CPA Practice Advisor - 24

REVIEW: CLIENT PORTALS

By Garrett Wagner, CPA

From Trend to Must-Have

24

OCTOBER 2020 ■

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and which ones may be the best fit for
you. For technophiles in accounting, this
guide will help you better appreciate the
features and functions of the portal you
currently have-or it may compel you
decide that it is time for an upgrade.
Again, the software development
lifecycle in this realm has introduced
a number of new players, new pricing,
and new ways of serving up modules and
bundling.
In this issue, we reviewed some of
the leading client portals in our space,
specifically designed for professional
accounting firms. The products include:
■ AccountantsWorld Cloud Cabinet Client
Portals
■ CCH Axcess Portal
■ Citrix ShareFile
■ ImagineShare from ImagineTime
■ SmartVault
■ Thomson Reuters NetClient CS
At the end of the day, our industry
for the foreseeable future still revolves
around us getting a large number of
documents from our clients, full of
sensitive information, and providing
them a deliverable that still contains
highly sensitive PII. Whether that PII is
personal information or, really, the intellectual property of their overall business
or personal lives, it deserves the greatest
care and diligence-especially in the face
of today's cyberattacks.
Take steps in 2020 for the times to
come. The future will be faster, smarter,
even more prone to hackers, with clients
getting more sophisticated in their
expectations. Virtual accounting is a
trend that has arrived. ■

O t he

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Cus t

CCH AXCESS PORTALS
CITRIX SHAREFILE
CLOUD CABINET
IMAGINESHARE
NETCLIENT CS
SMARTVAULT

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at maturity with wide adoption and
acceptance. We see platforms that are
stable and relatively low-cost with widely
proven enhancements and fantastic enduser acceptance and usability.
The features include robust, safetyrich integrations with other software
applications. Cross-integrations work
with phone systems, mail systems,
websites, and easy ways for your clients
to upload documents from laptops,
desktops and even smartphones. Now
is the time to stop clients from sending
you text messages, picture by picture, of
tax documents with their social security
numbers....
Another key aspect of any portal
solution is integration with your overall
technology stack. Odds are that you
have (or should have) a document management system that houses, secures
and organizes all that client data. The
right portal can tightly integrate with
your document management system.
Those portals are the choice of 9 out of
10 firms regardless of size. Given the
importance of these two technologies,
it is commonplace for accounting firms to
choose document management systems
in tandem with their selection of portals.
Another driving factor behind
which portal is right for your firm falls
under the type of services or work your
organization most commonly
performs. If your practice
focuses on tax returns,
your portal choice may
Mob

Fortunately, accounting firms do not
need to re-invent the wheel in 2020 and
beyond. To serve clients virtually, we
simply need to leverage a technology that
most firms of any size already have-but
may not have been leveraging to its
fullest potential. Portals, their many
variations and add-on services, are the
de facto highways and warehouses for
today's accounting firms.
Additionally, the ability to directly
connect with your client's portals provides tremendous opportunities to keep
your clients' data secure and protected
via electronic transmission. Emailing
documents to a client opens doors to
compromising personally identifiable
information or PII, which should be
avoided at all costs. In several states,
this is considered a data breach-and
your entire firm can be held responsible.
Given the exposure, portals are low
hanging fruit in 2020. To fully utilize the
power of portals, one goal is to see that
95% of your clients are introduced to
portals and using them. After all, most
states already require it, and for most of
2020, when you went virtual overnight, it
was the only option. Why go back?
Firms have felt for years that portals
are a technology that their customers
will resist or do not want, despite the
fact that the rest of the world has shifted
onto portals one after the other. One
industry after another-legal, insurance,
healthcare, financial services, and so
on-have shifted to web-based portal
systems to send and receive documents.
So, accounting does not need to buck a
trend, it just needs to harness it.
When it comes to portal technology,
solutions have been around for more
than a decade. These are technologies

be narrowed to a few large players with
solutions in that particular practice
area. If you are doing a large amount of
bookkeeping and monthly write-up or
payroll services, portal vendors in that
niche may suit you, because they are
geared on pricing and features for the
exchange of large amounts of documents
on a daily basis.
Below are key trends we are seeing
from the leading portal providers:
■ Cloud hosted - on premise hosted
options going away
■ Mobile apps a must
■ Deeper integrations
■ Ability to directly pay invoice via portal
Features all portals have:
■ Custom URLs for the firm's branding
■ Large and multiple file support
■ Strong encryption and security
One final trend is an ability for clients
to pay their invoices directly through
the portal. Everyone wants to get paid
sooner, easier, and quicker. Providing
clients with a seamless experience, to
review documents in the portal and pay
with one or two clicks, is a long-awaited
feature. When it comes to portal platforms in 2020, most firms are already
leveraging one. If you happen to be a
laggard in adopting portal technology, or
are due to revisit the category, now is a
buyer's market. There are more and more
choices and niche players to consider.
If you find yourself ready to buy
or reconsider an older platform in this
category, 2020 is the year for you to get on
board with the latest portal technologies.
This review will help guide you through
understanding the different solutions-

Ve n d
Integor
ra t io
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CONTACTLESS DELIVERY, CURBSIDE pickup, lockers and
drop boxes. These are the buzz words for businesses of all
shapes, sizes, and industries in 2020. Running a business
virtually became a necessity this year. The ability to bring
products and services to market both seamlessly and
securely shifted from a trend into a must-have.

5
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4.75
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