How Rewire’s Client Onboarding Automation Let a Two-Partner Accounting Firm Reclaim 120 Hours—and Wow Every New Client

Why Manual Onboarding Eats Your Friday Nights

The first week with a new client should feel exciting. Instead, it often feels like data-entry detention. A two-partner firm in Brisbane spent three full days per client chasing forms, ID scans, and half-signed engagement letters. That is twenty-four billable hours frozen in inbox limbo.

Manual steps pile up fast: copy-pasting details into Xero, re-typing the same welcome email, setting calendar invites, and checking AML boxes. Each hand-off invites errors and awkward follow-ups. Worse, every staff member “does it their own way,” so no two client files look alike. Miss one KYC tick-box and you risk fines, not just frowns.

Industry numbers paint the same bleak picture. Accountants lose up to 30 % of their week to tasks ripe for automation Wealth-Elite study. That is before the inevitable “Have you got my BAS receipt?” email lands at 5 p.m. on a Friday. We know 30 June looms; nobody needs extra midnight mail merges.

The Hidden Price Tag—Lost Hours, Lost Clients

Time lost is profit lost. Three days of onboarding delay cost our Brisbane duo 120 hours last quarter alone—hours they could have billed at $200 each. That is $24,000 of pure margin leaking out the side door. A recent study shows firms that automate lift productivity 15 % in months University of Maryland. Keep the status quo and you forfeit the uplift.

Clients feel the drag, too. Slow starts erode confidence; one in five buyers will switch advisers after a poor onboarding experience Moxo research. Late IDs or lost forms spark alarm bells about data security. No wonder NPS scores dip when day-one dashboards read “Pending.”

Then comes compliance. Manual KYC checks invite skipped steps and possible AUSTRAC penalties. Fines can hit $22,000 per breach—hardly the welcome gift you want to send a fresh client. Every extra email, phone tag, or spreadsheet copy raises both cost and risk.

Flip the Switch: 30-Minute Onboarding with Rewire

Rewire’s client-onboarding automation cut that Brisbane firm’s setup time from 24 hours to under 30 minutes. Workflow Builder kicks off tasks the moment a prospect signs; e-signatures land in seconds, documents flow through a secure portal, and client data syncs straight into the ledger. The partners reclaimed 120 hours last quarter—enough to add five new advisory clients or enjoy four Friday nights off.

What changes when you automate?
• Engagement letters auto-populate, send, and chase signatures.
• Secure portals request IDs and bank statements—no more “Can you resend?” threads.
• Built-in KYC/AML checks run behind the scenes, guarding against fines.
• Seamless integrations push data to Xero, QuickBooks, or Karbon. Result: zero re-keying, 99 % accuracy.

Ready to start?

1. Tackle the worst bottleneck first—usually document collection.
2. Train the team with short, task-based sessions. Everyone clicks the same buttons.
3. Review metrics monthly: hours saved, CSAT, and “time to first value.” Adjust the workflow and repeat.

See how the pieces fit on our short Client Onboarding tour. Want the numbers for your firm? Book a 15-minute demo—done before lunch, promise.

Automation frees accountants from paperwork purgatory so they can earn more, stress less, and wow every client. Clock’s ticking; let’s give your next new client the fastest welcome in town.

How Doc Cheetah Solves This

Rewire proved that workflows fly once you cut hand-offs. The biggest hand-off of all? Chasing documents. That’s the domino Doc Cheetah knocks over first—so every other system (Rewire included) runs on time.

What happens when the “send me your ID” email writes, sends and reminds itself?

• 2.5 hours per staff member, per day, drop back into billable work.
• Partners reclaim up to $24,000 in profit each quarter—same as our Brisbane duo, minus the lost sleep.
• New clients hit “Ready to Advise” in days, not weeks. NPS climbs.

Here’s how we do it:

1. Magic Link uploads — zero logins, zero excuses. Clients tap, shoot the doc, done.
2. Smart, reusable checklists — tax, bookkeeping, or onboarding templates set once, reused forever.
3. Automated, polite reminders — the cheetah chases; you never type “just following up…” again.
4. Live progress tracker — one dashboard tells the whole team who’s 100 %, 50 %, or ghosting.
5. OCR auto-filing — “Bank Statement – Feb 25” lands in the right folder with a smart name. You never rename a PDF again.
6. Bank-level security — AES-256 encryption keeps AUSTRAC and nervous clients happy.

Result: document collection finishes before lunch, every time. Implementation takes under an hour, not a quarter.

Ready to plug the time leak?
• Take a 15-minute live demo and watch us fetch docs in real time.
• Run the numbers with our quick ROI sheet—find it inside the demo calendar invite.
• Pick a plan when you’re convinced; transparent pricing is here.

Stop letting paperwork dictate your profit per partner. Let Doc Cheetah chase, so you can advise and grow.