An accounting firm does not need a portal in June. It needs one in the four weeks when several hundred clients all owe you the same paperwork and none of them have sent it. That is the test. A portal that looks tidy in a demo and cannot tell you, at a glance, which twenty clients are still missing a document is not solving the problem the firm actually has. Everything below is written from that week backwards, because the rest of the year any shared drive would have done.
The chase list is the feature
Collecting records is a list problem before it is a file problem. The firm needs to open one screen and see every client whose paperwork is outstanding, what specifically is outstanding, and when they were last asked. If that view does not exist, staff rebuild it in a spreadsheet, and the portal becomes an extra place to look rather than the place to look. Ask the vendor to show you the outstanding list, not the upload screen.
The client sees their own year, not your folder tree
Accountants think in engagements and years. Clients think about the thing you asked them for this week. A portal that opens onto a folder hierarchy makes the client navigate your filing system, and most will not. The client's landing view should be a short list of what they owe you and what you have finished for them, with everything older filed behind it rather than in front of it.
Security is the firm's obligation, not the vendor's promise
You are holding other people's financial records, so who can see what is a question you answer, not one the vendor answers for you. The practical checks are ordinary: individual logins rather than a shared one, the ability to remove access the day someone leaves, a record of who opened what, and multi factor authentication available and turned on. What your firm is required to do sits with your regulator and your own advisers.
Questions people ask about client portal software for accountants
Do we need client portal software if our accounting suite already has one?
Often not. Start by testing the one you have against your busy season chase list. Firms usually replace a bundled portal because the client side is hard to use or cannot be branded, not because it is missing a feature the firm needs.
Can one portal serve both individual and business clients?
Yes, if the record behind it can hold both. The difference is usually who else needs access: a business client often wants two or three people in, so check that the product allows more than one login per client before you commit.
What happens to client documents if we change software?
Ask that before you buy. You want a full export of documents with the client and date they belong to, in ordinary file formats, obtainable without a support ticket. A portal you cannot leave is a filing cabinet somebody else owns.