A tax client portal for large accounting firms, where the problem is consistency
At two hundred returns the problem is chasing. At two thousand it is consistency: making every preparer ask for the same things, and giving partners a way to see what is stuck without asking anybody.
Free for 14 days, no credit card. Your portal carries your firm's name from the first client you add.
Blocked engagements, oldest first
1612 of 1840 received3 items overdue — FirmHello is chasing
- ! Cawdor Holdings — rental schedules Overdue
- ! Ferraro Trust — trust accounts Overdue
- ! Halloran, S. — dividend vouchers Overdue
- Vance Partners — partner drawings Reminder tomorrow
- 224 engagements complete today No action
Pemberton Hale's portal, as their client sees it.
A large firm does not lack process. It lacks a single place where the process is enforced. Each office, each team and often each senior has their own document list, their own follow-up habits and their own idea of when to escalate, and tax time is when that variance becomes expensive.
FirmHello is the client-facing layer with the standard built into it. Templates are owned by the firm, chasing is a firm-wide policy rather than an individual's diligence, staff access is granted per client, and the whole season is visible on one screen sorted by what has been waiting longest.
Running a season, not a job
The four problems that only appear above a certain headcount, and what we do about each.
Every preparer asks for the same things
Request templates are owned at firm level and versioned. A partner or a tax technical lead defines what a personal return, a partnership, a trust or a corporate filing requires, and that definition is what every preparer sends, in every office, in the firm's own wording.
The practical effect is that a client's experience of your firm stops depending on who picked up their file, and a review no longer starts by working out what was asked for.
- Templates versioned, with a record of who changed them and when
- Per-engagement-type variants, not one list for everything
- Local additions allowed per client without forking the template
Chasing is a firm policy, not a personal habit
Follow-up rhythms are set per engagement type and escalate as 31 October approaches. Because reminders belong to the request rather than to a person, a client is never chased twice by two people about the same item, and nothing stops because somebody is on leave.
- Escalation tied to the ATO deadline, not a fixed interval
- One reminder per outstanding item regardless of how many staff are involved
- Escalation to a named reviewer after a threshold you set
Partners see the season, not the files
The oversight view lists every engagement with something outstanding, sorted by how long it has been waiting, with the blocking item and the assigned staff member named. Review conversations start from that screen instead of from a question.
- Blocked engagements by age, by office, by partner and by assignee
- The specific blocking item named, not just a percentage
- Unassigned work surfaced rather than quietly waiting
Access, joiners and leavers
Seasonal staff are the hardest part of a large firm's access model. Staff access is granted per client, so a contractor engaged for twelve weeks holds exactly the returns they are working on. Single sign-on means their access ends when their account is disabled, which is the only leaver process that reliably gets followed.
- Per-client grants, individually revocable
- Single sign-on through your identity provider
- One exportable audit trail across the whole firm
What matters at firm scale
Every featureRequest lists
Firm-owned, versioned templates per engagement type, so two thousand returns are asked for in one voice.
Automatic chasing
Deadline-aware escalation as firm policy, with a single reminder per item no matter how many staff touch the job.
Audit trail
One exportable trail across every office and every engagement, with actor-level detail.
Your brand, your domain
Branding and domains per office or trading name, with templates and oversight shared at firm level.
Client vault
Permanent client records that survive seasonal turnover and internal reassignment.
Intake forms
New client onboarding that runs identically whoever takes the call.
Client documents are the most sensitive thing a firm holds
So the portal is built to hold them properly: encrypted, access granted one client at a time, and every action recorded. Nothing travels as an email attachment.
How FirmHello is built- Encrypted in transit and at rest
- TLS 1.3 on every connection and AES-256 encryption for stored documents, with keys managed separately from the data they protect.
- Access is per client, not per firm
- A client can only ever load their own space. Staff access is granted per client, so a junior can be given three files and nothing else.
- No documents in email
- Notifications tell a client that something is waiting and link them to the portal. The material itself never leaves it as an attachment.
- Complete audit trail
- Views, uploads, downloads, approvals and permission changes are all recorded with actor, time and IP, and the log is exportable.
- Retention you control
- Set how long documents live per client or per matter, and hold or purge on request, so the portal matches the retention policy you already have.
- Hosted in your region
- Choose United States, Canada, the EU or the United Kingdom, and your firm's data stays in that region.
Questions from large firms
Can templates be locked so staff cannot change them?
Yes. Templates are owned at firm level and versioned. Staff can add an item for a specific client where a return genuinely needs it, without altering the template everybody else uses.
Do you support single sign-on?
Yes, on the Group plan, through your existing identity provider. It is the only leaver process that works reliably with seasonal staff.
How many clients can one account hold?
Unlimited, and so are staff seats. A firm with several thousand clients and eighty staff pays the same headline price as a small one; the tiers are storage, retention and firm-level controls.
Can we run multiple offices or trading names?
Yes. Branding and domains can differ per office while oversight, templates and the audit trail stay unified.
Will this integrate with our tax software?
Not today. If a deep integration with your specific tax suite is a requirement, that should decide your choice and we are not yet the answer. We would rather be clear about it now.
How is this different from your accounting firms page?
That page covers a practice with staff generally. This one is about tax time at scale: template governance, deadline-aware escalation, partner oversight and seasonal access.
Related
Where to go next
Every page on the site, grouped by the question it answers.
- Choosing a portal
- Security checklist
- Large firms — you are here
- Virtual tax firms
- Paperless practice
Ready when you are
Tell us how many returns you run and how your teams are structured, and we will work through whether we fit.
No card and no sales call. If you would rather tell us about your firm first, use the longer form.