Accountancy practices
Accountancy file exchange
Secure file sharing for accountants, with client access kept explicit
Exchange tax records, payroll material and working papers with named clients and advisers. A set access period and transaction history help practices keep everyday handoffs tidy.
What actually moves
Secure file sharing for accountants across recurring client work
Payroll, bank data, identity documents and management accounts pass through the practice in volume. The information belongs to the client, which makes the way it travels a service question as well as a security one.
Inbound records
Clients send bookkeeping files, statements and identity documents, often from a phone and often at the last minute.
Outbound packs
Accounts, returns and payroll reports go back out, sometimes to several people at the same client.
Third parties
Lenders, auditors, HMRC agents and advisers all need part of the picture, and rarely the same part.
Through the practice year
Five points in the cycle where the route earns its keep.
Practice work is seasonal and the pressure is uneven. The exchanges that matter most tend to cluster exactly where there is least time to think about them.
Client onboarding
Identity documents and proof of address arrive from a new client who has no relationship with your systems yet. A clean intake route sets expectations and avoids a mailbox full of scanned passports.
Payroll cycles
The same sensitive export goes to the same recipient every month, often from whoever is available. Standing recipients and a repeatable pattern reduce the chance of a slip in a routine task.
Year-end and returns
Large packs move in both directions against a fixed deadline. Availability that tracks the filing date keeps access aligned with the work instead of lasting indefinitely.
Lender and audit requests
Third parties ask for a subset of client information, sometimes urgently. Assemble deliberately: the risk here is sending the folder instead of the file.
Disengagement
When a client leaves, the final handover and the removal of access should both be deliberate. A defined closure point protects the practice as much as the client.
The pattern to repeat
Four steps that work the same in January as in July.
The value of a fixed pattern is that it holds when the practice is busiest, which is exactly when an improvised route does the most damage.
Confirm the contact
Check who at the client is entitled to receive this before assembling anything.
Assemble the pack
Include what the purpose requires, and leave the rest of the client folder out of it.
Set the deadline
Use the filing or reporting date as the natural end of availability.
Confirm collection
Check the client opened it instead of assuming the email was read.
The question you get in March
“Did you send that to us?” should not depend on somebody’s memory.
Client queries about what was sent, when and to whom arrive weeks after the exchange, usually when the person who handled it is busy with something else. A retained record answers it in a minute.
- Delivery. Whether the package was issued and to which named contact.
- Collection. Whether the client actually opened it, and when.
- Contents. Which files formed the pack, kept together.
- Closure. Whether access is still live or has expired.
Where the line sits
A controlled route supports your professional and data protection duties. It does not discharge them.
Your obligations under UK GDPR, your professional body’s requirements and your engagement terms remain with the practice. What the route can do is make consistent behaviour easier and the evidence easier to produce.
Try it before the busy season
Test the route on one client’s year-end pack.
Start a seven-day trial for up to five users and run a real exchange, including the part where the client has to open it.