Ask a practice where the time goes and the honest answer is often the chase. Not the accounts, not the returns — the weeks spent asking for records and then finding them again.
Email is a poor filing system
It was not designed to hold client records, and it shows:
- Attachments live in threads rather than against the client
- Nobody but the recipient knows what has arrived
- There is no reliable record of what was asked for
- The same document gets sent three times and none of them are current
What a portal changes
Give each client their own office and the material lands where it belongs. Documents attach to the client record. Requests are tracked rather than remembered. The history is there without a search.
The practical effect is that the chase becomes visible: you can see what has arrived and what has not, without opening a mailbox.
It also helps the client
Clients dislike the chase as much as you do. A single place to see what has been asked for, and to put things, removes most of the friction on their side too.
The add-on argument
A portal is most useful when it runs off the client list you already keep. Practice Hub UK builds Client Portal as an add-on to Practice Manager for exactly that reason — one client record, no second list to keep in step.