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Getting Started Guide

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Paul Murray
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Summary

Getting started with AccountKit is super simple. Just follow these steps and you’ll be up and running in no time. You can get away with skipping a few of the steps if you want to dive straight in, but we would hate you to miss anything in the excitement.

 
Jump straight to the applicable section:
 

 

Step 1 - Sync AccountKit to Xero Practice Manager

If you don’t have Xero Practice Manager, you can skip this step

  1. Go to Practice Settings under your user menu in the top right of your screen.
    Help_-_General_-_Getting_Started_Guide_-_Practice_Settings.PNG
  2. Click on Integrations and connect to Xero Practice Manager using the CONNECT button enter your login details and follow the instructions to finish sync.
    • 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. 
  3. Once connected, Select the IMPORT ALL CLIENTS button.
  4. 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 at the top of the page once completed, although a page refresh once in a while could be worth doing.
  5. At this point your full client list will be in place, but 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 to do as follows:
    • Go to the dashboard
    • Scroll down to "ATO Lodgement Statistics"
    • Select the Action button then "Manage ATO Imports"
    • Select "(+) Import ATO Lodgement List"
    • Follow the instructions on the pop-up to complete the import.
    • The import process matches the last 3 digits of the masked TFN along with the client name back against the ATO list. Where it finds a match, it'll update the TFN field with the full TFN. Those unmatched will appear as an exception at the bottom of the page.
    • For further details about the ATO import process, please see here.
  6. In future, you can force an update to clients as follows:
    • From the People Tab select Help_-_General_-_Getting_Started_Guide_-_Step_2_-_People_-_Clients.PNG then press the Action button on the right-hand side and select "Update modified clients from XPM'
    • You can do an individual client at a time by selecting the applicable client, then selecting "udpate from XPM" from the client action menu.
i
 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. You will need to be a Practice Administrator in XPM
 

 

Step 2 - Setup your clients and client groups (No XPM)

You can skip this step if you've already imported your clients via step 1.

If you don't have Xero Practice Manager, It’s ok, we don’t discriminate, but you are missing out on a lot of the bells and whistles that come with our integration.

  1. Go to the People tab -> Clients
  2. Press the Actions button and click 'import from Excel'
    Help_-_General_-_Getting_Started_Guide_-_Step_2_-_People_-_Actions_-_import_from_excel.PNG
  3. Follow the instructions to massage your client data from your current client management software via the Excel template.
    • See here also for much more detail about the manual import process for clients and relationships.
    • See here also for more detail about clients and client groups and their application within AccountKit. 

 

Step 3 - Setup your other Integrations

This is where you can setup any other integrations with other cloud-based providers that AccountKit integrates with. For a current list of Integrations click Here.

  1. Go back to your practice settings under the user profile and open the Integration Settings heading.
    Help_-_General_-_Getting_Started_Guide_-_Practice_Settings.PNG
  2. Go through each available integration and authorise as required to allow a connection between AccountKit and your other tools of choice.
    • See here for more detail about integrations within practice settings. 

 

Step 4 - Finalise your practice settings

This step is all about customising AccountKit to make it truly yours.

  1. Once again head back to your Practice Settings under the user menu. 
     
  2. Practice Settings: Tweak the details about your practice including adding your logo (both a dark and light version with transparency) and practice colours. If you can’t get these to look how you want, 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 colour choice to support@account-kit.com. 
     
    i
    		 Of particular import is ensuring your time zone is correct, since this sets the date stamp on any interactions within AccountKit.
     
  3. Employee Settings: Set your basic employee security settings striking a good balance between security and convenience that will apply to all employees. See here for more details.
     
  4. 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 and which plan your practice falls into. At this point, you can enter elect to finalise your payment details. See the AccountKit website for more details about our available plans.
     
  5. Setup your tags: We've included a bunch of tags used in the Correspondence Register, Mail Register & Important Document Register to standardise various types of data across your practice. For example, if you have off-site storage for important documents, you could set up a new Document Location tag, or perhaps you'd like to setup SOA's within the document types for the mail register. If you don't like any of our suggestions, then feel free to get rid of them all and create your own. See here for more details.
     
    i
    		 Make sure to check the Business Types within practice settings. We set up some types based on those from the ATO, but if you've set up any new types within XPM, you will need to associate and ATO type as well to each Business Entity Type. 
     
  6. See here for more detail about practice settings. 

 

Step 5 - Setup & Invite your Employees

As the name would suggest, here's where you can invite the various staff members into your practice.

  1. Head to the user menu once again and select Users.
    Help_-_General_-_Getting_Started_Guide_-_Step_5_-_Users.PNG
  2. Setup new employees
    • Select  Help_-_General_-_User_Managerment_-_Add_New_User.PNG
    • Enter the employee's details and select an appropriate level of authority.
    • Help_-_General_-_Getting_Started_Guide_-_Step_5_-_Users_-_User_Info.PNG
    • Press  [SEND INVITE]  to send an invite to the team member.
      • See here for more detail about users and their settings. 
  3. Re-inviting an employee
    • If an employee doesn't accept their invite and it expires, or they can't find it, you can always Select the "Click here to re-send the user invite" text under their name in User Maintenance to re-trigger the invite email.

 

Step 6 - Setup your favourites

See that little vertical bar on your left - that's your favourites bar, it starts with a  Help_-_General_-_IconFavourites.png icon It's there to make your life easier by giving you quick access to those tools you'll use the most. We've pre-populated it with the Correspondence Register since that's one tool that all staff will use every day.

  1. Select the Help_-_General_-_IconSettings.png icon down the bottom to open up your favourites select screen.
  2. Select the Tools you want to see in your favourites bar
    Help_-_General_-_Getting_Started_Guide_-_Step_6_-_Favourties_-_Choose_Favourites.PNG
  3. As new tools come online, you can continually add and subtract those that suit your needs according to the role you play and even the time of year. 

 

Step 7 - 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.

  1. Experiment with how you can edit and save to a client entity and get familiar with the client and client group structure. 
  2. Send some test messages via the correspondence record.
  3. Import any other registers that you may want some history tracked within AccountKit – such as the important documents register or mail register.
  4. Set up some structure diagrams for your clients.
  5. Check The Menus and Shared Elements page to get a feel for the interface elements repeated throughout AccountKit.


... and 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 8 - Help us build the tools you want to use

Whilst this isn't a step required to get you up and running, this step is really an ongoing philosophy that we would love you to apply to your day to day so that we can make the tools you need and ultimately help you to take your practice to new heights.

  • Think about the pain points in your business, for these often represent opportunities for us to create something to help you. 
  • Submit your ideas or suggestions to support@account-kit.com
  • From these ideas, we will periodically survey you to help drive our development priorities so that we’re only working on those things that you want and need – let us work hard to make your life easy!!

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