Getting Started with Prompt

What Prompt does

Most accounting practices manage client reminders through a mix of spreadsheets, calendar alerts, and manual emails. This works when your client list is small, but it doesn't scale — and it's easy for things to slip through the gaps.

Prompt replaces that process with a single system. You enter your clients once, and Prompt automatically calculates every relevant filing deadline — Corporation Tax, CT600, Companies House accounts, VAT returns, and Self Assessment — based on each client's year-end date and entity type.

When a deadline approaches, Prompt sends reminder emails to your clients on the schedule you've set up, using the templates you've written. If you've enabled the client portal, each reminder includes a link where the client can upload their documents directly. Once all documents are received, the reminders stop automatically.

Step 1: The setup wizard

When you first sign in, Prompt walks you through a short setup wizard. The wizard collects the basic information needed to get your organisation running:

• Practice name — this appears in the Prompt dashboard and is used as the sender name for outgoing emails.
• Contact email — the address clients can reply to if they have questions about a reminder.
• Filing types — you'll choose which types of filing your practice handles. Only the types you activate will generate deadlines and reminders.

The wizard is intentionally brief. You don't need to add clients, configure templates, or set up email sending before you can complete it — those all happen afterwards at your own pace.

Step 2: Connect your email sending provider

Prompt sends reminder emails through Postmark, a transactional email service. By default, emails are sent from a Prompt address, but we strongly recommend setting up a custom sending domain so that reminders arrive from your own practice domain rather than from Prompt's.

To set up a custom domain, go to Settings → Email and follow the DNS configuration steps. You'll add a few DNS records to your domain registrar — typically a DKIM record and an SPF entry — and Prompt will verify the configuration automatically.

Once verified, all outgoing reminders will show your domain as the sender. This improves deliverability and means clients recognise the email as coming from your practice rather than an unfamiliar address.

Step 3: Configure your filing types and reminder schedules

Each filing type in Prompt has its own reminder schedule — a sequence of emails sent at specific intervals before the deadline. The default schedules are designed to work well for most practices, but you can adjust the timing and number of reminders to match how your practice operates.

Go to Deadlines in the main navigation to see all active filing types and their schedules. For each type, you can:

• Edit the reminder schedule (number of steps, days between each)
• Assign a different email template to each step in the sequence
• Deactivate a filing type entirely if your practice doesn't handle it
• Create custom filing types for internal deadlines or non-standard obligations

You don't need to configure templates before activating a filing type — Prompt will use a default template until you create your own.

Step 4: Add your clients

Clients are the core of Prompt. Each client has a year-end date, an entity type, and an email address — and from those three pieces of information, Prompt calculates all of their relevant deadlines automatically.

You have two options for adding clients:

• Add manually — use the Add Client dialog in the Clients section to enter one client at a time. This is the right approach when you're adding a handful of clients or onboarding a new client mid-year.
• Import from CSV — if you're migrating from a spreadsheet or another tool, the CSV import lets you bring your entire client list in at once. You'll map your columns to Prompt's fields, and Prompt will validate the data before importing.

Once clients are in the system, Prompt immediately begins calculating their deadlines. Any client whose deadline is within the reminder window will start receiving emails on the next pipeline run, which happens daily.

Step 5: Set up email templates

Email templates define what your reminder emails say. You can use placeholder variables — like the client's name, the filing type, and the deadline date — so a single template works for your entire client base with the correct details filled in automatically.

Go to Email Templates in the navigation to create your templates. A good starting point is three templates per major filing type: an early reminder, a mid-point chase, and a final urgent reminder. Each should have a different tone that escalates appropriately as the deadline gets closer.

Once your templates are ready, return to the Deadlines section and assign them to the appropriate steps in each filing type's reminder schedule.

Your dashboard is ready

Once you have clients in the system and templates configured, the Prompt dashboard gives you a live view of your practice's compliance status. The upcoming deadlines widget shows what's coming up across your entire client base. The workload forecast helps you spot busy periods weeks or months in advance. The to-do list surfaces items that need your attention today.

From here, Prompt runs automatically every day. Reminders go out on schedule, portal uploads are tracked, and your dashboard reflects the current state of every client — without you having to chase anything manually.