The usual advice for getting clients documents faster goes something like this: make your proposals more professional, write better email templates, follow up more consistently.
You’ve tried most of that. It moved things an inch, if that.
The firms that actually solve this problem and get clients document faster do one thing differently. They stop treating each stage of onboarding as a separate task and build a connected process where every step flows into the next automatically. Clients get one clear journey. The firm stops chasing.
That’s what this post walks through. Across the UK, accounting firms that have implemented this approach, clients are signing and submitting documents up to 3X faster and full onboarding journeys have shortened by more than half. Here’s exactly how it works.
Why Do Accounting Clients Take So Long to Send Documents & Sign?
Accounting clients take longer to send documents and sign because the process asks too much of them, arrives in the wrong place, looks unfinished, and frankly, is genuinely boring. Any one of those would slow things down. Most firms are dealing with all four at once.
Solve all four and you get clients document faster.
How Do You Get Clients Document faster (Including Signatures)?
To get clients document faster, you reduce the number of steps the client has to take and the number of decisions they have to make.
That sounds simple. In practice, it means looking at every point in the onboarding journey where you’re asking a client to do something and asking whether it’s as easy as it could be. Four things drive the biggest improvements.
How Do You Write a Proposal That Gets a Faster Response?
A proposal that’s easy to read, clearly priced, and professionally presented gets a decision faster than one that creates more questions than it answers.
Most accounting proposals fall into one of two traps:
- A one-line email with a fee attached and nothing else. The client has no real sense of what they are agreeing to, no reason to feel confident, and no clear next step
- A 12-page document full of clauses and conditions that reads like it was drafted by a solicitor rather than written by a trusted adviser
Neither makes the decision feel easy.
What actually drives a fast response is a proposal that tells the client exactly what they’re getting, exactly what it costs, and exactly why the fee reflects their specific situation. When pricing feels calculated for them rather than pulled from a generic rate card, clients respond faster because the decision feels straightforward.
The question most firms reach at this point is how to produce proposals that look and feel this way without it becoming a project in itself. Hiring a designer for every proposal is not realistic. Building something in Word produces exactly the kind of output that slows clients down.
FigsFlow solves that directly. Professionally designed, compliance-ready proposals generated in minutes, with no tradeoff between how they look and how fast they get done.
How Do You Get Clients to Sign Engagement Letters Faster?
The signing process itself is usually what causes the delay. Either the client prints the document, signs it by hand, and scans it back. Or they try to insert a signature image into a Word document, which takes longer than it should and rarely looks right. Both require time, effort, and the right setup at the right moment.
What actually gets letters signed quickly is something a client can complete while waiting at a drive-through or sitting on the train. A link, a tap, done. No printing, no scanning, no fiddling with Word.
FigsFlow handles this end-to-end. The client receives a link, opens the document on any device, and signs in under a minute. Signatory tracking shows exactly who has viewed and signed without you having to ask, and automatic reminders chase unsigned letters without you monitoring each one manually.
For a full walkthrough of how this works in practice, read: Signature Configuration: Auto-Sign Letters | FigsFlow
How Do You Ask Clients for Identity Documents Without It Feeling Awkward?
Framing matters more than most firms realise. Clients who understand why they are being asked for a passport and proof of address respond faster than clients who feel like they are being investigated. A single sentence of context delivered upfront covers it: UK regulations require all accounting firms to verify the identity of every client before beginning work. It is not optional, and it is not specific to them. That framing makes the request feel routine rather than personal.
Once the framing is right, the method of collection is what get clients document faster.
For enhanced due diligence requirements, such as source of wealth and source of funds, the same principles apply. Explain that enhanced checks are a regulatory requirement, keep the framing factual, and collect through a secure portal wherever possible.
When & How Often Should You Follow Up with Clients for Documents?
For proposals and engagement letters, automate the follow-up. A reminder at three, five, and ten days after sending covers most cases without you thinking about it. If it is still unsigned after that, a call tells you more than another email will.
Once the deal is won, a well-structured onboarding process as described above should get clients document faster without much chasing at all. If something does stall, a follow-up email on a Monday morning around 8 am tends to land at the right moment. Keep it short and direct. Reference the specific document outstanding and make clear that the work cannot proceed until it is received. That urgency, framed professionally, is usually enough to get a response the same day.
Which Tools Help Accountants Get Clients Document faster?
FigsFlow is the answer to this. It handles the full onboarding journey, from proposal creation and engagement letter signing through to KYC and AML checks, all inside one connected workflow built specifically for UK accounting, bookkeeping, and tax practices.
But it is not just about getting documents signed faster. The deeper problem most firms face is an onboarding process running across disconnected tools, each solving one piece while leaving everything else to be managed manually. A proposal tool that does not connect to the engagement letter. An e-signature tool that does not trigger compliance checks. Document collection happening over email. The joins between each of these are where the delays live, and no amount of follow-up fixes a broken process.
FigsFlow removes every one of those joins. One platform, one flow, no switching between systems.
Book a demo, share the specific bottleneck in your onboarding process, and see exactly how FigsFlow solves it for your firm.
Conclusion
Getting accounting clients to send documents and sign faster comes down to four things: a proposal that makes the decision easy, an engagement letter that can be signed in seconds, a document request that arrives with context and structure, and a follow-up process that runs automatically.
Get all four right and the delays shrink. You get clients document faster without any chasing at all. The onboarding journey moves at the pace it should.
But getting all four right consistently requires a system, not a checklist. One that works from both ends, making it as easy for the client to complete their part as it is for you to track, manage, and move things forward from your end.
FigsFlow does exactly that. A dedicated portal for your firm and your clients, a fully connected onboarding workflow, and everything from proposal to signed letter to AML checks running in one place. No disconnected tools, no manual joins, no delays that could have been avoided.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
The most common reason is friction, not disinterest. A PDF that requires printing, signing, and scanning creates a task the client keeps meaning to get round to. Digital signature removes that barrier, and completion rates improve significantly.
Three email follow-ups is a reasonable limit before escalating to a phone call. After three unanswered emails, the channel has stopped working, and a conversation will tell you more than another message.
Yes, provided you use a platform with encrypted document handling and GDPR-compliant data storage. Email is not safe for sensitive documents like passports and proof of address. A secure onboarding link with proper data handling is both safer and easier for the client.
Yes. With a digital signature platform, clients can sign via text, drawn signature, or uploaded image on any device. There’s no app to download and no account to create. The client clicks a link and signs.
The best tools are the ones that handle the full journey rather than just one part of it. FigsFlow covers proposals, engagement letters, digital signatures, AML checks, and document collection in a single platform built for UK accounting and tax practices.
