In this episode I cover the dreaded topic of offboarding clients. Whether you've been fired by a client or had to let them go, there are essential protocols to follow. Tune in for some tips & strategies for handling the end of a client relationship with professionalism and integrity.
In this episode you’ll hear:
offboarding processes related to documents & software
importance of cooperation during client handoff
recognizing when you can’t serve a client's needs
seeking feedback & testimonials in a neutral or positive parting
Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper
For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:
Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.
In this episode I cover the dreaded topic of offboarding clients. Whether you've been fired by a client or had to let them go, there are essential protocols to follow. Tune in for some tips & strategies for handling the end of a client relationship with professionalism and integrity.
In this episode you’ll hear:
offboarding processes related to documents & software
importance of cooperation during client handoff
recognizing when you can’t serve a client's needs
seeking feedback & testimonials in a neutral or positive parting
Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper
For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:
Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.
So you've had to part ways with a client. It's something that will inevitably happen. So whether it was your choice or the clients, there are certain protocols that should be followed. So in today's episode, we're going to cover them. Now, what do you do when a client fires you? Or what about when you fire a client? should things be handled the same either way. In short. Yes. So let's talk about what to do when you part ways with the client. First and foremost, however, the relationship ended, try not to spiral or take it personally. If the client fired you and gave you some sort of reason or related to your professionalism, your capabilities or your customer service, use this as a learning experience to update your processes, fill gaps in your. Knowledge or to increase your team capacity. Thank them for the feedback and have the integrity to take what you learned and implement a change. So this doesn't happen again. In other instances where you may have let the client go, it could be something similar. Maybe you didn't feel you could serve them to what they needed. And I want you listening to know that this is a very high integrity move to recognize when you don't have the staff, the capacity or the knowledge to support a client in the way that they need. Regardless of which scenario that you may fit into. This means nothing about you as a person. Unless you were fired for actually being unethical, which I highly doubt you are listening to my podcasts and that's the case. But speaking of ethics. Let's move into this one. I've seen it time and again, from clients I've taken on and others in my programs, who've taken over books for clients. When the previous bookkeeper, not only doesn't help with the transition. But we're S refuses to cooperate and provide any type of documentation or handoff. This creates a lot of extra and maybe unnecessary work for the new bookkeeper, refer the client to try to figure out where things were left off, but more often than not. When someone isn't cooperative, it usually means they probably weren't doing what they were supposed to be doing anyway. Now, technically accountants aren't required to share work papers, but I always provide my clients with any schedules or documents that I created in order to make adjusting entries and all reports that we issued, like bank reconciliations, financial statements while they were engaged with us. As part of our off-boarding process, we send an email to our client, with our document retention policy. And I do share a sample document retention policy inside of my program, the bookkeeping business accelerator. I will link that below. And in the show notes. And I let them know that they are able to access and download everything for two weeks. But after that, we will quote unquote, unshare the folder and retain those documents internally. If they come after that initial two weeks and ask for something that's in that folder. We may charge them for making copies of anything and that's a standard practice. So make sure you have that in your closure letter or in the email, your disengagement email, your final email that you send your clients. Speaking of offboarding processes. We also have a task list that we start anytime we're engaging with a client. So along with documents, we let them know that any logins that we created on their behalf, usually for sales tax purposes or things like that. And also remind them of the logins that they created for us to remove our access to bank accounts. other software programs, things like that. For our clients, we have everyone on Xero and Gusto for payroll. So part of our offboarding process entails us removing ourselves from Gusto and reassigning, the master admin to the client. For Xero, we transfer the subscription to them as well as make sure they have admin access to Xero. You will want to make your own off-boarding task lists custom to how you work with clients and whatever softwares that you use. You can reverse engineer, whatever you use for onboarding. And if you have neither of those processes, yet, that's your assignment for this week. Start building your onboarding process and your offboarding checklists. And if you want help with this, I have samples and starting points in my program. The bookkeeping business accelerator. All right. Lastly, if you parted ways in a more neutral fashion, such as perhaps the client was closing their business or taking the work, in-house due to massive growth. I would always ask for a testimonial and if not in a positive. Parting ways I would still recommend asking for feedback about what could have been better for them. They will appreciate that you're taking things to heart and want to continue to improve. So I want to know, have you recently parted ways with a client? How did it go? Let me know in the comments, if you're listening on Spotify or if you're watching on YouTube. Or you can shoot me a DM on Instagram. I'm at ambitious bookkeeper. I would love to hear your experience. Thank you so much for tuning in this week. And every week, if you're a loyal listener and this podcast wouldn't be still going on if it weren't for you, we've just broken through 150 episodes. and if you're just listening for the very first time, welcome, make sure that you hit that follow button wherever you're listening or watching. And if you have a question. That you would like answered on air. Head over to speakpipe.com/ambitiousbookkeeper and you can record your own question there. I'll talk to you next week.
