New to AccountKit? This guide takes you through setting up your practice: practice settings, adding clients, inviting your team and connecting your integrations. See what’s in AccountKit and plans and pricing.
Summary
Before we start the setup process, lets start by first jumping into the Workflow Task Getting started with AccountKit that we’ve created for you within AccountKit. That way you can keep track of the progress as you work your way through the detail. Awesome right? 🤓
Before you start
Our onboarding sessions get your practice set up and your team working in AccountKit. There are two: the first sets AccountKit up around your goals and integrations, and the second takes the whole team through the tools your firm will use. Book the first session below.
Book your first session here: Onboarding
Session 1: Setting you up for success!
Introductions.
Understanding your goals, objectives and key integrations.
Do you want to be powering along by the end of the week?
Set-up and configurations based on your requirements.
Customization options and setting practice defaults.
User permissions and access management.
Restricting access to clients and tools.
Overview of selected tools based on needs.
Support and help.
Session 2: Bring the whole team and let's get stuck in!
Using your compliance tools and calculators.
How to create and configure all of your key schedules.
Consulting system walkthrough.
Using your power-ups and setting up your templates.
Guided exercises for the team to start using each of the elements your firm is focused on.
Once you're trained up, you're ready for take-off! We'll check in regularly for the first 90 days to ensure you're shooting for the stars and utilising every aspect you set your sights on at the beginning of the journey. Let's do this!
See the AccountKit Pricing page for the investment in you and your teams success.
Step 1 - Update practice settings
Most importantly, let's customise AccountKit to make it feel like it’s truly yours and an extension of your business. You spend a lot on your brand, so we want to be reinforcing your brand at all times to your team and clients.
Once again head back to your Practice Settings under the user menu. We’ve outlines below as to what you will find in each tab.
Tab 1 | Practice Settings is where you update key information about your practice, from contact details, to branding and security settings.
Start by bringing in your logo either in PNG or SVG (perferred). The less whitespace around the logo the better.
Then customise your colours until you have something you love. These update in real time, so you can keep playing until you nail it.
If you’re having trouble getting your branding to look how you want or need help with your logo upload, send them to us and we’ll have a professional graphic designer prep your logo and colours for you as part of the setup. Just email your logo and branding to support@account-kit.com.
See the Practice Settings article for more detail about your Practice Settings.
Of particular importance, is to ensure your time zone is correct. Since this sets the date stamp on any interactions with AccountKit.
Tab 2 | Subscription Settings: Beyond setting the billing email address, feel free to give this area a skip at this point, we will remind you when your free trial is nearly over. At which point if you choose AccountKit you can enter your payment details in this section.
See the Practice Settings article for more detail about your Subscription Settings and our website for more details about our pricing.
Tab 3 | Integrations: Here is where you can setup your various integrations with is broken up into 3 areas - Practice level integrations, (XPM, BGL & Now infinity), Communication integrations & DMS connections. We cover this at Step 4 below.
Refer to our XPM integration help page for further details or see the Practice Settings article for more detail about integrations more generally.
Tab 4 | Tool Settings: Here is where you can modify any settings relating to tools and is broken up into 4 sections. General - Tags, text templates and business types. Administration, Compliance & Consulting - each of these relates to each of the various tools contained with each group.
Give these a skim with the required team members to ensure the tool setting defaults have been setup correctly to align with the practices way of doing things.
See the Practice Settings article for more detail about your Tool Settings.
Make sure to check the Business Types within the practice settings. We setup some types based on those from the ATO, however, if you setup your own in XPM you will need to associate an ATO type to each of those business entity type.
Tab 5 | Practice Registers: Here you will find access to some simple audit trail reports
User History Register - shows all login / failed login attempts / client list downloads, password resets and the like.
Client History Register - shows all changes to all of your client data.
Practice Address Register - shows all registered addresses and which clients they’ve been mapped to.
See the Practice Settings article for more detail about your Practice Registers.
Step 2 - Add Clients & Groups
Now we need to get some clients into the system so you have something to play around with. There are several methods to add clients into AccountKit, lets explore each of the methods:
Method 1 - Sync Xero Practice Manager
If you don’t have Xero Practice Manager (XPM), you can skip to method 2. For more information about the XPM integration, review the associated help file.
Head to your Practice Settings
Selecting your Name in the bottom left of your screen.
Then select Practice Settings
Click on the integrations tab
Hover over the XPM integration option (the Xero logo) and select the 3 dot menu.
Select the Connect option where you will be taken to the XPM authorisation page.
Enter your XPM login details and confirm to authorise the connection.
You will be returned back to AccountKit with the sync commencing in the background.
NOTE: At times the re-direct within XPM won't take you to the correct page; To overcome this, simply log in to XPM first, then re-attempt the connect from within Practice Settings.
Wait for your data to sync - Depending on the size of your client base the first sync process could take as little as 30 seconds or as long as 10 minutes. While you wait for this to happen you can explore AccountKit or continue with the other settings. You'll receive a notification once completed, although a page refresh once in a while on the people page will soon show the clients have finished syncing.
Keep these notes in mind with regards to the synced data.
Given the XPM API only allows a masked TFN to come through to AccountKit, the TFN's will have the appearance "*** 123. This is ok unless you are looking to use the ATO lodgement reports; To correct this you'll need import your ATO Lodgement data as follows - this is entirely optional (there will always be a bit of work to tidy up the exceptions that appear on the first import). For further details about the ATO import process, please see ATO Lodgement Statistics.
The Partner and Manager roles in the client details screen do NOT populate unless a matching user is found in AccountKit.
Ongoing Sync - We sync modified every couple of hours, but you can force a sync of your client data at any time as follows from the following locations.
Client - If you want to update an individual client, simply select the applicable client, then selecting "update from XPM" from the XPM icon under integrations.
People List - Select then press the action button (⋮) on the right-hand side and select "Update modified clients from XPM". This will look for all updates across the entire client list.
Practice Settings - Head to the XPM integration icon and select the action icon and the Update all option. You will be notified upon completion.
Ensure you have a sufficient authority level with your XPM account as the integration will take on the authority level of the user facilitating the linking process.
Method 2 - Manually create your clients and client groups (No XPM)
Where you don’t have an XPM integration, you can manually input your clients.
Head to the People area by selecting the People icon in the menu.
Click the + icon.
Select the appropriate entity type
Enter the details and follow the prompts to finish adding the entity
Repeat
Method 3 - Bulk Import your clients via Excel.
Head to the People area by selecting the People icon in the menu.
Press the Actions button (⋮)
Click 'import from Excel'.
For more detail, see the dedicated import page
The bulk import client function is ONLY available to Super Admins which you can read more about on our Permissions Page.
Step 3 - Invite your team
Let's invite your team members to AccountKit so they can begin exploring. See User Management for more detail about users and check out this page for more details on how permissions work. Where you are using permissions please check out restricted access groups for more detail on how to restrict access to various clients/groups.
Add each user individually
Head to User Management
Click your Name in the bottom right-hand corner
Select User Management
Invite your new team members
Click the add icon (+)
Enter the team member's details and select an appropriate level of authority.
Press Send Invite to send an invite to the team member.
To re-Invite a team member
If they don't accept their invite and it expires, or they can't find it, you can always send another invite by clicking on the status icon and clicking Reinvite user.
Step 4 - Setup other integrations
This is where you can setup any other integrations with other cloud-based providers that AccountKit integrates with and is an important step to get the real power of operating in the cloud with other best of breed applications.
For a current list of Integrations see the Practice Settings article.
Head back to your Practice Settings under the user profile and open the Integration Settings tab.
Go through each available integration and authorise as required to allow a connection between AccountKit and your other tools of choice.
See the Practice Settings article for more detail about integrations within practice settings.
All integrations have significant value, but a great starting point is getting your Document Management connected so you can save and link files directly to your DMS client data.
Enabling an integration here does NOT give others the connected integration access, it simply authorises the app and then users will need to sign in using their own creditials in their profile..
Step 5 - Play time🔥
All the hard work is done, so now would be a good time to have a look around and play with some of the different tools and get familiar with how to get around AccountKit.
Check The Menus and Shared Elements page to get a feel for the interface elements repeated throughout AccountKit.
Experiment with how you can edit and save to a client entity and get familiar with the client and client group structure:
Edit the details and use the XPM icon to see the impact there.
Add a description to see how it appears on the list view.
Add a custom note and assign to other entities in the group
Add a relationship.
Set the default folder for the client in the DMS (if connected)
Click on the family group name to go to the family group page.
Build your first custom view in your client list. For example, make a view as follows
Filter by business structure type - Company
Make it a favourite view so it appears in your tabs
Share it with the team so everyone can see the view
Send some test phone messages via the correspondence register.
Play with different notifications - In-app, email, Slack or MS Teams.
Create a task in workflow and link
Link a file from the DMS
Tag with relevant tags.
Import any other registers that you may want some history tracked within AccountKit – such as the important documents register or correspondence register.
Set up a business structure diagram for a client group using the client map tool.
If you ever get a little stuck, just go to the Help icon in the top right and select "Help for this page" or search the help file for various other ideas on how you can better utilise the software.
Step 6 - Sign up!
As you come to the end of your trial, if we’ve done our job properly you will see the significant benefits in joining the AccountKit family as we seek to help you and your team perform at their absolute peak.
To kick off your subscription, follow these steps:
Head to your name/profile.
Practice Settings.
Subscription.
Update your payment details under Billing.
Select Plan.
Clicking on edit under 'Billing' will allow you to enter your payment details. The window below will appear allowing you to enter your preferred method of payment and payment information. Note: You must enter your payment information before selecting your plan.
Once you have entered your billing information, you can now click on 'Select Plan', the following page will appear.
Select your desired plan tier based on your requirements
Press the Subscribe button and you're all done!
That's it, You're now part of the AccountKit family! Welcome! 🚀🤩
Not using AccountKit yet? Set up your practice in a free trial. You can start a 14-day free trial or book a demo.