Small firms often run recurring work off a spreadsheet and a calendar. It works until someone’s out sick, or until the firm passes about 30 monthly clients and the spreadsheet stops matching reality. Financial Cents is built for firms that size. This guide sets up one monthly bookkeeping template where the project recreates itself every month, the client request list goes out on a fixed date, and reminders follow up until the client answers. At the end, a new month starts without anyone opening a spreadsheet.
What you need
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The right plan. From Financial Cents’ pricing page:
- Solo: $19/month, billed annually, 1 user only.
- Team: $49/user/month annually, or $69 monthly.
- Scale: $69/user/month annually, or $89 monthly.
- Monthly billing on Team and Scale needs at least 5 users.
All plans list client tasks and requests, the client portal, workflow automations and the QuickBooks Online integration. Auto follow-ups for client tasks, task dependencies and auto-create work are listed on Scale, not Solo or Team. If you want reminders to chase clients for you, budget for Scale.
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Optional: Month-End Close, Financial Cents’ tool for uncategorized transactions, at $5/month per client billed annually.
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Clients with an email address (and a mobile number if you want SMS notifications). Clients open requests through a magic link, so they don’t need a username or password.
Step by step
1. Build the template with a one-time section
Create a workflow template called “Monthly bookkeeping.” Add your internal sections: reconcile, categorize, review, deliver.
Then add a section for first-month-only work: getting access, connecting the bank feed, setting the opening balances. Mark it Do not recur all tasks. Financial Cents’ help center says these sections appear on the first project and are skipped in later recurrences. That’s how one template covers both onboarding and every month after.
2. Add the client request list
Inside the project or template, select + New Section, then Client Tasks, name the section (for example “Documents for this month”) and press Enter. Then select Add client task and pick a type:
- Securely request documents
- Securely send documents
- Request an eSignature
- Ask a question
- Categorize Transactions
Example list for a monthly client:
- Securely request documents: “Statement for any account not on the bank feed.”
- Securely request documents: “Receipts for purchases over $75.”
- Ask a question: “Anything unusual this month? New loan, big equipment purchase, new employee?”
For document requests, you can send uploads straight to another system, like ShareFile or Google Drive, by choosing To another document system and pasting a shareable folder link. Useful if your firm already stores files elsewhere.
3. Decide when the request goes out
At the top of the client section, use Schedule or Send. You get three choices:
- Schedule: a specific date.
- Send Now: immediately.
- Dependency: send automatically when a certain task section in the project is completed.
For the monthly documents list, use Schedule on the 2nd of the month. For a list that depends on your work, like “receipts for these 8 transactions we couldn’t match,” use Dependency tied to the reconcile section. That way the request only goes out once the list actually exists. (Task dependencies are listed on the Scale plan.)
4. Turn on auto-reminders
Select Auto-reminders and choose how often. Financial Cents’ examples are every 3, 5 or 7 days. For monthly bookkeeping documents, I’d go every 3 days. A shorter gap matters when your close deadline is the 15th.
Clients can get these by email and SMS. If you edit the email wording, keep the first line specific:
“Hi Priya, 3 items are still open for your October books. Tap the link to upload. It takes 2 minutes.”
5. Make the project recur
When you create the project from your template, set the Recurring field. Default options are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly or annually. Custom recurrences cover things like semi-monthly, the last day of the month, or the first Friday.
Two rules from the help center worth knowing:
- A recurring project creates the next one when the current project is marked completed/closed or when it becomes overdue. The new one appears within about an hour.
- Client tasks recur with the project. If you scheduled the request for the 2nd, it goes out on the 2nd of every future month without you reactivating it.
The overdue rule is a safety net: even if last month’s project is still open, next month’s project still shows up on time. It also means a late month doesn’t hide the next one, so check overdue projects weekly.
6. Handle uncategorized transactions
If your clients are on QuickBooks Online, the Categorize Transactions client task type and the Month-End Close add-on are built for the monthly “what was this charge?” list. Financial Cents’ help article on the feature (previously called ReCats) says it pulls uncategorized transactions from QuickBooks Online, lets clients add notes and documents, sends reminders, and pushes the answers back to QuickBooks. At $5 per client per month, it’s worth testing on your 5 messiest clients first.
7. Run one client through a full month
Set up one real client, ideally a reliable one. Watch the request go out on the 2nd, the reminders on the 5th and 8th, and the project recreate itself after you close it. Then roll the template out to everyone.
Common mistakes
- Expecting auto-reminders on Solo or Team. The pricing page lists auto follow-ups for client tasks on Scale.
- Forgetting the one-time section. Without Do not recur all tasks, your onboarding checklist shows up again every month.
- Scheduling requests that depend on your own work. Use Dependency so the “missing receipts” list only goes out after reconciliation.
- Leaving projects open for months. The next one still recurs when this one goes overdue, so a stack of open projects builds quietly.
- Vague request names. “Documents” gets ignored. “October bank statement for Wells Fargo 4471” gets uploaded.
When it’s worth getting help
Financial Cents is one of the easier tools to set up yourself, and a single template can carry most of a small firm. Help makes sense when you’re moving 30+ clients off a spreadsheet at once, or tying requests, Month-End Close and QuickBooks into one monthly rhythm. If that’s you, see the accounting page for how I work, or check the accounting cost calculator first.