The spreadsheet of mysteries
Every month the bookkeeper exports the lines they cannot code: a card payment to a name nobody recognises, a transfer in from a personal account, three payments to the same supplier with no bill. They paste them into a spreadsheet, add a column called 'please explain', and email it.
The client replies a week later. Some answers are in the spreadsheet, some are in the email, one says 'the Amazon ones are stock except the one in March' and there are four Amazon lines in March. The rest are left blank. Next month the unanswered ones roll onto a new sheet with this month's.
Why client queries pile up
The format suits the firm, not the client. A spreadsheet attachment is hard to fill in on a phone, which is where most owners read email. Questions without context, a date, an amount and a cryptic bank reference, need the client to go and look something up, so they put it off.
Then the answers come back in forms that need interpreting and retyping. Nobody tracks which queries are old, so a payment from six months ago still sits in suspense because the question was lost somewhere in a thread.
This is different from asking for documents. Chasing receipts and statements is one job; getting a person to explain a line in their bank account is another, and it needs a different kind of question.
What the unanswered queries cost
Suspense balances distort the client's figures, and queries left until year end become harder to answer because nobody remembers. Bookkeepers spend time formatting, emailing and matching answers instead of coding. Managers cannot see how many queries are outstanding across the firm or which clients are worst.
| Query format | Client effort | Bookkeeper effort |
|---|---|---|
| Spreadsheet by email | High, needs a laptop | High, answers retyped |
| List in the email body | Medium | High, answers scattered |
| Line-by-line page on the phone | Low, tap and type | Low, answers arrive structured |
How we build a client query page
- The bookkeeper marks lines as queries in the ledger, or the system picks up anything posted to suspense or left unreconciled past a set age, reading through the Xero or QuickBooks API.
- Each client gets a secure page with their open queries, one per card, showing date, amount, payee and any hint the bank provided.
- The client picks from simple answers you define, such as stock, personal, owed to me, or 'here is the receipt', and can add a note or photo.
- Answers flow back to the bookkeeper as a list, each attached to its transaction, with a suggested account where the answer makes one obvious.
- Reminders go on a schedule for queries still open, and old queries are flagged to the client manager.
- A firm-wide view shows open queries by client and age, so you can see who is stuck and why.
Where a model helps, it suggests the likely answer from the client's history, for example a supplier the client has used before, and shows it as a suggestion the client confirms. It never posts a transaction on its own.
Queries that come back answered
Clients answer on their phone in a few minutes while they remember, rather than setting aside an evening for a spreadsheet. Bookkeepers get answers linked to transactions and post them quickly. Suspense stays small month to month, and year end stops being the moment when a year of mysteries has to be solved at once.
Recognise this?
- You send clients a spreadsheet of unexplained transactions each month.
- Answers come back in the email body and have to be matched by hand.
- Suspense balances grow through the year.
- Old queries are carried forward rather than answered.
- You do not know how many queries are open across the firm.