Podcast
Designing workflows to save time and better serve clients
Getting information out of clients is the most frustrating part of every tax job, and the one nobody thinks to fix. In this episode of the Accountants Daily Insider podcast, Taxy Co-Founder and CEO Amanda Walker joins Jerome Doraisamy to tune out the noise around AI and get back to basics; why clients go quiet, what the chase costs, and where technology helps (and where it can’t).
- Guest
- Amanda Walker Taxy
- Host
- Jerome Doraisamy Accountants Daily
Read the full transcript
Jerome: Hello, everyone, and welcome to a special episode of Accountants Daily Insider, produced in partnership with our friends from Taxy. My name’s Jerome Doraisamy. I’m coming to you today from Cammeraygal Land in Sydney, and I’m very pleased to be joined in the studio by Amanda Walker, who is the co-founder and chief executive of Taxy. Hello, Amanda.
Amanda: Hi, Jerome. How are you?
Jerome: I’m well, thank you. I’m very glad to have you here, and thank you to Taxy for its support of Accountants Daily.
Amanda: Always. We love you guys.
Jerome: We love you too. Now today, Amanda and I are going to be talking about designing the workflows that will actually help save you time and improve the client experience. There’s a lot to get into here, Amanda — moving away from some of the noise around AI and getting things back to basics. But as a starting point, and this is a place I usually like to start these conversations: tell us a bit about yourself and the work that you guys do at Taxy.
Amanda: Yeah, of course. Taxy — we’re a tax workflow platform, but really, what does that mean? We have the privilege of working with accounting firms to design processes around tax work. A lot of that is around client experience, but also around the tools that bring the firm and the client together. And a lot of that is often based around information exchange or information requests – and really an information request is a very basic thing. I think that space is a very exciting place to sit in, because it gives so much potential opportunity for a lot of firms.
Jerome: And why is it personally and professionally meaningful for you to be working in this space?
Amanda: For me personally, I don’t have an accounting background — I always have to disclose that. My lovely co-founder, Kirsty, is the accounting brains behind Taxy. My background is that I’ve always been client-facing. I’ve worked in software and various sales and customer success roles, always with smaller businesses, across Australian teams and global teams. Seeing the impact that a lot of small businesses can have — and being able to work with accountants, a lot of whom are small business owners themselves, working with small businesses on creating wealth and helping them through tough decisions and tough times — it feels like a very impactful space to be in, despite the preconceptions a lot of people, including myself, maybe come into the industry with about accounting and tax and what it involves.
Jerome: Certainly. So let’s dive into the crux of our conversation. Obviously there’s a lot of chatter, including on Accountants Daily, about the need to adopt and better utilise AI. But there’s been less focus on how firms can reasonably make time for everything they need to be doing right now — and time is, of course, the thing they’re shortest on. Taxy’s work focuses a lot on helping accounting practices get back to basics in order to improve not only their processes but also the client experience and the quality of service delivery. So to kick off this part of our conversation: perhaps it would be useful to reflect a bit on the state of play — what you’re seeing out there in the market as the new financial year gets into full swing, and what are some of the headline things accountants can and should be looking out for right now?
Amanda: It’s an exciting and maybe a bit daunting time of year. End of financial year is always a big turning point for everyone. A lot of accountants go on holiday in July, so everyone’s coming back now, fresh-faced and hoping to get some work out the door. A lot of that is in the form of information requests, but sometimes it’s planning, sometimes it’s strategy — and it sort of sets the tone from now until the end of the year: what can we really get moving? Information requests are the centre of my universe, and I think they should be for everyone. For a lot of our customers and a lot of people we work with, an information request is the first step of a job. While we’ll always advocate for purpose-built technology and the use of AI to help people operate better and provide better outcomes for their clients, especially for a lot of smaller firms who maybe don’t have a large team, or a project to find an AI use case, or a CPO to own AI — the question is, what is foundational? You can get some really great returns by just evaluating a few of these foundational pieces of work within a business. And for us — we may be a bit biased — we see this process of asking for information from clients, in whatever form, as a huge time sink for accountants.
Jerome: I want to dive a bit deeper into this one. When it comes to information requests, do you view this as being just unavoidable admin, a time suck, as you suggested? Or is there an opportunity here — a lever that could be pulled to reduce some of the chasing that might feel inevitable?
Amanda: I definitely — again, coming as an outsider to the industry, from a client experience background — think we get to look at this problem from a different perspective. Admin in any form, in any business, is always going to be some menial task people don’t love doing. With the rise of technology and a push towards AI-enabled workflows, less of that will fall onto people. But the opportunity really is there to look at: am I spending time with the client, or am I spending time chasing them for information? And you don’t need AI to solve that problem. We can use some basic human psychology concepts to look at not just what we’re asking our clients — a lot of these questions are rooted in information accountants have to get to be able to provide judgments on tax decisions — but more how we’re asking for this information: the tools we’re using, the templates, the structures, the language. That proves to be the biggest opportunity for a lot of accounting firms, because it’s maybe not something they’ve considered before.
Jerome: You’ve touched on something quite pertinent there — that some clients will prefer you to ask one thing at a time, one email after another, and others will want you to give them a list of a couple of dozen requests in a single message, and that’s how they like to operate. Why is it that some clients will simply not work with you on these processes? I imagine firms can put in place all the right kinds of processes, but if clients aren’t meeting them halfway — perhaps because they’re being communicated with in a way that doesn’t make sense to them — then they’re just not going to respond. What’s your take on this, and how can firms strike the right balance and accommodate all those different idiosyncrasies from the clientele?
Amanda: It’s a good way of framing it — 50 things versus one at a time. It makes sense when you think about it from a client perspective, receiving a big long list of things their accountant needs from them. Most of these people have an accountant because they don’t want to have to deal with their tax, right? So just thinking through it logically: you receive an email, it’s a big long list of things, and if it doesn’t look easy to complete — or even easy to get started — more often than not that person’s going to put it down and decide, “I’ll come back to that another time.” And that’s where the time delay and the time sink comes from, because if a client doesn’t respond immediately, there’s someone inside a firm who now has to keep track: we’ve sent that request, we don’t have this information back. That’s a big chunk of time spent just circulating around these information requests. To the psychology of it — being presented with one thing at a time makes it a little bit easier to get started. You can answer something easy: maybe it’s confirming an address, or that your relationship status hasn’t changed in the last year. We actually had a small business owner join a feedback session of ours once who put their hand up and said, “I don’t like technology, not a huge fan of having to use lots of different systems” — but gave us some really amazing feedback on how easy it was to get started, and the momentum that built over doing one thing and then another. I think this is someone who didn’t intend to do as much as they did, but they got halfway through the request. Unfortunately, the tools accountants are expecting their clients to use have an impact on how easy clients feel it is to adopt. As a software provider and a vendor to accountants, the onus is really on us to design solutions and platforms that have both sides in mind — for accountants, but for clients as well, to make it easy for them.
Jerome: I would imagine it’s a missing piece of the puzzle that some firms may be getting wrong right now, and there would probably be a number of flow-on consequences and potential costs to the business if they’re not properly accounting for what different clients may need on this front.
Amanda: The cost is an interesting one. We’ve spoken about time — getting time back. I look at the regulatory and legislative landscape at the moment, and so much is being asked of accountants that it’s no wonder a lot of people feel they don’t have any time. “I can’t look at changing something because I’ve just got to get my head down and get through this work.” I empathise with that a lot, because it’s difficult to see through. What I love about the accounting industry is that it’s a service-based industry, and most accountants got into this to help their clients. So if we shut out the noise of everything else and just look at: okay, what am I doing with my day? If it’s not spending time with a client, what am I spending it on? If the tasks I’m spending my time on aren’t exciting me, it’s causing a lot of frustration — and that’s going to have an impact on my work and my ability to engage with clients. So what can I do? Small, incremental changes to my processes, or how I’m engaging with my clients, to shift the tide back towards working together, rather than sending things and chasing and putting things back. I’d say the time — and the headspace of it all — is probably the biggest cost.
Jerome: With that in mind, it’s probably worth taking a step back and zooming out, because we’re living in a time in which accounting firms and professional services firms across the board are being told, directly or implicitly, that they need to get on board with all of these new technologies or they’re going to be left behind. I imagine for a lot of them that’s creating a sense of urgency, including perhaps where it doesn’t need to be as urgent. So if we take a step back and zoom out — are we able to identify the areas of day-to-day operations and practice management that perhaps should be automated, versus those that shouldn’t, at least for now?
Amanda: Definitely. A lot of this conversation often centres on an instinct to find a use case you can apply a tool to: “I’ve got lots of problems — let me throw a tool at it and see if it sticks.” What we’ve seen be much more transformational and helpful for smaller firms — to build a really great baseline to then add technology to — is a simple criteria. If it’s easily definable and it’s repetitive, it’s probably a good candidate for something that could be improved, automated, or handed off to some kind of AI tool. The thing is, to be able to define it, you need to understand what the problem or the process is. Chasing clients is a problem a lot of accountants understand, and that’s really where the opportunity lies, because it’s very repetitive and a lot of people feel it. It’s a great place to start, because you don’t have to worry about understanding the technology you’re trying to apply to a problem. Focus on the problem, and then start taking the little things off your plate that contribute to it.
Jerome: I imagine this would be a bit of trial and error for firm leaders here, because it may be difficult to know what needs to be automated and what doesn’t — it’s a bit of a chicken-and-egg scenario. So what would be the right mindset or attitude to adopt here, so that you can better discern what to automate or not?
Amanda: There’s always a case of: just because you can automate something, should you? We always go back to — if you’re going to be saving yourself time, what are you going to be doing with that time? We’re of the ethos that as we move into more AI-enabled workflows, there are going to be some jobs a computer can do and some it can’t. Sitting down face to face with a client — who knows, but probably, at least for a little while, isn’t going to be something you can hand off. So if there’s an opportunity within your business to save yourself time on a process that’s holding you back from spending time face to face with clients, that will put you in really good stead to differentiate yourself, not just within the market but across the board. We’ve heard a lot from the regulators recently around the use of AI and the expectations, and the code of what’s expected of an accountant. You have to apply judgment to someone’s personal circumstances. If you don’t understand their personal circumstances well enough because you haven’t been able to spend that much time with them, it puts you a little bit at risk of that grey area of: have I shifted the judgment, or shifted the accountability, into a process or a tool or something else?
Jerome: You mentioned the regulators there, and obviously they are keeping a close eye on what’s happening on the ground — the spotlight is shining brightly. Accountants across the country will be aware that the regulator’s eye may turn to them at some point. Broadly speaking, what do you think accountants need to be aware of in terms of where attention will be focused, and what that means?
Amanda: It goes back to this relationship between client and firm. A lot of these problems to do with tooling and process — I personally, and we internally at Taxy, don’t feel like all of it should live on the shoulders of accountants. They’ve got enough to worry about in terms of the regulator; there’s been a lot of legislative change this year alone, and clients will be coming to them with questions about things. When your workload is already so high, throwing all this extra stuff in there is really difficult. So how can we, as providers who work with accountants all day, every day, try and take some of that load off? The regulatory piece is actually quite helpful, because the regulations are posted publicly and software providers can respond to that. For instance, when the rumour mill started churning around the budget earlier this year and some changes to CGT, we had a few people come to us and express concern about being able to field questions when everyone’s receiving the information at the same time. We had a customer call us the day after the budget and say, “People are asking me whether they should be disposing of assets, and I don’t have time to model a whole scenario on this.” It gave us an idea: to focus our expertise and our time and build a tool that helped accountants walk into those conversations a little bit more equipped, in the form of a very simple CGT discount calculator. It’s on the website, it’s accessible, it’s underpinned by the legislation — as it was proposed and released, we’ve updated it. That’s hopefully something we can do as our part: take things off accountants’ plates, rather than expecting them to navigate through all of this on their own and have all the answers themselves.
Jerome: Certainly. So, Amanda, reflecting on what we’ve been discussing thus far, what do you see as some of the fundamental, or even philosophical, questions that accountants should be asking of themselves at this point in time, so they can then design workflows that will help them save time and improve the client experience? Are there black-and-white questions to be asked at this juncture?
Amanda: I don’t think there are black-and-white questions, Jerome — but it’s a very good question. Across the board, when I speak to firm owners, they really care about their clients. The preconception about the industry may be that accountants only care about numbers and it’s all very rigid, but for the most part I hear stories about people leaving corporate, starting their own businesses so they can have an impact. A lot of accounting firms specialise in certain types of clients. It’s a very wholesome industry, really, when you think about it. As an accountant, I think just asking yourself: why am I in this business? Who am I trying to help? If you don’t have an answer to those things, I’m sure you’re probably still a pretty good accountant — but as we look to the future, and the humanity of it all, asking those questions of yourself will probably help steer your decision-making when it comes to tools and technology, processes, workflows, all of those things. I think it’ll steer it quite well.
Jerome: So, assuming an accountant is able to listen to themselves when they’ve asked those questions and answered them — and if they’ve been able to reasonably make time, rather than find time, for the important things like improving the client experience — if they’re truly able to get back to basics and do the things that matter most, in a time of such voluminous technological change, what are the opportunities you see opening up for those firms?
Amanda: Wow, that’s a really great question, Jerome. I think going back to what I was saying — accounting firms are often small businesses themselves, helping small businesses. It’s a tough time at the moment: cost of living, inflation, global crises. Maybe not to get too philosophical about it, but supporting each other — the economy, the small business economy — is such a cornerstone of our country. If accountants have more time to spend with their clients, helping them make decisions, we’ll understand a little bit more about the difference between where we are now and maybe where we want to be as a country, as a society, and how to help each other out of this.
Jerome: I love that. And further to it — what excites you about the ongoing journey, and how Taxy will continue to help the profession?
Amanda: The thing that excites me the most at the moment is how willing and excited the industry is to try new things. There is a lot of noise, and sometimes a question of where to start, or who to trust, what to trust. But cutting through all of that, there’s a general eagerness to try different things. Curiosity, I think, will serve us all very well moving forwards.
Jerome: Just finally, Amanda — for those who want to learn more about Taxy, or who want to get in touch to hear more about the calculator you alluded to earlier, how can they get in touch? How can they find out more?
Amanda: You can pop to our website — it’s Taxy with a Y, taxy.au. We’ve got an email and phone number on there, and the calculator is listed as well. Message me on LinkedIn — I’m always down for a chat.
Jerome: Amanda, thanks so much for your time.
Amanda: Thanks, Jerome.
Jerome: And thank you to Taxy for its ongoing support of Accountants Daily. Thank you to the listener for tuning in — we hope you enjoyed this episode. See you again next time.
What it’s about
It’s a deliberately unglamorous place to begin: the information request, the back-and-forth to get what you need before a tax job can even start. Hand a client fifty questions at once and they’ll put the list down ’til later; ask for one thing at a time and it actually gets answered. It sounds small, but it’s the first step in almost every job and the biggest, most fixable drain on the time firms never have enough of. And the fix isn’t really about AI, it’s about how you ask. Get it right and the hours come back, to spend where they’re worth most: with the client. That’s the idea Taxy is built around: less chasing, more control, from first request to final review.
“If you can save yourself time on the work that’s holding you back from sitting with clients, that’s how you differentiate.” – Amanda, Taxy
In this episode
- The state of the industry coming into FY27
- The real cost of delays in a tax job
- Why clients go quiet on their accountant
- The role of technology providers in supporting accountants
- The growing regulatory pressure on practices
Questions answered
Why don’t clients reply to information requests?
Usually because the ask is too big. Most people have an accountant precisely so they don’t have to think about their tax, so a long list of questions gets put down ’til later, and later is where the chasing starts. Ask for one thing at a time and it’s easy to begin, and the momentum carries the rest.
Do you need AI to stop chasing clients?
No. Most of the difference is in how you ask (the tools, templates and language of the request), not in new technology. AI can help once the process is clear, but a single, easy first step does most of the work on its own.
What should you automate, and what should stay human?
If something is repetitive and easy to define, it’s fair game to automate, and chasing clients is exactly that. But “can” isn’t “should”: the time you free up should go back into the part a computer can’t do, which is sitting with the client and applying judgment to their situation.
What role should software providers play?
The weight of tooling and process shouldn’t sit entirely on accountants; they already have plenty to track with the regulator and constant legislative change. The providers who work with firms every day are well placed to take some of that load off: watch what’s changing, and build the tools that answer it, so accountants aren’t left to navigate it all alone.
As soon as the budget was announced, clients started asking whether to sell assets now or wait. So we built a simple CGT discount calculator: something an accountant can open mid-conversation and answer on the spot, so it’s one less thing on their plate.
About the guest and host
Amanda WalkerCo-Founder & CEO · Taxy
Amanda Walker is the co-founder and CEO of Taxy, the tax workflow platform built for Australian accounting firms. After a career on the client side of software, she co-founded Taxy to bring customer-experience thinking to tax, helping firms spend less time chasing clients and more time advising them.
Jerome DoraisamyManaging Editor, Professional Services · Accountants Daily
Jerome is Managing Editor, Professional Services at Accountants Daily (Momentum Media) — a former lawyer and published author — and hosts the Accountants Daily Insider podcast.
Keep exploring
Taxy is the tax workflow platform built for Australian accounting firms. Structured information requests for every tax job across the year, from first request to final review.