AI phone receptionist for accounting firms

What the assistant does on this line

Both of you have a return open. The VAT send is this week. The phone rings. You cannot pick up, because the return will not wait, and the person calling will not wait either.

You put the assistant on the number already printed on the engagement letter. It answers when you cannot. It talks like a receptionist: the firm name, then what they need. Then it does one of three things. It books a time to leave papers, or a sitting you can actually keep. It writes down an E1, payroll or formation request. Or it puts a note in front of you with the sentence you actually use — the accountant will call back.

The first question is not when they are free. The first question is individual or company. Those are two different books, two different piles of papers, and usually two different people who should call back. A director who is both still gets two notes, not one sitting squeezed into twenty minutes.

The assistant can take a request. It cannot finish a tax question. “Can you take our payroll from next month?” is a request. “If I pay the bonus this week, what is the withholding?” is yours. Same call, two jobs. The assistant finishes the first and stops on the second.

Moving a document drop from Thursday to Friday can be finished on the phone. “What do I put on the E1?” cannot, and the assistant says so in the first reply.

Why nobody can pick up in a VAT week

You can pick up in the quiet weeks. You cannot pick up in the loud ones. VAT. The days the E1s come in. A payroll Friday in December. Both of you are inside a return that has a date on it. If there is a secretary, she is chasing invoices. The phone still rings.

Callers arrive in a burst. Each one thinks their file cannot wait. A second receptionist still leaves the third and fourth caller on a busy tone.

The caller who would become a new engagement has your name and two others. They do not leave a message. They dial the next firm. Clients whose books are already here will often wait. A founder who wants a company this month will not.

In a filing week you get both jobs on one phone: “where are my invoices”, and “can you take us on”. If you treat them as one pile, the new company waits ninety seconds and hangs up. The existing client, who had the invoices the return needs, leaves a message.

How CITT handles a firm line

1. Your number stays yours. You add a forwarding rule at the provider — everything, or only what has rung unanswered for the seconds you choose. Shorten the delay in deadline season. Calls you answer never leave the office. See pricing for how answered-by-you versus answered-by-the-assistant is treated.
2. Every line at once. A filing-week burst is a set of conversations, not a queue behind one person on hold with AADE.
3. It knows the firm, because you gave it your own material: whether you take individuals, companies or both; whether you are accepting new books this month; what you need for an E1, for payroll, for a formation; where to leave papers; which days you sit with clients.
4. It asks individual or company first, and it keeps those as two records when a director is both.
5. It takes E1, payroll and company formation as intake — name, number, what they want started — and does not answer the tax question hiding in the same sentence.
6. It checks the diary before it offers a time, and books into the same calendar the firm works from. It never offers a time that falls on a filing day.
7. It confirms by SMS, and reminds before the appointment so the folder actually arrives.
8. The accountant will call back is the spoken rule, not a footnote. Same sentence, every question that sounds like advice.
9. You get the transcript, the summary, and the details — pushed into whatever the firm already uses.

What it will not do — and must not

It will not give tax advice. Not a little, not “just the obvious box”, not because the caller is a day from a deadline. It takes the request. You decide.

It will not say what anyone owes, whether a return is “fine”, or how a foreign item is treated. Those sentences are yours. They stay off this line.

It will not fill an E1, run a payroll, or tell a founder which company form to choose. Those are the engagement. The assistant books the start of the engagement.

It will not read last year’s figures aloud as this year’s answer. A number from a closed file is still a number the firm would be giving.

It will not pretend a deadline has moved. If a caller asks whether they can file next week instead, the assistant records the question and says the accountant will call back. It does not give them a date.

It will not walk anyone through Taxisnet, MyDATA or a locked AADE account. Those calls go to a phone, with the note written down, so you see them before the evening list.

What these calls actually sound like

The exchange in the panel above is the shape to expect. The refusal lands in the second line. The caller asked what to put on an E1 for freelance work done in Germany. The assistant names the topic so the callback is useful, and refuses the figure. It asks individual or company, because that changes who calls back.

Payroll and formation split the same way. Intake is finished on the phone. “Should it be an IKE?” is not. An existing client who has not sent invoices is a chase. “Can I reclaim this?” is a callback.

A foreign director who asks whether you work in English is intake plus language. The assistant answers from what you entered. It does not quote a monthly fee, and it does not promise you can take them on if you have closed the books for the month.

Individual or company, before anything else

Configure this split before you turn anything else on.

An individual is usually an E1, a freelance question, a rental, a foreign resident, sometimes a transfer of books from a previous accountant. The assistant collects a name, a number, an AFM if they offer one, and the topic in their words. It does not ask them to dictate income.

A company is usually payroll, VAT, MyDATA, annual accounts, a formation, or a change of books. The assistant collects the company name, a number, who is calling, and the topic. It does not confirm balances.

If the caller is a director ringing about both, the assistant records both and does not squeeze them into one short sitting. Those are two conversations for you, even if they arrived as one call.

E1, payroll and company formation are requests, not answers

Write them down as topics the assistant is allowed to open, not as topics it is allowed to finish.

E1. Take the request. Ask individual, not company. Book a time to leave papers, or a call-back. Do not discuss foreign income, dependents, or what last year looked like.

Payroll. Take the request. Ask company, or the rare individual-employer case. Collect a start month if they have one, a headcount if they offer it, and whether this is a new engagement or a change. Do not discuss rates, overtime, or benefits.

Company formation. Take the request. Collect a name, a number, a preferred language, and whether they already have papers. Do not recommend a legal form, a seat, or a VAT registration.

Anything adjacent — EFKA, Taxisnet access, a locked AADE account, a notice from the authority — is a flagged callback, not a walkthrough.

If they offer an AFM, take it. If they do not, do not interrogate them for one on the first call. You can ask when you call back.

Deadline season is the real test

In the week the returns are due you want three settings tighter than the rest of the year. A shorter ring-time before forwarding, so overflow is caught while you stay in the books. A harder split between times to leave papers (bookable) and advice (callback). And a same-day phone route for payroll tomorrow, a send that is stuck, or a locked account — because those cannot wait for the evening digest.

The assistant does not help with the return. It answers the new-book enquiry you would otherwise lose, and writes down the missing-invoice call so someone can chase it in order.

A VAT week, an E1 week and a December payroll Friday are not the same week, and they are not the same overflow. VAT is invoices and the send. E1 is individuals, often after hours, often in more than one language. Payroll Friday is headcount, a late change, a payment that has to go tomorrow. Teach the assistant the three shapes. If you give it one generic “deadline” label, it will treat a locked AADE account like a document drop.

Missing invoices and new books on the same phone

In a filing week the same phone carries two jobs, and they get in each other’s way.

The existing client who has not sent invoices needs a chase, a time to leave the folder, and sometimes a flag the same afternoon. That call keeps a return you have already started.

The new company, the foreign director, the individual with an E1, is the call that becomes next year’s books. They will not hold. If the assistant parks them behind an invoice chase, they are gone.

Tell the assistant to finish a new-book request first. Treat a missing-invoice call as a note plus a time to leave papers, and flag it if the send is this week.

A time to leave papers is ten minutes at the door. A review sitting is you, a folder, and an hour. If the assistant cannot tell them apart, you spend Thursday on people who only needed to drop a bag.

Calls that cannot wait until evening

Three calls on this line do not belong in a digest you read after the send.

Payroll is tomorrow and one employee’s details changed. That is a phone, now. The assistant takes the company name, who is calling, what changed if they offer it, and puts it on a number you actually hold during the run.

The VAT send is stuck, or MyDATA rejected the invoices. Same rule. A note in the evening list is a note you read after the deadline.

AADE has locked the account, or Taxisnet will not let them in. The assistant does not walk them through a reset. It takes the name, the company or individual, and flags the call to a phone.

Write those three as a short list. Everything else can wait for the transcript.

Sitting days, filing days, August

You already know which days you sit with clients and which days you have closed the diary because a send is due. Enter them. On a filing day you still take the phone. You do not take a review sitting. Times to leave papers can still be offered if someone will be at the door.

Sitting days are for first meetings and anything that needs you in the room.

August needs its own dates. Some of you close for two weeks. Some of you leave one person on the books. The published number still rings. Foreign clients keep ringing. Set the closure dates, set who is on the phone, and set the sentence for new books. Do not let the assistant book a review into a week when the office is dark.

What you configure first

1. Individuals, companies, or both, and whether you are accepting new books this month. A firm that is closed to new work should say so on the first call, not after a booked meeting.
2. The individual-or-company question, as a required step.
3. The callback sentence, verbatim: the accountant will call back.
4. E1, payroll and formation as intake-only topics, with the papers you actually want people to bring.
5. Which days are filing days and must not be offered as review meetings, and which days you sit.
6. The same-day phone list — payroll tomorrow, send stuck, account locked — short, to a phone.

Turn on SMS reminders before you turn on anything clever. A document drop that arrives without the folder is an hour you cannot use, and a text is the cheapest way to say what to bring.

Then listen to the first fifty transcripts. You are not listening for warmth. You are listening for the moment it almost named a figure, almost filled a box, or almost treated an individual and a company as the same booking. Those are the only failures that matter on this line, and they are visible in the first week if you read the record.