Hi {{firstname|everyone}},
When I speak to firm owners, the first pain point that almost always comes up is client onboarding.
Everyone wants more clients, but no one enjoys the messy start: chasing paperwork, filling endless forms, and getting data in shape before real work can even begin.
In most firms, onboarding is still manual. It eats up your senior team’s bandwidth, drags timelines, and frankly frustrates new clients before you’ve even had a chance to impress them.
This is exactly where AI onboarding agents are flipping the model. Instead of your team chasing clients for weeks, the process can be cut down by more than half, while reducing errors and freeing up your best people to focus on higher-value work.
Automating the Paperwork
Every accountant knows the drill: weeks wasted on “Please send me your last three months’ bank statements” or “We’re still waiting on your payroll records.”
It’s tedious, repetitive, and leaves clients wondering why a modern firm is still stuck in email chains.
AI onboarding agents remove that pain. They track responses, remind clients automatically, and validate documents against pre-set requirements. Think of it as a virtual assistant who never forgets, never misses a deadline, and files everything exactly where it should go in your DMS or practice software.
The numbers back this up.
💡 According to Accounting Today, 60% of accountants say chasing clients for documents is their biggest onboarding bottleneck.
All in all, automating would ensure your first interaction with a client feels organised and professional, not like pulling teeth!
Smarter Data Mapping
Collecting documents is only half the story. The real drag comes in once those PDFs, scans, and spreadsheets arrive. Someone on your team still has to extract the numbers, check consistency, and manually key them into the right system.
💡 Research by Deloitte shows up to 30% of data entry in accounting is still manual. That’s not sustainable if firms want to scale without ballooning headcount.
AI onboarding agents are changing this.
They can read invoices, bank feeds, tax records, by pulling the right fields, cross-checking for accuracy, and dropping it directly into your ledgers or bookkeeping platform.
What used to take a junior an entire afternoon can now be done in minutes with higher accuracy.
AI-driven mapping means you’re not building your business on piles of low-value labour. Instead, you’re setting up clients cleanly from day one.
Faster Kick-offs, Happier Clients
For clients, onboarding feels like a test of patience. They’ve signed the engagement letter, but weeks can go by before they see any real work delivered.
💡 In fact, a 2023 Intuit survey found that 70% of small businesses switch accountants due to poor communication or delays in service.
When AI compresses onboarding time by almost half, the change is obvious. Clients hand over documents on Monday, and by the end of the week, they see actual bookkeeping in motion.
No limbo, no chasing, no awkward “we’re still setting you up” updates. And, if you can show responsiveness right at the start, you win confidence early and set the tone for a long-term relationship.
How Samera Does It
At Samera, we’re building AI tools with exactly this problem in mind.
Samera.ai is already making waves in the dental space. What used to take hours of admin now happens in the background, freeing our team to focus on patients rather than paperwork.
And here’s what’s next: we’re bringing the same technology into the accounting world. So if you’re looking ahead and wondering how to grow without adding more headcount, this is where the future’s heading.
Cheers,
Arun
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