CPA Websites Marketing Tips

Every CPA needs a system in place for managing client appointments. Most of the time this is a time consuming and expensive process. It doesn’t have to be. Here is a great new way to automate your accounting firm’s appointment bookings through your website (similar to airlines and hotels) using ebookaplace.com.

Everfree and More. The first level of pricing is free forever. That level includes one user and 10 booking requests per day. If you are a smaller CPA firm just starting out then this level could work very well for you.

Cost Savings. The cost savings more than pays for itself within the other levels. Especially considering the costs of hiring someone to help manage your bookings. If you do these yourself, there is the value of your own time and being able to free up towards billable hours instead.

Respond now with an email to michael@ebookaplace.com. The first 6 to respond and mention this blog post get a Standard Account (usually around $30 a month) free for two years!

How Ebookaplace Works. At a very basic level it offers a calendar system where clients book appointments with any of your CPA firm staff. The system also offers much more. There is a ton of flexibility that allows for multiple configurations depending upon your needs. There is also enough integration to easily use it within some of your existing work flow.

Live Example. Johnson, Harris, and Goff currently use the system. They have a link to appointments off of their accounting website navigation. When a client clicks through to the they get a calendar listing available dates. Clicking on the date then gives them possible times. They pick a time, register/login, and confirm.

You also have the option of placing the appointment calendar on any page of your accounting website. Ebookaplace.com generates the code to use so all you have to do is copy and paste it onto any website page.

Updates Easily Made. Running behind schedule? Appointment updates are easily  made from your phone at anytime. Doing any updates automatically sends an email to the meeting participants.

Google Calendar and Outlook. Ebookaplace integrates with Google Calendar which is included if you are using the Workteam Collaboration Suite. Really handy is the ability to manage the account within Outlook. Immediate integration with these popular services makes it easy to have the service work with your existing workflow.

There are times when working directly with a client on the phone or face to face is critical. Finding the best time to meet is one case where it is much easier and more efficient to use a service like ebookaplace.com instead.

Have you thought about using a booking service for your appointments? What features have you found the most appealing? Share in comments below.

If you have the Workteam Collaboration Suite included with any website hosted by CPA Site Solutions you have the ability to add an appointments page. There is a previous post on this added functionality. Here is an easy way to set up appointments pages with multiple people in your accounting firm.

Firm Calendar

Set-up the calendars. First take a moment to set up each of the member’s calendars to share. There is a calendar help section on this if you need it.

Add the appointment pages. After you set-up the calendars add an appointment page for each person. There is also a appointment help section on how to add and set-up the appointment page if you need it.

Unlike some of the other pages when you add an appointment page it is still available to add again. This means you can add as many as you have people in your firm.

Change the navigation and file name.

Rename the pages. Since all of the appointment pages have the same name when you add them to your website you need to rename each page. In the example here there are three different pages named for the person whose calendar is being displayed. What you name the page is what shows in your navigation.

Be sure to also change the file name. For this example the file names were changed from custom1.php to the first letter of the person’s name and appointments. So Peter’s appointment page became pappointments.php. You can use your own naming convention as long as each page name is unique.

Move each page below the hub page.

Add a hub page. Add a hub page with pictures renaming this with something like “Firm Calendars.” Make sure the name is relatively short as this is what is going to show in your navigation area.

Move all appointment pages. Move all of your appointment pages as a sub-page of the hub page you just created. Now when you mouse over “Firm Appointments” each page in the main navigation area, each person’s calendar page shows as an option.

If you click on the appointment page then each page is listed. When you click on a person’s page you are brought to their calendar.

Special notes. When you get an email from the person requesting an appointment you have to manually update your calendar. Once you update your calendar though the appointments page on your website is also updated.

You cannot change the picture being displayed in the hub page. You can change the header area to a custom header and show a personal picture as what shows in the example.

Use custom images in the header.

It doesn’t take too long to complete and, if you are at the Gold level, you can request that a designer do the work for you. You can do this by calling 800-896-4500 or emailing support@cpasitesolutions.com.