"Can you send me the bank statements again?"
The same request, three times, across two people's inboxes. You cannot see what has arrived, what is missing, or who you last chased. Year-end drags on because the records dribble in.
For accountancy firms
The client portal your firm should have had.
Stop running your practice out of an inbox. One place, under your own name, where clients send what you need, sign what you send, and see what is due — and where you can see, in one screen, who has not.
14 days free. No card. Your logo on it in ten minutes.
The problem
Sound familiar?
Most firms run their client relationships through email, a shared drive and memory. It works until it doesn't — and it costs more than it looks.
"I can't find the accounts you sent"
Documents go out as attachments and vanish into the client's inbox. They ask again; you dig them out again. Nothing is filed where the client can find it, and nothing is filed where you can prove they saw it.
Unsigned engagement letters
Your professional body expects a signed letter on every file. In practice they go out, come back half the time, and the rest sit in a "to chase" folder. Renewals slip entirely.
Every director now needs a Companies House personal code
Identity verification is mandatory. Without each director's 11-character code the confirmation statement cannot be filed — and it is you who has to explain why, chase it, and keep the code somewhere safe.
Deadlines live in your head
Accounts, confirmation statements, corporation tax, VAT, payroll — across every client, in a spreadsheet someone updates when they remember. A missed accounts filing costs the client £150 to £1,500 at Companies House, and costs you the relationship.
Client data travelling by email
Passports, bank statements and tax returns as attachments, to and from personal email addresses, forever. Your AML and GDPR obligations say otherwise; your clients assume you have this covered.
What it costs today
Chasing is the most expensive thing your firm does.
Not because any one email is hard, but because it is the same email, every client, every year, done by the people you pay the most.
Your time
Hours a week, by hand
Ask three people in the firm how long they spend asking clients for things, resending things, and checking whether things have come in. Then multiply it by what an hour of their time bills for. That is the number.
Your year-end
Work that starts late finishes late
Records that arrive in week nine instead of week one push the whole job back — and the next one behind it. The bottleneck in most small firms is not the accounting. It is getting the records.
Your risk
Penalties, complaints, and the file you can't defend
Late filings carry fixed penalties. An unsigned engagement letter is a weak position in a fee dispute. A document you cannot show the client received is a complaint you cannot answer. The portal keeps the record for you.
What changes
What your week looks like with it.
The portal does not change how you do the accounting. It changes everything around it.
You ask once
Send a checklist from a template — year-end, VAT quarter, self assessment, new client. The client ticks items off and uploads against them. You see what is outstanding on one screen, and chase with one click.
Nothing is "lost"
Everything you send them lives in their portal, sorted, forever. Everything they send you lands on their record with a time stamp. Both of you can find it; neither of you has to ask.
Letters come back signed
Engagement letters and approvals go out for signature with one click and come back as a PDF with a certificate. You can see who has opened it and who has not.
Dates look after themselves
Add a client by company number and their Companies House dates appear and stay current. Your dashboard shows what is due across the whole practice in the next 30, 90 or 365 days.
Directors get verified
One button asks every unverified director to get their Companies House code, tells them exactly how, and records it when they do. You see who is still outstanding before the confirmation statement is due.
Clients stop emailing — and notice
A portal under your name, with a code instead of a password, feels like a bigger firm. It is the cheapest way to look like you have your act together, because you do.
Who it's for
Firms that are good at accounting and tired of admin.
The sole practitioner
You are the firm. Every chase, every resend, every "did you get my email" is you. Starter at £49 a month is less than one chargeable hour and buys back several.
The two-to-six-person firm
Clients email whoever they like; nobody has the whole picture. Practice at £99 a month puts every client, every request and every date in one place the whole team can see.
The growing or multi-office practice
Scale without hiring another administrator. Firm at £199 a month takes unlimited clients, 20 team members and, soon, your own domain for the portal.
Why now
Three things changed.
1
Companies House identity verification
Every director must verify and hold a personal code; confirmation statements cannot be filed without it. Firms need a clean way to ask, explain, collect and record — for every client, this year.
2
Clients expect a portal
Their bank, their solicitor, their GP all have one. An accountant who works by email attachments now looks like the exception — and the larger firms taking your clients have one.
3
The big suites are too big
Practice-management platforms want you to move your whole firm onto them. Practice Portal is just the client-facing part — the bit your clients actually see — and sits alongside whatever you already use.
Ten minutes from sign-up to a client in the portal.
No import project, no IT. The portal reads what Companies House already knows about your clients and builds itself around it.
Step 1
Put your name on it
Upload your logo, pick your colour, add the details that go in the footer. Every screen and every email your clients get is yours from here on.
Step 2
Add a client by company number
Year end, accounts and confirmation-statement dates, registered office and directors are pulled from Companies House and kept current every night.
Step 3
Send them their link
A personal link and a 6-digit emailed code — no password, nothing to reset. From then on, everything you need from them and everything you have for them lives in one place.
What's in it.
The things clients actually email you about, handled in the portal instead.
A link, not a password
Clients open their personal link and prove themselves with a code emailed to an address you already hold. Nothing to forget, nothing to reset, nothing for you to support.
Documents and requests
File accounts, letters and returns. Ask for bank statements and invoices with a checklist the client ticks off and uploads against. Chase with one click.
Key dates that keep themselves
Accounts, confirmation statement, corporation tax, VAT — from Companies House and your settings, explained to the client in plain English, refreshed nightly.
Signing with a certificate
Engagement letters and approvals signed with a typed name, timestamp, IP address and a fingerprint of the exact wording — delivered as a PDF to both sides and filed automatically.
Director ID checks
Every director now needs a Companies House personal code. The portal asks them, explains how, records it for you and shows you who is still outstanding.
Messages, not email threads
Two-way conversations per client, each one emailing the other side with a link back. Nothing lost in an inbox; everything on the client's record.
Built by a firm, for firms.
Practice Portal grew out of the portal our own accountancy practice runs on. The people who built it answer client emails too — which is why the first thing it does is stop them.
Your brand, every screen
Your logo, colour and name on the portal, on every email, on every signed document. Nothing of ours in front of your clients.
Walled off, properly
Each firm's clients are separated in the database itself, not just the screen. Files are private and reached only through short-lived links.
No migration, no lock-in
Start with one client. Add the rest as you go. Leave any time and take your documents with you.
Pricing.
Monthly, cancel any time, prices exclude VAT. Fourteen days free on every plan — no card to start. Want the CRM or a website with a content engine too? CRM £49, Website £79, or £179 for everything.
Starter
£49/month
A sole practitioner or a small team getting clients off email.
- Up to 25 clients
- 2 team members
- Your logo and colours
- Documents, requests, messages, key dates
- E-signing and director ID checks
Practice
£99/month
Most firms. Room for the whole client list and the whole team.
- Up to 150 clients
- 6 team members
- Everything in Starter
- Engagement letters and onboarding checklists
- Priority support
Firm
£199/month
Larger practices and groups.
- Unlimited clients
- 20 team members
- Everything in Practice
- Your own domain for the portal (coming soon)
- Onboarding help from us
Questions firms ask.
How do clients sign in?
They open a personal link you send them (or that arrives in any email from the portal) and we email a 6-digit code to an address on their record. A device stays trusted for 30 days. No passwords to create, forget or reset.
Where do the key dates come from?
Add a client by Companies House number and the portal pulls year end, accounts and confirmation-statement dates, directors and the registered office — and refreshes them every night. Corporation tax and VAT dates are derived from those and your settings. You can add anything else by hand.
Is the e-signature legally fine?
Signatures are made by typing a full name and agreeing, from a private link issued to the signer's own email address. The PDF certificate records the name, time, IP address and a SHA-256 fingerprint of the exact wording, so the signed document can always be shown to be the one agreed. That meets the requirements of the Electronic Communications Act 2000 and eIDAS for a simple electronic signature. For anything that needs a witnessed or qualified signature, use the appropriate route.
Does it do engagement letters?
Yes — paste your firm's engagement letter in with merge fields and send it for signature. We provide a skeleton to show the structure, but the wording is yours: use your professional body's terms.
Where is the data held?
In a UK (London) database, one row-level-secured tenancy per firm, files in private storage reached only through short-lived signed links. Practice Portal is run by Chivvy Ltd (company no. 17040454).
Can I use my own domain?
Your portal lives at app.practiceportal.uk today, branded as your firm on every screen. Your own domain (portal.yourfirm.co.uk) is on the Firm plan and coming soon.
Does it replace my practice-management software?
No, and it does not try to. It is the client-facing layer: the portal, the requests, the signing, the dates your clients see. Keep your workflow, tax and bookkeeping software exactly as it is. Most firms that use it were running the client side on email and a shared drive.
How long does it take to set up?
About ten minutes for the firm — logo, colour, footer details — and about a minute per client if they are a company (type the number; Companies House does the rest). You do not have to move everyone at once; start with the clients whose records you are chasing this month.
What happens at the end of the trial?
Pick a plan or don't. Nothing is deleted; if you choose a plan later, everything is exactly as you left it.
Put your name on it in ten minutes.
Create your firm, upload a logo, add a client by company number, send them the link. Fourteen days free, no card.
Start free trial