Is Timworks the new client support alternative to Slack for accountants?
If there is one thing every accounting business needs, it is to provide excellent customer support. Giving your clients ways to get in touch with you makes your clients happy but it can also lead to a query overwhelm for your team.
Naturally as you grow your accounting practice you will seek a platform that gives your team a way to manage client queries. Instant chat communication with both your team and your clients can be an efficient and client satisfying way to provide customer support.
Slack is undoubtedly one of the most popular platforms for instant communication out there that allows instant messaging for both your team and clients. But when it comes to accounting, we know you need more than just a ‘chat’ platform with a few perks to truly benefit from it and build better relationships with your clients.
Slack vs. Timworks - what are they?
If you are reading this, you probably know the drill. Slack is an instant messaging app that assists businesses that want better communication and the ability to be more organised as you can add different channels.
It’s pretty straightforward to set up and easy to navigate. Waiting days for an email reply that could have been a quick text or going back months of email conversation to find important information is really not a smart way to do business. But should you really use Slack for communication in your accounting firm?
Timworks is a UK-based platform that also offers the great benefit of instant messaging but has been built specifically for accountancy firms and their clients. While it is similar to Slack, the functionality serves the specific needs of accountants handling multiple clients and sensitive financial information. Timworks also unlocks the firepower of native integrations with accounting software that will actually make your life easier.
So how do the features of Slack & Timworks stack up?
Instant Messaging/Live Chat
While we can’t deny that emails always served businesses well, sometimes it’s much more convenient to simply have a real-time conversation, which is why instant messaging is such a life-saver - it happens instantly, it allows a more casual approach and it’s easier to search. More and more accounting firms are relying on chat apps rather than just email to reach out to their clients with ease and get queries resolved in real-time.
Timworks, just like Slack, offers a quicker and more efficient way of communicating with both your team and your clients in a messaging format, making collaboration easier, quicker and saving you a lot of time and effort going through old emails.
Unlike Slack however, Timworks is specifically made for accountants and their clients and so everyone benefits from not having to get distracted by other conversations whilst having a dedicated space for accountancy. This way, communication is more streamlined, the process is straightforward, and you avoid distractions (as we know Slack is being used not only by accounting firms but a lot of other companies).
Desktop & App Versions
Both Slack and Timworks offer a mobile and desktop version of their chat apps to meet their users exactly where they are.
While Slack’s desktop and mobile apps have very similar features, Timworks’s desktop version allows accountants to be in full control in the process of setting up clients, managing permissions, organising conversations and using integrations to push data to and from other software like Xero, Dext/ReceiptBank or Hubdoc.
Meanwhile, the sleek mobile app makes it easier to reach your clients, especially when on the go, also letting them enjoy the same ease and convenience as they would with another chat app they are familiar with so they can easily perform only the most important tasks such as replying to messages and sending documents.
CRM
Whether you are an expert or not, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) should be at the heart of your business’ foundations to ensure long-lasting relationships and ease of communication for both sides. Forging good relationships and keeping track of your clients is crucial for both acquisition and retention, which is a CRM’s prime function.
While Slack allows you to have individual contact details in the app, Timworks on the other hand gives you the ability to organise by either business or individual, depending on your needs, allowing more flexibility and assisting the interactions between your clients and your firm.
Integrations
We love integrations, don’t we?! Long gone are the days where you had to manually input data or even worse - keep old receipts in a folder and calculate things by hand. Integrations are here to save us time, allow ease, automation and let you have peace of mind that you won’t miss anything out!
While Slack does offer a few integrations in its free version (some of which require the usage of third-party platforms such as Zapier) it can’t beat Timworks if you are an accountant.
What do we mean? Well that Timworks really was ‘built for accountants’, which is why it integrates with your existing tech stack.
Timworks integrates with Xero to allow you to pull bills into conversations for quick and easy discussion or approval.
Timworks also integrates with data capture tools Dext, Hubdoc, AutoEntry and Datamolio. These integrations allow you to push documents and data directly from chat streams to your integrated data capture tool of choice.
Best part is, the platform is designed with all these automations built-in so you don’t need to overcomplicate things and rely on other apps or complicated workflows to help you have everything organised.
File Upload & Pinning
Would any chat app really serve a greater purpose if it doesn’t allow you to upload and share your important documents?
Both Slack and Timworks are great when it comes to sharing documents, and you can also ‘pin’ messages in conversations to assist everyone who needs quick access. Both platforms also allow you to have dedicated channels, to keep everything tidy.
As we have already mentioned, it’s lightning fast when you upload files because it integrates them straight away with Xero or your favourite tools. So that’s definitely a point to Timworks.
Client Information
As an accountant, how often do clients ask you for things like their company numbers? A big advantage that Timworks has over Slack is that it has a dedicated space for your client’s HMRC payment details, Companies House information, etc. That way your client will always have them at hand through their Timworks app (tell us this is something that won’t save you tons of time).
Permissions & User Access
One of the biggest fears for accountants is to lose control over data or important documents. Fear not, because Timworks gives you full control over creating and managing conversations and files, so everyone needs to follow your rules. Unlike the unpaid version of Slack, where any clients you add on will be able to see all other members, allowing them to communicate with each other in the same workspace, on Timworks every channel you create stays private to you and the client.
Users on Timworks also have minimal control over the conversations, such as renaming them or creating them, which helps you monitor and easily keep track of everything. However, clients can add others to a conversation to stop any unnecessary bottlenecks! Also, within the accountancy firm, permission levels can be set so that employees are given access to only as much information as they need.
Audit Trails
There are many regulations that require the retainment of accounting and other records for six or more years.
These laws, together, mean that firms need to take record retention seriously or they risk falling afoul of the law. In a time where data is spread across email, facebook messenger, slack and the telephone, this is often easier said than done. The idea of employees leaving phones in pubs with sensitive client information, is enough to keep any accountancy firm up at night.
Slack provides a way to keep client conversations centralised and cloud-based. However, data can be deleted.
Timworks keeps all client conversations organised and cloud-based. While conversations can be archived to keep your dashboard clean, they will never be deleted.
GDPR Compliance
GDPR and Data Protection laws require that personal information storage is minimised. However, where it is a necessity record keepers are “required to know exactly where and how all such personal information is stored in order to be able to retain, remove and transfer it in a compliant manner”.
The good news is both Slack and Timworks are GDPR compliant. Slack adheres to GDPR, CCPA and other privacy and security regulations.
There is a catch, however. Slack allows your users to delete information and Slack service backups are destroyed within 14 days (except in the case of an incident). Which means that important files or information can forever disappear, making it very hard for you to complete your audit trail. Unless you opt for a data residency - data residency for Slack allows global teams to choose the region where certain types of data at rest are stored.
Timworks, as an app built for accountants, gives you a place to store and manage client details in a GDPR compliant way. This means your employees will never have an excuse to WhatsApp a client again!
Grab our GDPR-made-easy guide if you are using Slack to communicate with your clients and you are not sure how well you comply 😬
Slack VS Timworks - what specific problems does Timworks solve?
**A maximum of 10,000 messages will be saved per organisaion.
The bottom line
Slack is undeniably a great communication tool for many companies, and no doubt many accountants use it, too!
As much as we love all of Slack’s features, if you are an accountant or have an accountancy firm, you want to opt for a communication platform that allows speed, ease, flexibility and specific integrations to meet your needs wrapped up in a layer of protection.
Like things done with ease?
Then you’ll love Timworks.
