The free client portals you may already have

Who already qualifies for something free

I sell a client portal, so take the next sentence in that light and check it yourself. Most small practices are already entitled to a document-collection portal at no extra cost, through software they pay for or a membership they hold. Before you pay anyone — including me — find out whether that applies to you.

The Wolters Kluwer Annual Accounting Industry Survey asked 2,373 tax and accounting professionals about their plans. Seventeen per cent intended to invest in a client portal solution. The more interesting number is the other one: eighty-three per cent did not. Some of those firms have decided a portal is not for them, which is legitimate. Others are chasing documents by email while an unused portal sits inside a subscription they renew every year.

QuickBooks Online Accountant — Client Requests

QuickBooks Online Accountant is free to ProAdvisors. Inside it there is a feature called Client Requests, and it is a genuine document collection tool rather than a shared folder with a nice name.

• You raise a request against a client.
• QBOA emails the client to tell them there is something to do.
• The status of the request is tracked, so you can see what is outstanding.
• What they upload lands in Shared Documents.

The part most people miss: it works even for clients with no QuickBooks subscription of their own. You do not have to put every client on a QBO plan to collect documents.

The constraint. The client has to accept an invitation and log in, reaching the requests through the My Accountant page. So your first request is really two asks — accept this invitation, then do this task.

Xero HQ — Ask

Xero HQ is free to practices in the Xero partner programme. The relevant feature is called Ask.

• It requests documents from a client.
• It tracks which queries are still outstanding.
• It emails clients who are not themselves on Xero, so it is not limited to your Xero client base.
• It accepts up to 100 files, at 25MB each.

That allowance is more generous than people assume. A year of statements, a folder of invoices and a set of payroll reports fits inside it comfortably. The 25MB per-file ceiling only bites on documents photographed at full resolution, and the fix is to ask for the PDF download rather than the photo.

The constraint. The client needs a secure login.

Intuit Link

Intuit Link is free with a purchase of Lacerte or ProSeries. If you are a Pay-Per-Return customer, you need to purchase Remote Entry Processing for at least one return before you get access. That is worth knowing before you go looking for it and conclude it is not there.

Link is aimed squarely at the tax season workflow rather than a monthly close:

1. Send an engagement letter.
2. Send a questionnaire and, or, a checklist.
3. Track the client’s progress through it.
4. Follow up on whatever is still missing.

The constraint. For security reasons the client has to accept an invitation before a preparer can send documents through Link at all. The maximum file size is 30MB.

IRIS OpenSpace

OpenSpace is a cloud document management platform for accountants. Secure sharing, electronic signatures, document approvals. Two routes to a free allowance:

• Existing IRIS customers get 1GB of storage free as part of membership.
• ACCA members can create an account and get 1GB free. That arrangement was announced in 2019, so check it against your current membership benefits page before you rely on it — membership benefits get renegotiated and I would rather you verified it than took my word.

Beyond the first gigabyte it is around £5 per GB per month, with roughly 15% off for annual payment. Whether 1GB is enough depends on what you collect. A practice receiving PDF statements and invoices will go a long way on it. One receiving phone photographs of receipts will not.

The constraint. Client login required.

Dropbox File Requests — the no-login option

This is the one that is genuinely different, and the reason it is worth reading this far. Dropbox File Requests are available on every plan, including the free one, and the person uploading does not need a Dropbox account. No invitation, no sign-up, no password reset three weeks later. You send a link, they put files in it.

If your objection to portals is that clients will not create yet another account, this removes the objection entirely and costs nothing. Be equally clear about what it is not:

• There is no checklist with per-item status. You cannot see that the bank statement arrived and the credit card statement did not — you see files in a folder and work it out yourself.
• There is no automated chasing. Every reminder is one you remember to write and send.

It is a folder that receives files. For a practice with a handful of clients that may be all you need. It is not a request-tracking system, and pretending otherwise costs you a month before you notice.

The one constraint four of the five share

QBOA, Xero HQ, Intuit Link and IRIS OpenSpace all require the client to have a login. Dropbox File Requests does not. That is the axis the whole decision turns on.

What I will not do is tell you how much it matters. I do not know your clients. Whether a login is a mild inconvenience or the thing that quietly kills the rollout is an empirical question about your specific client list, and nobody — not me, not a vendor, not another blog post — can answer it from the outside. Anyone offering a confident number here is guessing.

You can find out cheaply. Pick six clients and send the invitation. Count how many have accepted and logged in within a week. That number is worth more than every opinion on the internet about portal adoption, mine included. The structural reason portals go unused goes into why the buyer and the user being different people breaks so many rollouts, and the rollout guide covers how to stage it so a failure costs you six clients rather than sixty.

How to test one this month for nothing

Do not roll a portal out to the whole client list to find out whether it works. Test it on one month’s close.

1. Pick the tool you already qualify for. Use the table at the top. If two apply, pick the one attached to the software you are in every day.
2. Pick six clients, not sixty. Mix them. Two good with technology, two average, two who are the reason you are reading this.
3. Write the document list before you touch the software. The list is the hard part and it is portable between tools. The month-end close checklist builder makes one for a client’s industry and cadence if you would rather not start from a blank page.
4. Send the invitation and the first request together, with the email below, so the client understands why they are being asked to log in.
5. Count two things at month end. How many accepted the invitation, and how many chasers you still sent by hand. Those two numbers decide what follows.

Hi [Name],

Small change to how I collect your paperwork, starting with [Month].

Instead of emailing documents back and forth, you will get a link with a list of exactly what I need. You upload against each item, and I can see what has arrived and what has not. No more of me asking whether you sent the statement and you searching your sent items to check.

You will get an invitation from [tool name] first. You need to accept it and set up a login before I can send you anything — that is a security requirement on their side, not a preference on mine, and it takes about two minutes.

Here is what I will be asking for each month:

- [Document 1]
- [Document 2]
- [Document 3]

If the login gives you any trouble at all, tell me and I will send you the list the old way for this month. I would rather have your documents on time than win an argument about software.

Thanks,
[Your name]

The last paragraph is not a weakness. A client who feels trapped stops replying altogether, and then you have lost the portal and the documents. Offer the exit and most of them will not take it.

What free does not give you

These are real tools and I would rather you used one than paid me out of habit. But be clear about where they stop. The two gaps are the same two gaps every time.

• Per-item status. QBOA, Xero HQ and Link do track requests. Dropbox does not. Take the Dropbox route to avoid the login problem and you trade away the checklist, then end up keeping the real one in a spreadsheet beside it.
• Automated chasing. The bigger gap. Tracking tells you what is missing. It does not do anything about it. Somebody still has to notice and write the email, and in a small practice that somebody is you, on a Friday afternoon, for the third time this month.

One clarification while we are on tools you might already own. Hubdoc and Dext are receipt capture. They are good at that, and they are not a substitute for checklist-based document collection. Do not talk yourself out of a portal because you already have one of them. They solve a different problem.

When paying is actually justified

There is a real market here and it is not free. Of twelve paid client-portal and practice management products I surveyed, not one has a free tier — the standard offer is a 14-day trial. What those products cost goes through the numbers and, more usefully, the axis each one charges on.

Paying is justified when one of these is true, and not really before:

1. The login is demonstrably the blocker. You ran the six-client test, you counted, and the invitations went unaccepted. That is evidence, and it points at something that does not require a login.
2. The chasing is the cost. You spend hours a month writing reminders you could have scheduled once. The clearest case for spending money, because the saving is measurable on your own time sheet.
3. You need one channel across mixed software. Half your clients on Xero and half on QuickBooks means two free portals, two systems, and chasing across both. Worse than either one alone.

Because it would be odd not to say it on my own site: ClientVault gives the client a link with no account and no password needed, sends follow-up emails automatically at day 3, day 7 and day 14 after a request is created, and repeats monthly, quarterly or annual requests on their own schedule. There is a free tier for three clients. That is the whole pitch. If QBOA or Xero HQ already covers you, use that instead. Where the established product in this category beats mine is set out on the comparison page.

If you are still deciding, the cheapest next step is not a trial of anything. It is checking whether the software you already pay for has a Client Requests or Ask button you have never pressed.