Agree a clear invoice handover with your bookkeeping clients

Make the agreement smaller than the software

A client does not need to understand every bookkeeping setting to make a useful contribution. They need to know where to send paperwork, which questions belong to them and when a decision is required. Your team needs enough information to prepare the accounting data without guessing.

Start with a short working agreement. Name a document contact, a person who can answer purchase questions and the people responsible for any invoice approval. They may be the same person in a small business. In a larger client, the roles may be spread across colleagues.

Adapt this framework to your firm. Agree the responsibilities with your client, then configure access and approval stages to match.

Walk through a real kind of purchase

Imagine a client buys replacement equipment. A member of staff receives the supplier invoice, the owner needs to confirm the purchase and your bookkeeper needs to prepare the accounting treatment. These are three contributions to one document, not three people doing the same job.

The staff member supplies the original invoice through the agreed collection route. Your team checks the captured details and asks about anything it cannot establish from the document. If sign-off is required, the configured approver decides. Your team remains responsible for its accounting review.

Use an example like this during onboarding. Ask where the invoice normally arrives and who understands the purchase. A concrete document often reveals a missing responsibility more clearly than a long list of product features.

Give paperwork a reliable destination

Agree one main submission route and explain the alternatives. Datamolino supports upload, folder email and mobile receipt capture. A folder has its own email address, which can also be shared with suppliers. Unknown senders may need approval before documents enter processing.

For the client, the benefit is a clear way to provide original paperwork instead of transcribing invoice data. For the practice, it is a repeatable collection process organised around the relevant folder. The submission agreement should also say who checks for a document that has not arrived.

Keep statement PDFs on their separate processing path. Invoice-folder email addresses route purchase documents; use the bank-statement upload route for statement PDFs.

Keep accounting instructions with the practice's process

Your team can save supplier defaults within the client's folder and reuse those values on future documents. Supported line rules can apply more detailed instructions where the plan includes line extraction. These rules reuse the accounting decisions your team has saved.

Agree how changed purchases are handled. A familiar supplier can still sell something new. A different description or an unusual invoice may need a fresh decision, even when recurring documents normally use a saved rule.

When an approval workflow uses Keep documents editable, Admins and Users in the folder can continue editing after approval, so your team can finish the coding. This can separate the client's business decision from final bookkeeping preparation. Approver-only users cannot edit after approval.

Make client sign-off specific and manageable

Use approval stages where a client's process needs sign-off. A stage can require one configured approver or everyone in that stage. Choose the arrangement that matches the decision, rather than treating a longer chain as automatically better.

Each approver chooses their own notification settings: emails for individual events or a scheduled summary. Month-end reminder settings are also available. Eligible manual nudges provide a follow-up action, with timing limits.

Agree who follows up an outstanding decision and who deals with a blocked assignment. The goal is a visible next action for the responsible person. Do not assume that leaving a comment automatically sends a notification or that every delay resolves itself.

Use this checklist with the next client

Record the answers beside your onboarding notes. Review the agreement when the client's people or purchasing process changes.

• Who supplies invoices and receipts, and through which route?
• Who checks stopped emails or missing paperwork?
• Who at the client can explain a purchase when your team has a question?
• Who sets and reviews the accounting instructions?
• Which invoices need approval, and who must decide?
• Who follows up outstanding decisions?
• Who completes accounting review and the normal export process?