The monthly ritual every bookkeeper hates
It's the 5th of the month. You need January's bank statements from 15 clients. You send 15 emails. Three reply the same day. Four reply after a follow-up on the 10th. Three more need a second follow-up. Five don't respond until you call them.
This happens every single month. The bookkeeper becomes a document chaser instead of doing actual bookkeeping.
The problem isn't your clients. They're busy running their businesses. The problem is that email is a terrible system for recurring document requests.
Why email doesn't work for this
Email lacks three things that make document collection work: structure, visibility, and accountability.
No structure. Your email says "please send January bank statements." The client replies with a PDF of their credit card statement, not their bank statement. Or they reply to the wrong thread. Or they send it to your personal email instead of the firm inbox.
No visibility. You have no dashboard showing which clients have submitted and which haven't. You're checking 15 email threads individually or maintaining a spreadsheet tracker that's out of date by the time you update it.
No accountability. If a client doesn't respond, there's no automatic follow-up. You either remember to chase them or you don't. There's no escalation path.
A better system: intake links with built-in follow-up
Instead of emailing each client, give them a dedicated intake link. The client clicks the link, sees a professional branded form, uploads their documents, and submits. No login required.
On your end, every submission appears in your dashboard organized by client workspace. You see at a glance which clients have submitted and which are overdue.
Here's how this works in EasyRequests:
One workspace per client. Your workspace for "Acme Corp" has a permanent intake link. Every month, you share the same link (or embed it in your client portal). The client knows where to go.
The form tells them exactly what you need. No ambiguity. The Document Request template includes fields for document type, reporting period, file upload, and notes. Clients can't send the wrong thing because the form guides them.
Automatic notifications. When a client submits, you get an email and a Slack notification (if connected). When they don't submit, escalation timers can send automatic reminders before you have to manually follow up.
Clients can track their own status. Every submission gets a tracking page. If a client wants to know whether you received their bank statements, they check the tracking link instead of emailing you "did you get it?"
What about Slack and other integrations?
If your firm uses Slack internally, EasyRequests sends rich notifications with request details directly to your Slack channel or DM. You can even approve or reject document submissions from Slack without opening the dashboard.
For firms with more complex setups, outbound webhooks fire on every event (submission, approval, rejection) with signed payloads. The REST API lets you build custom integrations. And Zapier connects EasyRequests to your accounting tools — route approved documents to Google Drive, notify a channel in Teams, or log submissions in a spreadsheet automatically.
The math on time saved
If you spend 10 minutes per client per month on document follow-ups, and you have 20 clients, that's over 3 hours/month spent chasing documents. Over a year, that's almost 5 full working days lost to email threads about bank statements.
A structured intake link with automatic reminders eliminates most of that. Not all of it — some clients will always need a nudge. But the system nudges them for you.
Get started
The Free plan gives you 1 workspace with file uploads, notifications, and a tracking page. Set up a Document Request workspace for your most forgetful client and see the difference. No credit card required.