Client portals for accountants are a crucial extension to your firm—one that can quickly elevate or detract from your reputation and your clients’ experience. Because you’re not in and out of the portal the way your clients are, it can be easy to discount its importance in providing an extraordinary client experience.
We want to help you take a step back and view things from your clients’ point of view.
Why Does Your Firm Need a Client Portal?
We hate to state the obvious, but without a client portal solution, clients can throw off your budgeted time dramatically. They don’t know if they’re missing a document that you need. Sometimes they drag their feet when it comes to signing documents. Maybe they miss a payment reminder. It’s no secret that many of your firm members are spending too much time chasing down clients.
A top-notch client portal for accountants helps you significantly improve your processes, decrease time spent chasing down clients, improve employee morale, and provide a 5-star client experience.
Here’s a quick breakdown of the top 7 accounting firm portals to uplevel your client experience in 2025.
Client Portals that Are Part of a Complete Platform
1. Canopy
Canopy is an established player and award-winning practice management solution. In addition, Canopy has the highest-rated client portal mobile app in both the Google Store and the Apple Store.
The more you can service a client within one portal, the better. With Canopy, clients can make payments, save card details, sign engagements, sign documents, see documents, make comments, switch between multiple portals, fill out organizers, answer questionnaires, and more.
One practitioner using Canopy highlighted how much their clients like the Canopy portal experience:
“My clients like the ease and security of the portal, and being able to keep all their documents in one place is a wonderful feature.”
– Amy H
A client user of the Canopy portal said this:
“It is so easy to navigate! I don’t have to think about anything. Whatever document I think my tax professional might need I just upload. I can snap a photo and upload or scan, email, and then upload (if I’m feeling fancy, lol). Fire app! 🔥”
– Android user
2. TaxDome
TaxDome is a practice management software that serves boutique firms (1-10 FTE). It offers a client portal alongside its practice management software (which is the case for the following 3 vendors as well).
Though TaxDome has a client portal app in both the Play Store and the App Store, it’s important to note that the mobile applications are not built on a native mobile environment. They use React Native, a mobile development environment that lacks a solution for storing sensitive data. That lack introduces security risks. Security should be a top priority in the security-sensitive space of dealing with private and sensitive client and firm data.
TaxDome supports multiple languages for practitioners and clients. Each user gets to choose their preferred language.
You may want to look at other options if you’re a larger firm or a US firm concerned about security.
3. Financial Cents
Financial Cents provides a client portal in their practice management offering. It’s best suited for small firms using Quickbooks Online. They have a unique feature to practice management and client portals—recats, which allows firms to ask clients about uncategorized transactions.
Like most client portal software for accountants within a practice management software, Financial Cents’ client portal enables practitioners to create client tasks and requests, process payments, send messages, and create a branded experience.
There have been some new entrants in practice management, Financial Cents being one of them. They are a small company with around 30 employees. They have not yet passed that critical 5-year milestone, and they may not have the resources to support clients when and how firms expect. Additionally, they may not have sufficient resources to perfect how their software works or add functionality like e-signatures and document editing.
You may want to look at other options if you’re a tax-heavy firm or if you collect a lot of e-signatures and want to get rid of another piece of software in your tech stack.
4. Firm360
Firm 360 is a newer entrant to the practice management space. They were founded by an accountant. They offer most categories that practice management softwares offer, minus document management. As a result, their client portal is a bit more limited.
As a younger player in the market, Firm360 will be enticing or discouraging for the same reason—they simply don’t have it all built out yet. Some take this as an opportunity to save money and potentially influence the roadmap. Others see this as a lack of stability and would rather pay for a more robust solution.
This is also important to consider as you look for a client portal. Since this is the main way you plan on interacting with your clients, you need to understand the experience you’re providing them with and whether it matches your brand.
Firm360 boasts the ability to manage billing, reminders, and project status updates. However, they’re less than optimal for documents and provide no e-signatures.
Like Financial Cents, they are also not SOC2 compliant nor do they have natively built mobile apps. With passing sensitive documents back and forth, you may want to consider a different solution for documents. Once you have more than one tool for clients to interact with, we highly encourage you to go through the processes as though you are your own client to see if the tools align with your goals.
Dedicated Client Portals for Accountants
Most accounting client portal software is an integral component of a firm’s project management software or workflow management platform. However, some portals are also offered as stand-alone apps that can, to varying degrees, be integrated with other accounting programs. Liscio, Copilot, and Clinked are three popular stand-alone client portal apps for accountants.
5. Liscio
Liscio is solely built as a client portal. It goes deep on client-firm interactions, but it requires integrations with other systems, like your practice management software, to help streamline things in your firm.
Liscio is the strongest contender in messaging. It allows for secure messaging and two-way texting and integrates with your email.
Clients can accomplish all of the typical tasks they need to complete through Liscio—eSignatures, messaging, uploading documents, and completing tax organizers.
You may want to look at other options if collecting payments and consolidating software are top priorities for your firm. Even though Liscio is a dedicated client portal software, it adds another software to your tech stack. Top practice management software has built-in client portals (at varying degrees of completeness).
6. Copilot
Copilot’s client portal is designed for clients to easily manage files, contracts, and messages via web and mobile while enhancing branding, security, and automation features for accountants.
It can integrate with a limited list of accounting software and separate CRMs, but may not be the best choice for firms that need all options and features available to them. For instance, users have stated the desire for more automation options and a wider range of integrations but also speak highly of APIs that are useful for the same purpose.
7. Clinked
Clinked is designed to seamlessly integrate secure document management with QuickBooks, Google Workspace, and other important platforms. It enhances client communication through centralized messaging, tagging, and announcements, along with the expected list of client portal features.
Clinked is also highly regarded for GDPR and HIPAA-compliant security, without sacrificing customization.
Concerns include higher costs and a steeper learning curve than other options. Clinekd is not built specifically with accountants in mind, so the software may not meet the specific needs of most accounting firms. Some firms may not get all the integrations needed for full-scale internal project management since many integrations are more client-focused.
Choosing the Right Client Portal for Your Firm
Client portals are essential for modern accounting firms, enhancing client experience and improving efficiency by:
Streamlining communication, document management, and client interactions
Reducing administrative processes
Enhancing security
Empowering clients with self-service features
Delivering clients a 5-star experience
Despite these benefits, many firms overlook their importance.
A robust portal significantly improves client communication and interaction for firms and clients alike, but examining the top 7 options shows not all portals are created equally.
A robust portal significantly improves client communication and interaction for firms and clients alike, but examining the top 7 options shows not all portals are created equally.
While a dedicated client portal like Liscio may be the overall leader in messaging, it requires integration with project management platforms, missing the purpose of ease-of-use and an all-in-one solution that firms are desperate for. CoPilot and Clinked have strong features and a healthy user base, but when comparing prices, features, and the learning curve to integrate everything firms use every day, most will opt for a portal within their main project management platform.
TaxDome is a complete platform solution with easy app installation options but may lack the robust security and scalability that’s critical for hitting the bull’s eye for most firms.
Financial Cents may be adequate for small firms focused on QBO where overall growth isn’t a primary concern.
As a new offering, Firm360 may grow into its own as a more complete solution, but for now, its lack of SOC2 compliance is a concern.
When you consider factors like security, mobile accessibility, ease of use, and other specific firm needs when selecting the best portal solution to elevate your client experience, it’s hard to ignore the most rational choice: Canopy.
Canopy provides:
An award-winning platform with a feature-rich client portal
A comprehensive solution
The highest-rated mobile app, available in Google Store and Apple Store
Client payments
The ability to save card details
ESignatures
Document visibility, uploads, and downloads
The ability to make comments
A client organizer
See for yourself why firms are choosing Canopy.
Start your free trial today!
