Every client’s month, closed on time.
Cohesio is the shared workspace for bookkeeping firms and their clients: confirm what a month needs, collect it without a client login, review AI-surfaced evidence with page references, and hand off a signed close. Then the next month drafts itself.
7 days free on the Team plan · No credit card · Whole team included
- Client login required
- None
- Facts without a page reference
- Zero
- Time to first pack
- < 10 min
- Ledger & storage integrations
- 12
Onboarding is a month. Bookkeeping is every month.
Most tools stop at the first upload. Cohesio treats onboarding and the monthly document pack as one recurring cycle — four stages, run in order, every month, from the same template.
Stage 1.0: Confirm what the month needs.
Start every engagement from your firm’s template. Confirm the required items, who owns each one and when it is due — then issue a single link. Your client never creates an account.
- Templates for bookkeeping, payroll support and year-end
- Scope, owners and due dates agreed before anything is requested
- One branded link per engagement, sent from your domain
Required this month6 of 6 enabledToggle a row. Requirements are confirmed by staff from the firm’s template — never inferred by the model.
Engagement- Period
- March 1 – March 31
- Client due
- April 7
- Internal owner
- Jordan Alvarez
- Client contact
- Priya N. · owner
Kickoff tasks- Engagement letter on file
- Chart of accounts mapped
- Confirm sales-tax filing cadence
Nothing is sent until you choose to.Stage 2.0: Collect it without a portal.
Clients open a short checklist on their phone. Answers save as they go, every upload returns a receipt, and reminders stop the moment the pack is complete.
- Photo capture, drag-and-drop, or forward-by-email
- A receipt for every file, so “did you get it?” stops being a question
- Reminders that stop themselves when the pack completes
Lee BookkeepingMarch documentsDue April 72 of 5 complete- Checking account statementReceived · receipt #R-3921
- Credit card statementReceived · receipt #R-3922
- Payroll summaryYour bookkeeper asked for the full month — please re-upload
- Square processor reportPDF, JPG or PNG · up to 20 MB
Photo FileWhat the client sees
- Only their engagement — never another client, never a firm login.
- Plain-language items with the exact format and size accepted.
- Flags from staff read like a note from a person, not an error code.
- Every upload returns a receipt they can find later.
Stage 3.0: Review evidence, not guesses.
Cohesio reads every statement and pins each period, total and account identifier to a source file, page and version. Mismatches surface in a queue split by who is waiting on whom — nothing is auto-accepted.
- Source file, page and version on every candidate fact
- Accept, request a correction, or waive — each with a reason
- Unreadable scans stay unknown; they are never rounded to a match
RequirementsSelect a rowEvidenceMismatch · needs a person- Candidate fact
- Pay period Feb 26 – Mar 25
- Requirement expects
- Full calendar month
payroll-summary.pdf · p.1 · v1The model proposes; a named staff member decides. A mismatch or unreadable source is never silently accepted.
Stage 4.0: Close, hand off, and draft the next.
Close is deterministic: every required item accepted or waived, every task done, the manifest exported to your ledger. Next month drafts itself from the same template.
- Nothing exports until the exception list is clear
- Signed manifest lands in QuickBooks Online or Xero
- Accepted originals mirror to Drive, Dropbox or SharePoint
March 2026Decision manifest- Checking statement — MarchJ. AlvarezAccepted
- Credit card statementJ. AlvarezAccepted
- Payroll summaryJ. Alvarez · after correctionAccepted
- Square processor reportM. ChenAccepted
- New locations / loans / owners?J. Alvarez · no changesWaived
Original files + decision manifest (PDF/CSV)Next cycleApril 2026 · drafted from Template v3- Draft Business bank statement
- Draft Credit card statement
- Draft Payroll summary
- Draft POS report
- Draft Changes this month?
Approved context carries forward. Acceptance does not — April needs April’s evidence.
Then the template drafts next month, and the cycle starts at 1.0 again.
Start at stage 1.0One client, twelve closes.
Follow Riverside Bakery through a year in Cohesio: the first month’s onboarding, the quiet months, the quarter-end, the year-end pack. The same four stages, every time.
An exception
Payroll summary covers Feb 26 – Mar 25, not the calendar month. The model flags the period mismatch with the page reference. A staff member writes one friendly correction request; the client re-exports. Nothing was auto-accepted.
Review & handoffRules that chase, route and close while you review.
Reminder cadences, exception routing, review SLAs and next-month drafting run on plain when / if / then rules. Every run is logged.
Gentle reminder cadence
- WhenPack issued and incomplete
- If3 days before dueClient has not opened in 48h
- ThenSend branded reminder (email + SMS)Stop when pack completes
AI reads and flags. Your team decides.
The category is racing toward “AI coworkers” that act on their own. Cohesio scopes the model to one job — surface evidence a person should look at — and keeps every consequential action with a named human.
Read the trust centerEvery fact has a page
Each extracted fact carries its source file, page and version. The document is the truth — never a filename or a guess.
Unknown stays unknown
An unreadable scan or an impossible date range returns unknown or unresolved. It is never rounded up to a match.
Your staff hold the pen
Only a named team member can accept, request a correction, waive or close — and each action logs who, when and why.
No hidden authority
The model cannot change a recipient, send a message, or follow instructions it finds inside a document.
Fits the stack you already run.
Closed months land in QuickBooks Online or Xero. Accepted originals mirror to Drive, Dropbox or SharePoint. Exceptions post to Slack or Teams. Everything else goes through Zapier, Make or the API.
- QuickBooks OnlineLedger
- XeroLedger
- Google DriveStorage
- DropboxStorage
- SharePoint & OneDriveStorage
- SlackCommunication
- Microsoft TeamsCommunication
- GustoPayroll
Built for financial documents from day one.
Your clients' statements deserve more than a shared drive. Cohesio quarantines and scans every file, isolates each client to their own engagement, and records every consequential action in an immutable audit trail.
Trust & security
Quarantine & malware scanning
Every upload is scanned before conversion or review.
Client & engagement isolation
Client links are scoped to one engagement. No firm-wide login exists for clients.
Immutable audit trail
Accept, correction, waiver and close are logged with actor, time and reason.
SSO & role-based access
Google Workspace and Microsoft Entra sign-in; roles decide who can invite, review, waive and export.
What the category promises, what small firms report, and how Cohesio is different.
We read the public pages and reviews of thirteen client-portal and practice-management tools. The gaps are consistent — and they are the product.
Review themes are summarized from public reviews and comparison sites; quotes and sources are on the comparison pages. See how Cohesio compares
How many hours does the chase cost you now?
Adjust the sliders to your firm. Then start a trial and measure the difference on your own clients.
- Follow-up touches
- 375
- Per client
- 1.5 h
- Per year
- 450 h
This is your own arithmetic, not a savings claim. Firms on Cohesio replace this chase with one batched monthly ask, automatic receipts, and a queue split by who’s waiting on whom — run a real month with your own clients during the free trial to see the difference on your numbers.
Common questions, answered plainly.
Most firms issue their first monthly pack within ten minutes: import clients from a CSV or QuickBooks Online, pick a template, confirm the requirements, and send one link. There is nothing to install on the client side.
No. Each client opens a branded link scoped to their current engagement. They can upload from a phone camera, drag files from a laptop, or forward an email. Cohesio issues a receipt for every file.
Nothing. It reads each document, extracts periods, totals and account identifiers, and pins each fact to a page. A named reviewer accepts, requests a correction or waives. If a scan is unreadable the result is unknown, not a guess.
QuickBooks Online and Xero sync clients and periods, and receive the closed month’s manifest and originals. Google Drive, Dropbox and SharePoint mirror accepted files. Slack, Teams, Zapier, Make and a REST API cover the rest.
Pick Workspace, Team or Scale, or do nothing. Trials expire without charging a card, and you can export every file and manifest for 30 days afterwards.
Run next month in Cohesio.
Set up your first client and monthly pack in under ten minutes. Free for 7 days on the Team plan — no credit card, cancel anytime.