The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

157 ⎸ How to Onboard Clients

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 157

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In this episode I’m exploring the world of client onboarding, while focusing on the use of Dubsado to automate the process. If you're interested in learning about automated onboarding processes and low-cost options, this episode is for you!

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • Challenges of managing multiple clients at the same time
  • Specific details of the onboarding process using Dubsado, including lead capture, proposal creation, reminders, contract creation, and invoicing
  • Intake forms tailored to client needs
  • Introduction of the Dubsado Decoded course and its features
  • Use of email templates throughout the onboarding process

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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You're listening to the ambitious bookkeeper podcast. I am Serena Shoup , your host. And I am here today to chat with you about onboarding. So, if you're new around here. Welcome to the podcast this whole month. We are talking about onboarding clients. So if you've missed previous episodes, go ahead and scroll back in your podcast player and take a listen. If you have been watching along on YouTube, I am. Greatly apologetic today. I was trying to do a video. But sometimes just life happens and I would rather get an audio podcast out than none at all. So today we're skipping video, it is purely audio. So my apologies. when I do interviews, that's a lot easier to do a video, but right now I'm doing a solo episode in an evening. My house is dark. I couldn't get the lighting right. Honestly, I didn't really want to put on makeup. All the things. So here we are. We're getting scrappy. And we're going to talk about onboarding today. So if you follow me on Instagram and threads, I put out a call for questions about onboarding. I did receive a few questions and we're going to tackle those today. So let's get to it. All right. One of the questions I received about onboarding is could you share a cheap or low cost option? Or system for onboarding. So I'm going to go through some suggestions and then we're going to just kind of, I'm just going to riff on something. So you could totally, if you listen to last week's episode where I interviewed Corey. She talked about when she first set up her onboarding process, she was doing like a Canva proposal. And sending that in an email and going back and forth with having the client sign, the contract and all these things that took a lot of time. That is absolutely possible. You can totally do a system like that, where you have. A proposal in Canva or even a Google or a word doc. And then you also have a template contract that you have saved in a Google doc or a word doc that you just modify. The, you know, the information about the client. And then you can pull that into something like hello, sign or Adobe Acrobat. Hello, Sinai. Believe you can still get A few free. E-signature is per month. That's what I started out with before I set up the system that I'm going to talk about in a moment. And then eventually I ended up moving over to a different, a whole CRM system that, that handled the proposals, the contracts, the invoice, all that stuff. And then I purchased Adobe sign, which you could also just go straight into that instead of hello sign, because you're going to need something to modify PDFs and get e-signatures possibly outside of your proposal software. Anyway, at some point. So that's also an option. That's usually about $20 a month. And, in our firm we use everyone's on apple products on Mac. So we use. A program called PDF expert, and that's what we use to be able to modify PDF documents and move pages around delete pages, combined files, markup PDF documents, since we're all. Digital. so that's kind of just a little side note about tech. So you could totally do something like that. The problem with that is. You then have to go back and forth and manually modify these things. Instead of having them truly like pulling in the client's information automatically. And then you also need to have something like a checklist that they receive once they sign their engagement letter and pay their first invoice of everything that you're going to need from them. And then I maybe a Google drive folder to have them uploaded it. So once you start talking about all these little pieces that you're piecing together, it becomes very cumbersome for yourself and for your client. And it's kind of hard to keep track of. If you're onboarding more than one client at a time, this can feel very, very. Uh, chaotic and overwhelming. And so that's why I recommend implementing. In actual system. Like Dubsado. So all the resources that I'm going to talk about today, I will be linking in the show notes. So you don't necessarily have to take notes. So Dubsado is. A. CRM, which enables you to. From the point of a client inquiry where the client is like, Hey, I'm interested in working with you. You can capture their information. And then convert them into a proposal situation. Once you have a call with them, you can even schedule stuff through Dubsado has a scheduler. And then from there, it's a proposal and you can set up automated reminders for the client to review and sign the proposal. You can set expiration dates. So if you consider. This versus doing something manually, you might forget that you sent out a proposal. And then two or three months later, a client's like, Hey, I signed your proposal. And you're like, oh, I totally forgot about that. Or maybe they just forget to even sign it in the first place. And you forget to, and there's no followup system. So all of that would be manual without a system like Dubsado. So Dubsado can do all of that heavy lifting for you where they're following up. You create email templates. And have them go out every so often until your proposal expires and reminding the client that the proposal was expiring and all that good stuff. So. That's what happens from the lead capture up to the proposal point. So then once the client signs a proposal, They accept, choose their options. It automatically creates the contract by pulling in the information from that proposal. This is all done in the backend setup, obviously, but once it's set up, that's the capability that it has and then they sign the engagement letter and then immediately you can have it pull up the first invoice based on the proposal package that they chose so that you're not beginning onboarding until you have payment. And then it triggers an onboarding workflow. And this is again, stuff that you would set up inside of Dubsado and it's highly customizable. That's when you can start putting in like an intake form. And this is the checklist of all the things I'm going to need from you client. And here's a link to upload all the documents, and then once they've completed that checklist, they can submit it. And then you get an email notification from Dubsado that says, Hey, client XYZ has completed their intake form. And so then you can begin the actual onboarding process and you don't have to worry about checking in on them again, because you can set up email reminders. That go out every week or so. Until that intake form is completed and submitted by the client. So again, when you start thinking about. Onboarding more than one client at a time, even just one client at a time. In addition to all the other client work or other things you have going on in your life, it can be. Hard to keep up with keeping a client moving through the onboarding process. So wherever you can implement systems that do all of Those reminders for you. That's going to be a game changer and Dubsado was only $35 a month. Can you believe that? It's not based on like how many clients you have in there. It's just a flat $35 a month. And then. There might be additional fees per user, but we have, I think three users on our Dubsado at the $35 a month. So it's pretty, it's a pretty robust system for such a low price and they just implemented, they just launched their app. So you can do a lot of this stuff from your phone, which is really cool. I was going, I was in there the other day, looking at. The op, just to see what it looked like and it made it so easy to see, oh, these are all the leads I still have in the pipeline that. Maybe never filled out the proposal and I want to follow up with them or people that have filled out the proposal. They're still an onboarding and you can send an email straight from there in Dubsado. a custom email or a template add one. That's like, Hey, just following up. So I actually did that with some leads that were interested earlier on in the year when it was like coming up on tax time. And then I think they ended up filing extensions. And so now I'm following up with them to see, Hey, Did you ever find a bookkeeper and if not, let's get started. And so it's really awesome to have a system that all these leads that you have are already organized for you. And so you can just go in there and follow up with people, which is pretty cool. So that's pretty much my suggestion with, a cheap, low cost option. Either doing it all manually or doing it. For $35 a month and yes, there is going to be some setup. You probably heard it at the top of this episode. We do have a sale happening right now for our program. Dubsado decoded. I partnered with a Dubsado specialist. And developed the content with her and. She recorded all the videos because she's the expert in Dubsado, but she literally walks you through. Step-by-step how to set up your Dubsado. Exactly. Like I have it. And using all the features that are available to you. So once you go through that program and you set it up step by step. You then have the, capability of making modifications to your Dubsado set up too, because you'll understand it on a deep level. It is a very robust program. Additionally, we have one click templates in there where you can just click to add the proposal templates and other templates straight into your Dubsado account. So you're not recreating the wheel. And all you have to do is go in there and set up your own colors and fonts and pictures inside of the proposal to customize it to your brand, which is pretty awesome. I feel like this is a really great way to stand out as a boutique. Accounting firm or bookkeeping firm or bookkeeping, business, whatever you want to call yourself. Because it's so customizable and it makes it really personal to be able to put your own branding and fonts and pictures in your proposal templates. And and all that. So. Okay. So we kind of talked about. An onboarding system. One of the other questions I got was knowing what standard list of documents to request during onboarding. So right here is where I'm going to shout out a freebie that I have. You can go onto my website and download for free my onboarding email templates. And within one of those emails is actually. And I think we might even have like a whole PDF, which has just the checklist of the onboarding documents that you're going to need from clients. You can go to the show notes to grab it, or you can go to ambitious bookkeeper.com. Right on the homepage. If you just scroll down to the section. That says free new client set up templates, just enter your name and your email, and those will get delivered straight to your inbox. So I encourage you to go grab those and get ahold of that standard document requests. This was one of the things that when I started this brand, this was kind of like the catalyst to starting this brand. So many people. Had questions about like, what do I ask clients for and why am I asking for this? Like, whenever I would say, this is what we ask for people will be like, well, why are you asking for all of that? I probably have some older podcast episodes where I go through. That list in detail. And kind of explain it. But yeah, you can go to ambitious bookkeeper.com and just scroll down to the free new clients set up template section, and you can get those straight to your inbox and start using them. And it's. Not just the checklist, but it's emails that you can use to get your clients through the onboarding process. So you're not having to like recreate the wheel every time. So even if you are doing this process manually, you can save these email templates In your Gmail or whatever system you're using. Save it in a Google doc and copy and paste into, to your clients. When you're setting up a new client. inside that, freebie. Template download you also get access to how we structure our file setup internally for clients or our client file setup in Google drive. And like I said, the new document checklist and the onboarding email sequence that we use. Okay. The next question I got was finding clients. People were having a difficult time finding clients. And so my recommendation is to actually, you can search this podcast history and go back in time and see where I've talked about finding clients, finding your first client, finding clients on Upwork. We have lots of episodes. We were talking about this. but I also have a mini course that is $37. It's called the bookkeeping client closer. And even though it's called the client closer. I do walk you through, like where you can look for clients and find leads in addition to how to close them on sales calls. So that's another resource for you. I will link it in the show notes. You can go to ambitious bookkeeper.com/closer and get ahold of that. All right. Now. Number four is the fourth question that I have someone asked, what do you have automated for the onboarding process? So I've kind of. In a disorganized manner, talked about how I have my onboarding process. Automated, but. I'll go from. From end to end. So basically when a client comes to us, And they're interested in working together. They may come to us through. An Instagram, DM. They may come to us through someone introduced us through email or LinkedIn. in all of those places, You also want to have somewhere to direct people, right. And get them into your automated system. So even though all have. Real time conversations with people in the DMS or on email or phone or whatever. I will ultimately still direct them to our new client interest form. If I'm not quite sure. If there are going to be a great fit, because I want them to fill out a questionnaire. Otherwise, if I already. Talked to them enough and understand that they would be a good foot and they understand that. Our minimum price is $450. And that we only use Xero because those are covered on that intake form. If they understand all of that. I will bypass the intake form and get them straight onto a discovery call, or maybe even just a proposal. then they're still getting into our Dubsado system. So let's talk about if they fill out the intake form. Which is on our website. That's an interest form actually. Then it's like 10 questions I cover. what our minimum fee is that we only use zero and I asked them some questions about their business, their revenue, their industry, their website. So I can do my research on them as well. And how they heard about us and all that kind of information. And so then that is a way that we're automating that information. So now they filled that out and a form within Dubsado that they're filling out, it's just embedded on our website. So as soon as they fill that out and submit it, their information now lives in Dubsado. So in the future, when we do a proposal or anything else, all I have to do is, use a template and it pulls in their name and their. Business name or website or whatever it is right there, email and all that kind of stuff has already pulled in. So that's one way we automated. And then if we bypass that process, And move them straight into a discovery call. My discovery call on acuity is also linked through Zapier to Dubsado. So as soon as someone books a specific. Appointment type discovery, call. Their information also gets in Dubsado as a lead. So either way. They're in there. And that piece has automated that. The data entry of the client information. The initial information is automated that way. The piece that is manual is once they fill out that interest form. Dubsado sends me an email that says, Hey, this person has filled out this form. At the same time, they're getting a confirmation email from Dubsado that lets them know, Hey, thank you. We've received your form. You'll receive a response from someone within 24 to 48 hours. In the meantime, here's a new client services guide. So now we're educating them along in the process and giving them something to look at. While we're doing our manual piece on the backend of reviewing the interest form and deciding if I want to invite them onto a discovery call. But say it's a good fit. We invite them onto a discovery call with a template email that I have set up in Dubsado. So I have two emails. One's a good fit email, and one's a bad fit email. So they're already templated. I don't have to think about what I'm really going to like the meat and potatoes of what I'm going to say. Is already there. I might fluff it up a little bit. But I can go back into Dubsado and send either one of those emails and that's semi-automated because it's a template, right. So I'll do that. And then once they do a discovery call and we have the chat, their information, like I said, is already in Dubsado. So if I'm ready to send a proposal, I can do that immediately. After I get off the discovery call with them. I have the proposals templated. We have our packages templated, and I just pick and choose based on what we talked about. And then I send it off to them. And the email that goes with it is also template it. It's already in the system and it gives them a step-by-step of what to expect next. And there's been a lot of thought. That has gone into this to make it. A pleasant experience for the client. that's part of why we created the Dubsado Decoded program to give you all of this. So you don't have to go recreate the wheel and develop all of these emails to set up your client experience and all of the onboarding process. Like we just give it to you. So imagine how many, I mean, I spent years developing these emails and this process to make it like as robust as it is. And I get a lot of compliments from new clients when we onboard them of like how the process is. so once we send a proposal, like I said, at the top of this episode, I kind of briefed like how that process works. It is then automated end up Sato. They choose the package. It gives them the engagement letter immediately and the invoice immediately. So that's all automated. Once they pay that invoice. Let me back up a little bit. It also sends email reminders. So if they haven't filled out the proposal, it sends email reminders. Once they fill out the proposal, if they haven't paid the invoice, it sends email reminders. Once they pay the invoice, we have a zap, which is also, I give this to you inside of Dubsado decoded. We have a zap that says. When client pays invoice in Dubsado. Go to Asana and create a new project based on our monthly accounting. Project template. So I have a template in Asana of our monthly accounting workflow. And. It automatically creates that project for us. When a client signs an invoice. So you do have to have a paid version of Asana. I think it's just, they're like. First tier paid like premium or whatever. Have Asana to be able to access that feature of the templates. But you can also set it up. Manually, you can do that process manually when someone pays their invoice. You'll get an email from the Dubsado that says your client paid your invoice. So now, you know, okay, I'm going to go in and create the us on a project. So that all is automated. I also have stuff, other stuff that's part of that zap that pulls the information from Dubsado and enters it into Xero so that we can invoice our clients in the future from Xero. It pulls their information into Open phone. So we have our clients. In our phone address book so we can text them. and call them if we need to. it creates a slack channel. For our team. So all of that happens as soon as the client pays a first invoice. So if you think about. How much time you're saving by oh, someone doesn't have to manually go in and create an Asana project. Create a slack channel. Create the contact in open phone, greet the contact in zero. Like all of this four things happen automatically, as soon as that client pays that invoice. So that's one of the big ways that we automate as well. And then after that they get an intake form. that we have set up in Dubsado too. Not send it automatically. I have to check it off to approve it, to send it that way. I can modify the intake form based on what I know about the client or choose a different intake form. So for example we have some clients that are already on QuickBooks online. And then some clients that have nothing. So their intake forms are different. The ones that are already on QuickBooks online, we have a section that's shows them how to. Add us as an accountant so we can pull information from QuickBooks. if they have payroll, there's also a section where it shows them how to add us to Gusto or things like that. So we have a couple different versions of intake forms that we use. So that piece is a little bit manual, but they're all templated again. So I can just pick and choose and kind of drag and drop things. And it doesn't take that long to modify the intake form. And then once they've received the intake form, again comes with a template email with the step-by-step process. So they're, we're holding their hand all along the way, letting them know what to expect next, what to do with this email. And all the things. So Dubsado sends the intake form. It's in an email. And then. They again, get email reminders every week. If they haven't completed the intake form. Dubsado is doing the followup for us. We don't really necessarily have to, occasionally I'll go in there and just kind of check to make sure things are firing correctly. Especially if I haven't heard from the client in a while, and I don't want, I want to make sure we're not dropping the ball. So like we do go in and check Dubsado once a week just to see what the status is. If we haven't heard anything, but it's not like having to write the email and send it to the client over and over again. That's already being done. So that all is automated as well. I think that's pretty much, that's pretty much the gist of what I automate. It's a lot. And I didn't do it all at once. I didn't set that all up at once. I, it took time and years of kind of tweaking the process and figuring out okay. What part of the onboarding process is giving us? Uh, headache and what can we change and improve? And so we built that out and again, put it into a program for you guys to just be able to like add it and one click almost, and just tweak a little, a few little things, but also learned about Sato. So you know how to modify things. If you need to change them. So that is our automated onboarding system. Okay. Question number five was I took an implemented Alyssa's kickoff with Asana. I'll link that in the show notes as well. Would I use and need your Dubsado course in the answer is yes. If you're going to implement Dubsado because it's a completely different. Program than Asana. And like I just answered in the previous question about the automations. One of the automations we have is once the Dubsado piece is done. It creates the The project in Asana. Dubsado I would look at as. The client facing part of the onboarding, whereas Asana is like, back end, our end right of our work of what we're doing on the backend to onboard the clients. And make sure. That their accounting is done. That's kind of how I look at it. Then I have a Specific question about. Dubsado decoded. Is this course helpful if you use a different CRM or is it completely specific to Dubsado? And the answer is it is completely specific to Dubsado. So like I said, it walks you through the exact setup and provides one-click templates to make it pretty. we walk you step-by-step on how to implement each piece along the way in. Dubsado specifically. So I don't think it would be. Beneficial. I mean, it would be beneficial just to see how an onboarding system works. If you're unsure about which system you're going to use. Then you can buy this one and just use Dubsado and the decision is made for you. However, I would not say. To use this program with HoneyBook because it's not compatible. But this episode walked you through our entire onboarding process and what you can do in onboarding. So if you have. The skills in a different system, like HoneyBook or something else. And it has the capabilities of what I talked about. you can implement that. and then also, if you want more of a visual overview of what your onboarding process can look like. continue listening to all these podcasts episodes this month. But also if you're in the bookkeeping business accelerator, I do walk you through visually. My Dubsado set up. I don't teach you how to set it up. I just show you what's possible. And I give you tips and pointers for setting up your onboarding system in whatever system, whether it's Dubsado or something else like HoneyBook. Or a completely manual process. You can recreate this with a manual process. If you're willing to spend that much time. Every time you onboard a client. I hope this helps. I hope this episode was useful for you. If you found it, valuable, please share it with someone that, you know, in our industry or someone who is thinking about starting a bookkeeping business. Also, I would love, love, love. If you please would rate and review the podcast on apple podcasts I'm sure you've heard this on other podcasts, if you listen to them, but when you rate and review people's podcasts, It shows it to more people, so it gets the word out. And I love doing this podcast every week. I'm sorry, it's not on video this week, but. I love doing the podcast. I love being able to share. All this knowledge with you and inspiration and. I love seeing the reviews that people write. I love getting feedback because it's kind of like a one-way I'm just like sitting in the dark, talking into a microphone, hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping, hoping. That some of this resonates with people and people find it valuable. And I don't know, unless you let me know. So, that would be a great way to kind of like, Just pay it forward. If you have a specific question that you want answered on the podcast in the future, you can go to speakpipe.com/ambitiousbookkeeper and record an audio, which would be pretty cool. Or you can always just email us at support@ambitiousbookkeeper.com. And that is all for today. Thank you so much for tuning in don't forget. Dubsado decoded is 20% off. Through the end of July, 2024, depending on when you're listening to this episode. And not only do you get 20% off, but you also get bonuses like.$250 off the bookkeeping business accelerator self-paced version. You can, Or use it towards, elevate the self-paced version. And a bunch of other goodies. So make sure you are subscribed to my email list. If you go and download those onboarding templates, you will get on the email list. So you'll be getting emails about this sale that we're having in more information on it. And future promotions that we do. one other really cool thing is we are opening the bookkeeping. biz workshops again. For the final time in 2024, that will be at the end of August. And if you joined up Sato decoded, before the end of July, you get a free ticket to the biz workshops. so yeah, that's pretty cool too. Thank you so much for tuning in every week. And we'll talk to you next week.

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