January, and everybody rings at once
In short. For a fortnight the phone carries the same question from every client on the list, and the new client enquiry arrives in the middle of it. Enquiry 360 is an AI receptionist for accountants and bookkeepers. It answers, asks your intake questions in your order, separates a company formation from a payroll change from somebody who has opened a letter from HMRC and panicked, then files each call as a structured record in your own Microsoft Dataverse. It gives no advice. From £99 + VAT a month, and it answers through the working day as well as after it. You can ring 01905 918444 and hear it take a call.
The team is heads down in returns, the calls chasing this year's deadline and the calls that pay for next year arrive in the same fortnight, and the one that mattered gets written on the back of a compliment slip.
The calls that arrive together
A first self assessment, a limited company being set up, a VAT registration. A client wanting to know whether their return has gone in and what they owe. Payroll changes around cut-off: a new starter, a leaver, changed hours, a fortnight of statutory sick pay. Somebody who needs last year's accounts for a mortgage broker by Friday. Records chasing, and clients ringing to say the box is in the post.
They get missed at the same points every year. The third week of January, the day either side of payroll cut-off, and any afternoon when three people are with clients. A missed records chase costs an email. The other kind costs the client.
Triaged and routed before anyone picks up
You set the criteria and it asks against them. A new client enquiry goes to whoever handles new business, a payroll change to the payroll team, a confirmation statement question to the practice manager. Where you have given it a number, it can put an urgent caller straight through. Where you have not, it says so and takes the enquiry instead.
Who is on cover changes in January. Routing is configuration rather than phone system wiring, so a Saturday during the deadline run can go somewhere different from a Tuesday in June, and changing it is an edit rather than a project.
What ends up on the record
Who is calling and which client they are, what the call concerns, what they want doing and when they need it by. Whatever else you would ask, in the order you would ask it, on the eightieth call of the day as on the first.
Where a value has a rule, it is checked against that rule as it is given, and where the form asks for a read-back the caller hears it repeated. A digit wrong in a UTR or a company number is worth catching while the client is still on the phone. An answer it cannot make out is asked again rather than guessed at.
It gives no advice
A client asking whether they can claim something, or what a letter means, has the question taken down properly and passed to somebody qualified to answer it. The judgement stays with your people, which is where the practice's responsibility sits and where clients expect it to be. It quotes no fees and promises no filing dates.
Where it lands, and what you do with it after
Every call becomes a row in your own Microsoft Dataverse, inside your own Microsoft tenant, and that has consequences worth having. Power BI and Excel read it like any other table, and the built-in views and charts are there from the start, so the January question, how many new enquiries came in, what they concerned and which are still open a week later, is a view rather than a piece of work.
Power Automate reaches over a thousand connectors, so an enquiry can land in a shared inbox, post into a Teams channel, raise a task on the January job list, or go into a practice management or accounting package that has an API. The app runs on a phone, so a partner can read the morning's enquiries on the train.
Sign-in is Entra ID and access follows Dataverse roles, so payroll staff and client managers see what you decide they see. Dataverse auditing applies, and the conversation transcript is held against the session, which settles most arguments about what a client actually asked for.
The same intake on screen
Plenty of practices buy this part first. The same questions run in the browser, so whoever answers is walked through them in the same order and cannot skip one, and the record at the end is identical whether the caller spoke to a person or to the assistant.
It is configuration rather than code, so the questions can change the week before the deadline without booking developer time. Some firms start there, get the enquiry sheets consistent, and add the phone once they trust what comes back.
Frequently asked
Will it give clients tax advice?
It takes the question and gets it to somebody qualified to answer it. A client ringing to ask whether they can claim for a home office has the question recorded against their enquiry and gets a call back from one of your people. The judgement stays with your team, and the assistant quotes no fees and promises no filing dates.
Can it tell a new client enquiry from a records chase?
Yes, because it asks. You set the questions and decide what each answer means, so a company formation can go to whoever handles new business while a records chase goes to the practice manager. Both are on the record, with the caller identified, before anybody opens them.
What happens in the third week of January?
It answers all of them, at the same time where it has to. Callers who ring together get separate conversations rather than a queue, and the last caller of the day is asked the same questions in the same order as the first.
Can it take payroll changes?
Yes. A new starter, a leaver, changed hours or a period of statutory sick pay are questions with answers, and you decide which are asked and which are required. The change arrives as a structured record with the client identified, so the payroll run works from a list rather than from three voicemails and a text.
Where does the client data sit?
In your own Microsoft Dataverse, in your own tenant, in the region you choose, under your sign-in and your access controls. It stays under the practice's own retention policy. Call recording is off until you turn it on, and where you point it at your own Azure storage the recordings go there.
Can we report on what came in?
Yes. Every enquiry is a Dataverse row, so Power BI and Excel work on it like any other table and the built-in views and charts are there without anyone building them. The January figures most practices want, how many new enquiries arrived, what they concerned and which are still open, come straight out of that.
Is this an auto attendant with better wording?
No. An auto attendant reads a menu and transfers the call. This holds the conversation: it asks what the enquiry is, takes the detail and routes it to the right person, with everything the caller said written down. Nobody presses a number.
Hear it take a call. Ring 01905 918444. It is a live line, not a recording, and it takes about a minute.
From £99 + VAT a month. Free setup, cancel anytime. Or read where your call data lives and how it compares to an answering service.