01
What do you need — a return, catch-up bookkeeping, payroll, or advisory?
Four different engagements and four different people at your firm. Routing starts here.
For accountants and CPA firms
Busy season,
answered anyway.
A prospect emails in March asking whether you can take them on before the deadline. Everyone who could answer that is heads-down in returns — so the note sits, and by the time the extension is filed they've signed an engagement letter somewhere else.
The inquiries arrive exactly when nobody can answer them
Accounting demand is seasonal in a way that works against you. The heaviest inbound weeks are the weeks the whole firm is billable to capacity, and a new-client email in March is competing with a return due Friday. It loses, every time.
These inquiries also carry dates. A notice with a response window. A filing deadline. A payroll problem that gets worse every pay run. A prospect who hears nothing back within a day reasonably concludes you can't take them on before the deadline — which was the only question they were really asking.
LeadsApp answers immediately with what your firm actually offers, collects the details your engagement letter needs — entity type, states, open years, software, transaction volume — and escalates anything with a notice or a deadline attached to a human the same day instead of dropping it into a follow-up sequence.
42h
Median time a business takes to answer a new inbound lead
63%
Of companies take longer than an hour to reply to a new inquiry
Published industry benchmarks — not our own data
The scoping questions it actually asks
These come off your own new-client checklist, in your wording. It asks one or two at a time and picks the ones that fit — somebody who already said “S-corp” doesn't get asked about entity type.
02
What's the entity — individual, sole proprietor, LLC, S-corp, partnership?
Decides the scope, the forms, and whether it's a fit for the firm at all.
03
Which states do you file in?
Multi-state and out-of-state nexus is the detail that otherwise turns up two weeks into the engagement.
04
Which years are open, and how far behind are the books?
“A little behind” has meant eighteen months more than once. Better to find out before you quote.
05
What's the transaction volume, and where do the books live?
QuickBooks Online with 200 transactions a month and a shoebox of receipts are not the same job or the same price.
06
Is there a notice or a deadline with a date on it?
The escalation trigger. Anything dated goes to a human that day rather than into an automated nudge.
Example — not a real client
What this looks like in your inbox
An illustration we wrote, not a customer message. Everything in [brackets] is pulled from the business profile you fill in during setup — the AI states nothing it wasn't given.
Website contact form — Tuesday in March, 8:32pm
Hi — we're an S-corp in Ohio doing about $1.2M a year. Our books haven't been reconciled since last May, and we just got a letter from the IRS about our 2024 payroll filings. Can you take us on, and roughly what would this cost?
Draft reply — waiting for your approval
Thanks for getting in touch. This is the kind of work we do, and a payroll notice alongside a catch-up is a combination we see a lot at this time of year.
I've flagged the IRS letter for someone at the firm to look at today. Two things would help us scope the rest:
1. How many bank and credit-card accounts are in scope, and are the books in QuickBooks, Xero, or something else?
2. What's the date and the notice number printed at the top of the IRS letter? Please don't email the letter itself — [your secure portal link] is the safe place for documents.
On cost, we'll come back with a real number once we know the account count. We'd rather quote the actual work than a range that turns out to be wrong.
— [Firm name]
84
Hot
Why: An S-corp with revenue stated, a concrete catch-up scope, and a dated IRS notice — deadline-driven work sitting squarely in your service list. They asked what it costs, which is a buying question.
Escalated the same day rather than followed up automatically — the message names an IRS notice, and notices come with a response deadline.
Two things it refused to do here: interpret the notice, and put a number on the work. It asked for the notice date so a human can triage it, and it pointed the documents at your portal instead of your inbox.
What it will never do for an accounting firm
Advice and documents are the two ways an AI could hurt an accounting practice. It does neither, and review-before-send is the default so a partner can read every word before it goes.
- Never gives tax advice. Not whether something is deductible, not how to treat an expense, not whether an S-corp election makes sense.
- Never estimates a refund, a liability, or a penalty.
- Never interprets an IRS or state notice, and never suggests how to respond to one. Anything with a notice or a deadline is escalated to a human that day.
- Never quotes a fee for a return or a monthly bookkeeping rate. It gives the ranges in your profile, or it says the firm will come back with a number.
- Never asks for an SSN, an EIN, bank credentials, or tax documents over email. If you've given it your secure portal link, that's where it sends people instead.
- Never promises the firm can take somebody on before a filing deadline. That's a capacity call, and only your firm can make it.
The March inquiries stop going cold.
Point your website form at LeadsApp or forward the inbox new clients already email. Every inquiry gets answered the same evening it arrives, scoped against your checklist, with anything carrying a deadline pushed straight to a human.
Free on 25 leads a month, no card · $149 for 250 · $299 for 1,000 · $499 unlimited
Every account also includes the free contact toolkit — search 136M+ US and Canada B2B contacts and verify any email, from the web or your own agents.
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