Websites for tax advisers: clients and recruitment

When a tax practice talks about its website, the subject is almost always new clients. That is one half of it. The other half is reading from inside another practice: a tax clerk, a qualified accountant, someone about to sit their next professional exam — people considering a move, who look at how you work before they apply.

Why that is not a side issue: an additional client is only worth having if someone is there to do the work. In many practices the constraint is not demand, it is capacity. A website that speaks only to prospective clients is therefore working on the side that is not stuck — and leaving the side that is.

Two audiences, one website

Both groups arrive through the same home page, but they are looking for different things. A prospective client wants to know whether you handle their kind of case, whether you are taking anyone on at all, and how the working relationship actually runs. An applicant wants to know how the work is done here, with whom, under what conditions, and how digital the day really is.

Those questions cannot be answered in one shared piece of text. So the usual compromise — a careers link in the footer with a single paragraph behind it — is not a minor gap. It is a quiet decision not to serve one of the two audiences. It costs nothing in visibility, and it costs the most.

For prospective clients: name what you want to handle

The most common mistake is the complete list. Bookkeeping, payroll, annual accounts, tax returns, business advice — that appears on almost every practice website and distinguishes none of them from the others. It describes the profession, not the practice.

You only become distinguishable once you name focus areas: business start-ups, succession, payroll as a service in its own right, associations, tradespeople, hospitality, online retail, healthcare professionals. Someone searching for "tax adviser start-up Offenbach" is a different person from the owner of a firm with thirty employees — and neither of them can tell from a list of services whether they are in the right place.

In practice: three to five focus areas, a page of its own for each, and four things on every one of those pages.

• The situation clients are typically in when they come to you — in their words, not in statutory references
• What you take on and what stays with the client: cash records, collecting receipts, deadlines, payments
• What the first step looks like and which documents you need for it
• The cases you are not the right address for — that builds more trust than any self-description

Say whether you are taking anyone on

Many practices are currently taking on no new clients, or only selected ones. The website almost never says so. The result is enquiries that have to be turned down, and time lost on both sides — yours in the office, theirs in having to start the search again.

One sentence is enough, and it can be nuanced: not taking anyone on, taking on only within certain focus areas, taking on from a given date, a waiting list. That does not read as unwelcoming, it reads as organised. It is the single piece of information searchers find least often and need most. The only requirement is that someone changes it when the position changes.

How working together actually runs

The question clients really ask is rarely a technical one. It is: how does this work with you? This is where practices genuinely differ from one another — and it is where the fewest websites say anything at all. Use a page of its own to answer what otherwise gets asked in the first meeting.

• How records reach you: paper, scan, photo, upload — and whether the client has to set anything up
• Whether there is a digital route in, who sets up the access, and what remains possible without it
• How often reports are produced, and in what form
• Who the regular contact is, and who covers for holidays or illness
• How quickly an email gets answered — promise only what the practice keeps to
• What still stays with the client, so that nobody is surprised later

A product name on its own answers none of this. What counts for the client is what they have to do, what they get for it, and from when. "You photograph your receipts and we collect them" is an answer; naming a system is not.

For applicants: the page that is most often missing

Qualified staff are scarce in the tax profession, and applicants behave accordingly: they compare before they write. Anyone interested in a position looks at the website first — and as a rule finds a page saying that the practice is looking for reinforcements, plus a general email address.

That page does not fail on tone. It fails because it answers not a single question that decides a move, and because it is interchangeable with the careers page of every other practice in the area. That is the comparison you are in, and it is settled on the basis of what is written there.

What applicants actually want to know

• Hours: full time, part time, flexitime, core hours — and how the pressure of filing season is handled
• Working from home: how many days, from when, a fixed arrangement or a case-by-case decision
• How digital the day is: scanned records or ring binders, one screen or two, mobile working technically possible or not
• Client base: size, sectors, how many clients one person looks after
• Scope of the role: bookkeeping, payroll, annual accounts, own clients — and what gets added after the settling-in period
• The team: how many people, who does the induction, who takes the technical decisions
• Training: whether exam preparation is paid for and time is given for it
• A salary figure, or at least a range — its absence is itself a statement

Then there is the route to applying. A form with mandatory fields, a compulsory upload and a required cover letter costs you exactly the applications that get written at half past ten in the evening from a job someone has not yet left. A named person’s address, a statement of who replies and within what period, and an explicit note that no cover letter is needed will do more than any applicant management system.

Give every open position a page of its own, too, rather than one combined listing. A page per role can answer a specific search for job title plus location, can carry structured data for job postings, and can be sent to someone without them having to hunt for it. A combined listing can do none of that.

Which page serves whom

The split is unspectacular, but it decides whether both audiences are served at all. As a guide to the structure:

Professional conduct rules: tighter than ordinary advertising

What a tax practice may say publicly about itself is governed by the German Tax Advisory Act and the professional code. The standard is factual information about your professional activity. The risk area is claims about success — statements about results achieved — promotional superlatives, and comparison with named colleagues.

For the website that means, above all: no figures about outcomes, no wording that holds out a result, no side-by-side comparison with other practices. This is no loss. The sentences that make a practice distinguishable are the factual ones anyway — focus areas, process, contacts, whether you are taking anyone on. The same applies to the second audience: a careers page that does without superlatives and describes the working conditions instead is the more credible one.

What to prepare before commissioning the work

The timeline of a website project almost never depends on the technology; it depends on content and approvals. Settling the following points before the first meeting shortens the project noticeably — and makes the quote more precise, because the scope is then fixed:

1. 01Decide whether, and for what kind of work, you are taking on new clients. A pause on new clients is information, not an admission
2. 02Settle on three to five focus areas to carry the website — based on what you want to handle in future, not on what happens to be on the books
3. 03Note bullet points for each area: the typical starting situation, what you take on, what stays with the client. It does not have to be finished copy
4. 04Describe the working relationship in the order a client experiences it: first meeting, documents, how records reach you, reports, contact, cover
5. 05List the open positions, and for each: duties, working pattern, home-working arrangement, induction, training, who replies to applications and within what period
6. 06Write down how the practice actually works, including whatever still runs on paper. A flattering description gets found out at the interview at the latest
7. 07Assemble the details for each qualified professional: designation, responsible chamber, specialist titles exactly as conferred, focus areas, languages
8. 08Schedule photographs of the team and the offices — or decide deliberately against imagery and work with typography and a clear structure
9. 09Establish which mandatory professional disclosures belong on the site, and name one person who signs copy off
10. 10If a website already exists, list its addresses. After the switch that list cannot be reconstructed, and without it you lose everything that was previously being found

Frequently asked questions about tax practice websites