The re-keying tax
Every new limited company client costs hidden time: search Companies House, copy legal name and number, paste into your practice system, pull officers from another tab, start AML notes in Word, draft an engagement letter from last year's template. Multiply by forty new clients a year and you have a part-time job nobody billed for.
Worse, each hand-off is an error opportunity. A transposed company number or outdated director list creates downstream rework when accounts production starts.
One calm onboarding flow
Modern UK practice software should start with CH typeahead — type three characters, pick the right entity, auto-fill legal name and registered office. Officers import next, mapped to your client record, not a side spreadsheet.
Engagement letters and AML checklist steps belong in the same tenant-scoped flow. When onboarding completes, the client exists once, with audit trail, ready for deadlines and portal invite — not three partial records in three tools.
What to demand from your stack
Ask vendors: does onboarding create one client record or several? Can staff see onboarding status without asking a partner? Is Companies House lookup live or manual CSV?
If the answer involves exporting and re-importing, you are paying for software and still running a hidden manual process.
Run your practice from one command centre
Clients, Companies House onboarding, deadlines, document vault and client portal — full platform on every plan.
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