple cloud-based business tools, including Zapier, Pipedrive CRM, SmartSuite, Xero, Google Suite, ClickUp, Asana, Airtable, Hubspot, Active Campaign, Salesforce, Mailchimp, Quickbooks and many more. We are Zapier Certified Experts, SmartSuite Certified Partners, Pipedrive Certified Partners and Xero Certified Advisors. We also educate teams about using AI in their daily roles, mindset, governance and strategy in our Solvaa AI Academy.
Solvaa® was founded in 2016 by Kelly Goss, a no-code solutions architect, business process automation specialist and author of Automate It with Zapier (first edition) and Automate It with Zapier and Generative AI (second edition).
A thought leader on business process automation and digital adoption, Kelly attended an invite-only Roundtable on Artificial Intelligence (AI) with the UK government at No.10 Downing Street, providing insights and recommendations on how SMEs can benefit from productivity gains by using digital technologies, automation and AI. She has also been invited to speak at the House of Lords and at many other events.
Contact us today to find out how Solvaa can help your business make big savings on operational costs and time, and significantly increase productivity.
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