Carpenter Box, an award-winning chartered accountant and business advisers in the Southeast of England, were founded in the 1920s. with a commitment to building strong relationships, their specialist teams advise clients on growing their business in a profitable, sustainable and tax-efficient way.
They take a collaborative and proactive approach with clients, working with them to provide a value-added service rather than simple compliance. In their pursuit of this mission, Carpenter Box collaborated with Summa Tech to address specific operational challenges to create the best experience for their clients.
Carpenter Box’s partnership with Summa Tech focuses on a combination of services including a client portal, desk booking and an end to end onboarding solution.
Before working with Summa Tech, the company faced a much longer and complicated onboarding process. Erin Pinhorn, Executive Assistant at Carpenter Box, said: “Previously, we would have to fill out a new client form on our central software, which sometimes meant doubling or even tripling up information and it was never a super quick process as we’d often run into delays.”
Responding to these challenges, Summa Tech developed a bespoke Client onboarding solution. This tool enables all related client data to be uploaded in one piece of software, allowing both employees and clients to access the data in a centralised location to ensure all client information is accurate.
“It’s definitely sped up the process from both our side of things and the partners’ side of things. They can see everything without having to ask anyone for an update by clicking on their onboarding to see any of their clients starting to be onboarded themselves.
“It’s enabled us to save about 20 minutes per .”
They have also seen significant improvement in clients’ onboarding experience.
“From a client’s side, it’s really good. Say you’ve got one director, and they have multiple companies they look after it’s all listed in their account. They haven’t got to log in to multiple systems, it is all in one place and they can see all the companies they are linked to”
Carpenter Box also utilise a tailored client portal provided by Summa Tech to support their services.
“We used our own version of a portal previously, which worked, but the one provided by Summa Tech is definitely a step up. The invoicing side of the portal is really helpful. It uses automatic invoicing, so we no longer have to, download the invoice from Central and then upload the invoice to the portal or send a copy of the invoice to clients over email, which supports us with our GDPR compliance.”
The portal has provided a secure platform for Carpenter Box to exchange and upload documents.
“Clients are able to see any invoices, statements, payments due and documents that are uploaded to the portal and review them whenever necessary, so, it’s been really helpful for them.”
There are a range of features on the portal to improve efficiency, including software to upload an e-signature.
“We’ve also started to introduce the e-signature element of the portal which has been useful for audit purposes, as audit accounts need to be signed with a physical signature not just an approval, so it saves using a third-party software.”
The desk booking system is also utilised regularly by the team at Carpenter Box to help them work collaboratively and manage an office where they are required to hot desk.
“The desk booking system has been really easy and simple to use. You just click on the desk you want to book, and then choose the times (half day am or pm or all day) and dates you want to use it. We use a hot desking system in our office, so being able to see who is sat where has been useful for when we need to work together in our teams.”
Erin’s experience with Summa Tech has been extremely positive. “Their systems are updated quite regularly and whenever we think about something that would/could be useful for either us or our clients, we can talk to the team at Summa Tech and they’re always happy to look into it and add it, if needed”, said Erin.
“For example, we asked them to add a tax enquiry section to the portal and they did. So, now we can see whether a client has paid or not paid and whether they have been offered it or not, which helps various members of our team stay up to date.”
Erin believes that part of why Summa Tech has been so successful in supporting Carpenter Box’s needs is because the software was built by accountants.
“The fact that the software has been built by accountants is definitely an added benefit as they already know what accountants need and have built solutions for their challenges.”
Summa Tech’s approach to finding solutions for the challenges Erin faced has been significant. Their knowledge of the accounting industry and collaborative way of working has been a crucial part of improving their onboarding processes. The success story of Carpenter Box and Summa Tech highlights how digital solutions can enhance the accounting industry.