AM flips the idea of ‘sending a note’ on its head. Instead, add a note to the right place and it’ll be there for your colleagues to find, exactly when they need it.

Ok, so Notes don’t lend themselves to attention-grabbing headlines, but they’re mighty useful and have a big impact on efficiency, visibility and communication across your business. 

Notes on Tasks (those little yellow notes)

The Task List in AM is a personalised to-do list for everyone in your practice. It automatically generates based on your clients’ deadlines, your internal Target Dates and any recurring Custom Tasks you may have added.

You can update the progress of a Task as it moves forward – and you can add Notes to a Task. These Notes are useful for reminding yourself of something or giving more detail about the Task’s progress. 

“The team put Notes on Tasks – those little yellow notes,” says Anita Cocks, owner of Tax and Financial. “I think it’s brilliant because you can just log in straight away and see: ‘Oh, someone spoke to them on that date…’ Or ‘We’re still waiting for that’. Straight away, it’s just there in front of you without you having to click on anything else.”

  1. On a Task, click the pen icon 
  1. Select the top option ‘Update Progress Note’
  1. Write your note, choose whether you want to notify a colleague and click ‘Update’
  1. The progress note appears in yellow against the Task in the Task List

Notes on Client Files

If you have new information about a client instead of a Task, you can add this to the Client File. 

  1. Go to a Client, either through the Client List or by searching for the client
  1. In the Client File, go to the ‘Internal’ section to write your note and click ‘Update Client’
  1. This will now appear in the Client Timeline:

…and, if you add the ‘Notes’ column to your Client List, it will appear there too:

Urgent Notes (that big red bar)

We’ve unofficially crowned these The Most Useful Notes Of All. 

If there’s something really important about a client that you need all staff to be aware of, you’d usually write an all-staff email titled ‘URGENT – PLEASE READ’ right? …And keep your fingers crossed it won’t be missed or forgotten.

When you add an Urgent Note:

  • A red bar appears above the Client File (unmissable and unforgettable)
  • A button will appear against any Task for that client in the Task List
  • And you can view all Urgent Notes under Clients > Urgent Notes
  1. Open up a Client File, go to the ‘Internal’ section, write your Urgent Note and click ‘Update Client’ 
  1. Refresh the Client File and you’ll see your big red bar

…then go to your Task List to see the Urgent Note button – hover over this to see the note.

…then test out filtering your Client List by Urgent Notes

Jordan Jewitt, owner of For the Trade, uses Urgent Notes to be more ‘hands off’ – taking snippets of important information from his head and feeding it into the team.

“Using my experience of what could be an issue, I can create an Urgent Note for the team.” 

One of these snippets for Jordan, is keeping an eye on the £85,000 limit for VAT. “If I know a client is consistently at about £85 grand recurring, me as the partner, I do not have the mental capacity to go in every month to check. If I know something might be an issue, I use an Urgent Note to tell people to make sure we bear this in mind. That’s pretty cool.”

Notes on the Client Timeline

Finally, you can add Notes directly to a client’s Timeline and notify another member of staff. Each Timeline captures any changes to the client’s information, all automated interactions you’ve had with the client and any incoming emails from that client. 

  1. Open up a Client File and click Timeline
  1. Click New Note
  1. Choose who to notify and write your note
  1. Your colleague gets a notification, the note is stored on the Timeline and you can filter the Timeline to only see Notes

Claire Rulton, owner of Addison Accounts, has noticed how Notes have cut down on the amount of emails her team send each other.

“My team doesn’t need to keep telling me because they can just update the system.”

“It’s definitely reduced our email traffic. So, we’re not emailing each other things. We’re putting the information directly onto AccountancyManager. They can update Notes. We use the Notes function all of the time to update as to where we are with things.”