Getting Started Guide

Once you've created your Keeper account, follow this guide to get your practice set up and learn how to run a close in Keeper!

If you prefer to play around but want to make sure you got everything, you can also head to the Recap Checklist at the bottom of this page to make sure you got through everything important.

If you have any teammates, you can invite them by going to your Practice Settings (1) and clicking 'Manage Users' (2).





Follow these instructions to set up your whitelabeled client portal (i.e., customize your branding + have it live on your domain). In the same location, you can also integrate your practice email to send emails to your clients directly through Keeper.

If you don't enable whitelabeling, your client portal will live at keeper.app/client and emails will come from [email protected].

Once you've set up you're practice, you're ready to dive into a close.

The Close page is the core of most of Keeper's functionality. It's where all your tasks, reports, and client communication live.

You can get to a client's close page by clicking their name on the Client List.

If you use Class, Location, or Customers/Projects, you should enable those in your client's File Settings (the gear icon on the left, next to your client's name). This will allow you to run custom reports like Class Inconsistency and Expenses without a Customer.

The core of a close is the month-end tasks you do and reports you run in Keeper.

There are two types of tasks in Keeper: Closing Tasks and Non-Closing Tasks.

All Keeper tasks live in sections, and each of these sections live across all of your clients. That means if you add a section, it will show up in every client, and if you delete a section, it will be deleted from every client.

Reports are designed to help you review the data in your client's books. Keeper has lots of different reports. Here's a few examples:



Interactive Demo

This demo shows how to use Keeper's Expense Inconsistency Report:

All reports have Exclusion Lists to help you fine tune what shows up in them. So for example if Amazon always shows up as inconsistent, you can configure the Expense Inconsistency report to exclude Amazon transcations.

Within a report, you can always click the More Information Button to drill down and find more info on a transaction. Clicking this button will open up a detail pane that shows similar historical transactions, line item information, and attachments.



Communicating with your clients is one of Keeper's core features. You ask questions from their close page, and they'll respond to them (or ask you questions) in your Client Portal.

There are four pieces to client communication:

Interactive Demo

This demo shows how to add questions to your client's portal and email them a notification:



Asking questions

From any transaction in any report, you can ask questions by clicking the Ask Client button, typing your question, and adding it to the Client Portal. Once it's in the Portal, your client can see and respond to it.

However, we do not automatically email your client about new questions. That way, you can ask as many questions as you want, and then send one email about all of them.

If you want to ask your client a question that is not related to a transaction, you can do this from the Non-Transaction Questions report in the Client Questions section. You can even set these up to be recurring - e.g., for bank statement requests.



Setting up and emailing your contacts

To access your Client Portal functionality, go to the tab in the top left that says Client Portal.

Here, you'll be prompted to add a contact. Contacts are the people you communicate with for each client. You can have multiple contacts for each client, and you can have contacts with access to multiple client files.

If you want your contacts to receive weekly or monthly email reminders about outstanding, unanswered questions, check the box that says Reminders Enabled.

Once you have added a contact, head over to the Client Emails tab. This is where you can manually email your contacts. You can use our default templates, or you can edit them and create your own.

Here we recommend sending the Intro Email template to introduce your clients to their new Client Portal.



Previewing what your client sees

On the Contacts tab of the Client Portal modal, click the Preview button to see what your clients will see before you send them an email.

Handling client responses

Once your client responds, you'll see their answer in the reports in the Client Questions section.

If it's a transaction question, you can reclassify the transaction directly from Keeper. You can also append the client's answer to the memo, or respond if you need more information – just by clicking the client's answer.

Once you have made all the changes you need, you should mark the question resolved by checking the box next to their response. This will archive the question from Keeper and hide it from your Client Portal.

That's it for the close - now onto the Management Reports!

Keeper's Reporting section is where you can generate month-end management reporting packages for your clients. You can get here by clicking the Reporting tab from the Close page.

Before sending out any financials to your clients, there are a few practice-level settings we recommend configuring.

For each client, you can:

Learn more about the Management Reports here: Management Reports.

Once you're ready, you can deliver the Management Report package by clicking Publish. This will let you print the package as a PDF, email it to your client, or upload it directly to the Client Portal.

Whew that's a lot to go through! If you feel good about these five things, you should be well on your way to streamlining your closes in Keeper: