Most of the features in this article are specific to Fathom Pro - the plan with access to all of Fathom's features. Companies on Portfolio can be upgraded to Fathom Pro at any time.

The suggestions contained within this article will enable you to establish a streamlined workflow for your client onboarding process on Fathom. They work together and can be personalised by you depending on your ideal outcome and how you plan to use Fathom for your clients.

Once implemented, you can:

Save time with future client set-up
Provide effective custom reports
Track industry-specific KPIs
Improve your internal benchmarking

How to create a client onboarding workflow

First, select a company (or companies) to perform an initial company setup within. This company will become a model for future companies.

Depending on how you are going to organise your client onboarding process decides whether you should perform initial company setup within one or more companies. For example, if your client base is split between two main industries, you may want to set up two companies initially with industry-specific KPIs and reports.

Once you have selected your model company:

Create Tag Categories and Tags for your organisation
Customise the company’s Chart of Accounts layout
Make your KPI selection, build any Custom KPIs, and save them to the KPI library
Create and save a custom report template
Share the custom report template

Example onboarding workflow for new companies

Following the setup of your model company or companies, when onboarding a new client, you:

Copy the configured Company Settings from the relevant model company
Tag the new company
Create a report from the shared custom template

Identify companies with Tags

Tags enable you to easily sort and organise your client base on Fathom. They are custom to your organisation and can be created and managed by Admin-level users.

Once allocated, you can filter the Insights Dashboard to view companies with specific tags. This is especially useful for spotting trends and patterns amongst similar companies, which you can then share with your clients.

You can decide which tags you create and group them within custom categories. For example, you could create a tag category titled ‘Industry’ to group tags for each industry you work with e.g. ‘Dentistry’, ‘Property Management’ etc.

To set up tags for your organisation:

Tag a recently onboarded company

When onboarding a new client, you can allocate tags from the ‘My Companies’ page.

To tag a company:

Head to the ‘My Companies’ page
For the company you would like to tag, select the Three dots icon under the Action column
From the drop-down menu select ‘Add/remove tags'
Select ‘Add tag’
Start typing the tag name you would like to add or select it from the list, once selected it will auto-save
Press the ‘X’ next to a tag to remove it.

📝 Note: From this window, you can also select ‘Manage tags’ which will take you to the Tags section of Organisation Settings where it is possible to tag multiple companies at once.

Standardise your client’s Chart of Accounts

Standardising your clients’ Chart of Accounts will enable you to create and use custom KPIs and custom Pro Reports seamlessly across multiple companies. It can be particularly powerful if you work with many clients in a specific industry.

Ways to standardise the Chart of Accounts across clients:

Within the source accounting system

With headings in Fathom

Custom terminology in Fathom

If your clients have matching Chart of Accounts containing accounts with the same name within their source accounting system you can take advantage of this within Fathom.

However, as this is quite rare, we recommend using Fathom’s headings feature to achieve a standardised Chart of Accounts layout.

For companies with matching account names

Within Fathom, if an account name is included in a custom KPI or a custom report template that is then shared or copied to a new company with an account of the same name and classification (e.g., Revenue, Cost of Sales, etc.), the financial results for the new company will auto-populate.

Example: A company has an account named ‘Staff Salaries’ classified as an ‘Expense’. You create a custom report template which includes a chart with ‘Staff Salaries’ as a comparative.

When onboarding a new client, you share this custom report template with them and generate a report from the template. As the new company also has an account called ‘Staff Salaries’ classified as an ‘Expense’, their financial results automatically appear within the chart.

📝 Note: You can view and update a company’s Chart of Accounts, including account classification, within Company Settings.

Group accounts with Headings

Headings are completely customisable and enable you to group a company’s accounts together without affecting the information within their financial data source. Useful if your client’s Chart of Accounts differ from company to company.

If a heading is included within a custom KPI or a custom report template and it is shared with another company, as long as they have a matching heading, the new company’s results will auto-fill. This will work even if the number, names, or classification of the grouped accounts are different.

Example: You create a heading within a company’s Chart of Accounts called ‘Staff Expenses’ and group all associated labour accounts within it. You create a chart within a custom report template which contains the heading (Staff Expenses) as a comparative.

When onboarding a new client, you create a heading of the same name and group their relevant accounts within it. You also share the custom report template with the new company. When you generate a report from the template the chart automatically populates with their financial results.

To create Headings:

Within the ‘Chart of Accounts’ step of a company’s Settings
Hover over a classification line in the Chart of Accounts e.g. ‘Expenses’
Select the ‘Add heading’ option, which will appear to the right

💡Smart Tip: You can also create sub-headings to take the grouping a level deeper.
Type in the name of your custom heading
Hover over the accounts you wish to group and tick the checkboxes which appear to the left
Select ‘move to’ at the top and from the drop-down menu choose your new heading
Click ‘Save changes’ in the top right.

Use Custom Terminology

Terminology is the vocabulary used for financial statement titles, classification names, and financial totals (e.g. Gross Profit). You will see these terms within Pro Reports, the Analysis tools, and Forecasting. They primarily affect financial statements within Pro Reports.

When a company is imported into Fathom, the terminology will be set according to the default terminology allocated within Organisation Settings. You can set this to auto-detection, which will select one of Fathom’s predefined terminologies based on the company type and your organisation’s country, or if you would like to tailor the terms further you can create your own custom terminology.

Example: If you work with multiple Not-For-Profit clients, you can use Fathom’s predefined Not-For-Profit terminology set for these companies. If your client’s company is sourced from Xero, QuickBooks Online, or Sage Business Cloud Accounting you can use the auto-detection option. Fathom will then automatically detect the company’s type on import and allocate the Not-For-Profit terminology.

For a detailed guide on Terminology including how to create your own, visit our ‘Custom Terminology’ article.

Use custom KPIs across multiple companies

Custom KPIs can be added to your organisation’s KPI library by Admin-level users during creation. Once added to the library, KPIs can be shared across multiple companies and added to new companies with ease.

If a custom Formula or Account Watch KPI is added to the KPI Library and includes an account name or a heading and an exact name and classification match is found in the company it is shared to, the results will auto-fill within the new company.

Example: Within a company, you create a Formula KPI named ‘Staff Costs % of Turnover’. You include the heading you created previously and the Revenue classification line from the company’s Chart of Accounts: ‘Staff Expenses/Revenue x 100’. You save it to your organisation’s KPI library.

When onboarding the new client, you select this custom KPI from the KPI library, as you have already created the heading (Staff Expenses) the KPI can be viewed within Pro Reports and the Analysis tools and their results will populate automatically.

When creating a custom Formula KPI that includes a non-financial KPI, the same logic applies. As long as the referenced non-financial KPI is added to the KPI library and copied to another company, when you copy the Formula KPI to that company as well, the results will auto-populate. This is particularly effective if you are tracking industry-specific metrics across groups of clients.

Example: A practice specialising in dentistry clients creates a Formula KPI including a non-financial metric titled ‘Revenue per patient’ (Revenue / Number of Patients) and saves it to the KPI library.

When onboarding a new client, they select the custom ‘Revenue per patient’ KPI from the library. If the two referenced metrics exist within the new company the KPI can be viewed and tracked straight away within Pro Reports and the Analysis tools.

📝 Note: In the case of sharing a custom Formula KPI that includes a non-financial KPI, you will have to upload or input their results within the company’s Settings for them to flow through to the Analysis tools and Pro Reports. For a guide to adding non-financial data to Fathom, see our non-financial KPIs article.

To share custom KPIs across your organisation:

Create custom KPIs within a company’s Settings
Add the KPIs to your KPI library

💡Smart Tip: Custom KPIs can also be created from within the KPI library – handy if you prefer to manage your organisation’s KPIs from one central location.

In the library, you can create folders to organise your custom KPIs. As a practice, you may want to have defined sets of KPIs, for example by industry or service level, which are assigned to a client’s company during onboarding. For more details on KPI library organisation, including folder creation see here.

Add your custom KPIs to a new company

When setting up a client on Fathom you can easily select the desired custom KPIs from the library.

💡Smart Tip: If you would like to set up a company with the same KPI selection as an existing company, including any custom KPIs, you can use our copy settings function.

To add existing custom KPIs to a company:

Within the ‘KPIs’ step of a company’s Settings,
Click ‘create a KPI’
Select the KPI library option
Choose the KPIs you would like to add to the company for tracking
1. You can also select a KPI library folder from the left-hand menu to help speed up the process.

💡Smart Tip: Custom KPIs, including Account Watch, Formula, and Non-Financial KPIs, can be used as comparatives within our Benchmarking tool, enabling you to take your internal benchmarking to the next level, especially if you track industry-specific metrics.

Copy Settings from an existing company

To speed up the setup process of a new client you can copy the configured Settings from an existing company with just a couple clicks.

This can be beneficial if you are hoping to standardise the Chart of Account layouts of your clients, track the same KPIs, and use a common report template.

You can copy the:

Chart of Accounts layout - This includes account classifications, Headings, and Sub-Headings if the account names match the company you are copying from.

KPIs – This will copy a company’s KPI selection made within the KPIs step of Company Settings, this includes both the selected default and any custom KPIs if they have been saved to the KPI library. It also copies their allocated importance and categories.

KPI Targets – as set within the ‘Targets’ section of Company Settings.

Alerts

To copy settings from an existing company:

Head to either the ‘Chart of Accounts’, ‘KPIs’, ‘Targets’, or ‘Alerts’ step of Company Settings
Scroll down to the bottom of the page
Select ‘Copy settings from another company’
Choose the existing company you want to copy settings from by typing in the company name
Check the box next to the area, or multiple areas, of Settings which you would like to copy: Chart of Account layout, KPIs, Targets, or Alerts.
Click ‘copy settings’.

💡Smart Tip: If you are setting up a consolidation in Fathom the ‘copy settings from another company’ option can be a great time saver. For example, custom KPIs can be copied across all the underlying companies, and then once consolidated, their results will aggregate and roll up to the consolidated group level.

📝 Note: If copying settings across tens of companies in a Fathom account, please contact our Support Team at support@fathomhq.com. We may be able to assist you.

Create report templates for your practice

You can easily share a custom Pro Report across multiple companies on Fathom by saving it as a custom template.

If you create and share a report which contains account names, headings, and custom KPIs and a match for any of these is found within the company you share it to, their results will auto-populate.

It is worth investing time in establishing a template—or multiple templates—that you are happy with and that work for your practice, whether you create reports by industry or tailored to the level of service provided.

💡Smart Tip: For inspiration regarding report template creation, visit our article on Tiered Reporting.

💡Smart Tip: Looking for some collateral to assist your discussions on the benefits of Management Reporting and KPI tracking with your clients? Download a one-page resource here to help.

To build your custom report template:

Start by creating a custom Pro Report
When you are happy with your report, save it as a custom template.

Share your custom report template

Once you have saved your custom report template, you can share it across your Fathom companies.

To share a custom template:

Open the Templates section of the Pro Reports centre
Select ‘Custom’
On the template you would like to share, click the Three dots icon
From the drop-down menu, select:
1. ‘Edit template sharing’ - this option enables you to share a template with all your companies and groups, ideal if you are planning to implement a standard report template across your organisation as any newly onboarded clients will automatically have access to the template.
2. ‘Copy to another company’ - to copy to another individual company.

A report can be generated from a custom template in a couple of clicks. Visit our ‘Creating a Custom Report’ article for a how-to.

💡Smart Tip: Watch our Expert Series featuring Patrick Ball from Aprio for more tips on onboarding clients and utilising the standardisation of clients’ Chart of Accounts, KPIs, and reports: ‘Reports with impact: Scaling insights for clients’.

Accountant Tips: Set your clients up efficiently