Darren Hosiosky
We've been putting that question to more than 20 firms over the past six months. The answer that came up most surprised us. Clients said their accountant was too slow to reply.
From the client's side, it looks like this. Sam runs a small building company. On a Tuesday in late October, he emails his accountant: "Can I claim the new ute this year, or should I wait till July?" The reply comes six days later. It starts with "Sorry for the delay."
Sam lets it go. Next year, he signs with someone else.
Where the reply gets stuck
Sam's email landed in the inbox of a manager who spent that week on one thing: getting lodgements out the door.
In busy season, that week looks like this:
The admin team opens each tax return, picks the right Word template, and copies across the client name, entity, amount, PRN and due date.
They merge the pack into one PDF, upload it to the e-sign tool, and place every signature.
The client gets an email, misses it, and the chasing starts. Close to deadlines, that means phone calls two or three times a day.
Once it's signed, someone checks every page, files it and lodges it. Then they chase the payment, and sometimes sort out a payment made to the wrong PRN.
That's around 25 minutes of hands-on work per lodgement. Across a few hundred lodgements, the admin team falls behind. The overflow lands on managers and partners. They answer "has my client signed yet?" They call the clients who've gone quiet.
So Sam's question about the ute waits behind a stack of signature chasers. The slow reply is a capacity problem. The work that moves paper comes first, and the work that keeps clients waits.
Why it costs more than it looks
Slow replies rarely show up in an exit email. Clients who leave over it hardly ever say so. They quietly sign with someone else next year.
The questions that wait longest are often the most valuable ones. Should I buy the ute? Should I restructure? Can I afford to hire? These are advisory conversations. They're the reason clients stay, and the work partners want more of.
When the team is buried in chasing, those conversations are the first thing to slip.
Giving the hours back
Admiin is a lodgement workflow built for the admin team. It takes the manual steps above and runs them in one place.
Drag and drop the tax return into Admiin, import it from XPM, or forward it to your firm's own Admiin inbox.
Admiin reads the document and writes the cover letter in the right format. Client name, entity, amount and PRN come straight from the return.
Signature spots and payment details are set up for you.
Clients get the pack by email and SMS, and sign on their phone.
Reminders go out on their own before and after the due date, so the phone chasing stops.
One dashboard shows what's signed, what's waiting and what's overdue.
At Logicca, lodgement prep dropped from 25 minutes to under 5. The firm recovered 1,100 hours a year and handled four times the binding volume at peak. 75% of documents now come back signed within 48 hours.
1,100 hours is about 29 standard 38-hour weeks. That time goes somewhere. The admin team clears the queue on their own, so managers stop picking up the overflow. Sam's question gets answered on Tuesday. Partners get their week back for the conversations that keep clients around.
Admiin is free to use
The core lodgement workflow costs nothing. Firms pay only for extras like white label and KYC checks. More than 50 firms use it today, with zero churn.
If clients are waiting on your team, start with the queue that's keeping them waiting.
