Running a client portfolio

With one client, you know where things stand. With many, the question becomes which of these needs me first. This playbook is about answering that from one list, without opening every workspace to find out.

The portfolio ranks clients by what needs attention

Every practice keeps a spreadsheet with the client down the side, the month across the top and a tick where the data came in. A tick records that somebody said the month was done. It cannot record what the books show.

Your portfolio reads each client’s own books and puts the ones that need attention first: overdue receivables, missing GST setup and pending approvals. The score is worked out when you open the page; it is not stored, so there is no history or trend to look back on.

It does not tell you whether a client’s purchases are matched against GSTR-2B, whether a bank statement is missing, or whether invoices lack an HSN. Those are checks in each client’s own screens, for example GSTR-2B reconciliation.

Work the portfolio

1. 1

   Open the portfolio before you open a client

   Your portfolio lists every client workspace you have been given access to. Read the whole list first and see which clients are ranked at the top, and why. Each card shows the client’s name and business name in full, wrapping onto more lines rather than being cut short, with the role and health labels on their own row beneath.
2. 2

   Open the clients that need you

   Go into a client with Open workspace on its card and work from that client’s own screens: receivables, GST setup and approvals.
3. 3

   Prepare several clients together

   Under bulk work you can build GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B prep packs for several clients at once. Finocket prepares them; it does not file them. Chasing a client for a document is still something you do yourself, as practice advice rather than a feature.

Client names are shown in full in the other places you pick a client too: the exception queue, the client list on bulk work and the client switcher.

Inside a client, you see only that client

Your one login can see many clients, but once you open a client’s workspace, that client’s books, ledgers, journal, Day Book, Cashbook, expenses, recent activity on their home page, saved reports and Hand to CA pack show only that client’s entries, never another client’s.

• Searching for a client, invoice, item or expense from the command palette looks only inside the client on screen. To find something in another client, switch to that client first.
• If recent activity could not be read, it says so: “We could not read your recent activity just now. That is not the same as no activity.” An empty list means there really was nothing.

What you can see, and what you cannot

Each client grants your access, one workspace at a time.

• You see the workspaces you were invited to, and nothing else. There is no practice-wide key. A client who has not invited you is not on your list.
• The default CA seat is read-only, and the database enforces it. A client can give a seat that can write, so check which seat you were given.

Where the month ends up

Finocket prepares GST prep packs and TDS working sheets, and can hand a client’s books to your own software with the Tally export. Finocket does not file returns.

Related: Finocket for Chartered Accountants, Invite your Chartered Accountant, One-click Tally XML export.