Simple workflow software for small accounting firms

A small practice does roughly the same work every year, on a calendar HMRC and Companies House set for you. VAT returns fall due one month and seven days after each quarter ends. Payroll runs monthly. Limited company accounts go to Companies House nine months after the year end, and the self assessment rush for 2025/26 finishes on 31 January 2027, whether or not Mr Hughes has found his statements.

In Klusko you’d set up a project per type of work, ‘VAT returns’ or ‘Year-end accounts’, with a card per client. Monthly payroll and bookkeeping can be recurring tasks, so ticking off October’s run creates November’s.

One thing to know early: recurring tasks go up to monthly, and there’s no quarterly or yearly option. For VAT, save a task template with your usual subtasks and create the four quarters for each client at the start of the year.

Most of the delay in a VAT quarter is waiting. Give every chase its own task in a Waiting on client stage with the Chase tag. Add a comment each time you email or ring: ‘14 Oct, emailed. 16 Oct, left voicemail.’ When the partner asks why Hughes Joinery is late, the answer is on the card with dates, not in someone’s sent folder.

A saved view filtered to the Chase tag and sorted by due date gives you a Monday-morning list of who to ring, starting with whichever client you told the partner last Thursday would definitely be sorted by now. We’d open that one every Monday.

Klusko isn’t practice management software, and we’d rather say so than have you find out in January. There’s no client portal, no document requests, no e-signing of accounts, no AML checks, no time recording and no billing. It doesn’t connect to Xero or QuickBooks, because there are no integrations yet, and it won’t work out filing deadlines for you from a company’s year end.

If you have a few hundred clients and need all that, we think a dedicated practice management system is the better buy. Klusko fits the firm with three to fifteen people that currently tracks its work in a spreadsheet, a shared inbox and a WhatsApp group, and wants one place for the list and the conversation. For seven staff on Team that’s £35 a month billed yearly, and free during early access. More on recurring work and pricing.

Your task cards will hold client names and sometimes attached bank statements, so this matters. Klusko stores data in the EU, in Frankfurt. Each company’s data is kept apart by row-level security in the database, and it’s encrypted in transit and at rest. Our security page has the detail and the data processing agreement is published. If a client asks where their details are kept, that’s a one-line answer. We’d probably still keep payroll files and passport scans in the systems built for them, though.