It's the 6th. Four clients have sent nothing.
Obtainr chases your clients for the records you need — from your own mailbox, in your name — and checks what arrives against what you asked for, so the month closes when the paperwork is complete rather than when you give up.
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What you're actually waiting on
Bookkeeping is not an annual problem, which is what makes it a different job from the one your accountant does. It's the same chase, every month, for the same records, from the same people:
- Bank statements for every account, for the month, in a format that isn't a photograph of a screen
- Purchase receipts for the card transactions nobody can identify
- Sales invoices raised outside the system, on a pad, in a van
- Supplier invoices for the payments already showing in the feed
- Petty cash records, or an admission that there aren't any
- Mileage logs before the VAT return, not after it
- The paperwork for the thing they bought on finance and mentioned in passing
It's low-value, high-frequency, and it never stops. You can't charge properly for it, you can't skip it, and the client experiences your reminders as nagging — which is a relationship cost you pay every single month.
The cost isn't the chasing. It's the twelve times a year.
A conveyancer chases hard for six weeks and the matter completes. You chase the same twelve clients forever. That changes the economics completely: a task that takes ten minutes a client a month is a fortnight of your year, and it's the fortnight you'd have spent on work you can actually bill.
It also changes the tone. You can be firm with someone once. Being firm with the same client every month for three years is how you lose them.
The client who always forgets
Not being difficult, just running a business. Needs a specific, cheerful, unembarrassing prompt naming one thing.
Their staff
The person who actually has the receipts often isn't the person who signed your engagement letter.
Their suppliers
Sometimes the missing invoice has to come from a third party the client hasn't chased either.
The client's own accountant
At year end, wanting things from you and from the client at the same time, on a deadline nobody set together.
Obtainr sends an ordinary email from your ordinary mailbox. It works on anyone with an email address, whether or not they've ever heard of us. There is nothing for them to join.
How it runs on your work
Describe the chase the way you'd brief a junior
“Get March bank statements for both accounts, receipts for anything over £50 on the card, and the mileage log from Fenwick Joinery.” Obtainr asks which accounts, what format works, and whether photographs are acceptable — then holds each month's reply to that list.
It goes out from your mailbox
Gmail or Outlook, connected once with OAuth. Your address, your signature, your existing thread. Replies land in your inbox where you'd expect them. Nothing is relayed through a third-party sending domain, and there's no "sent on behalf of" header.
They get a link and a QR code
Every chase carries an upload link and a QR code. Clients photograph a stack of receipts on their phone and send them without an account, a password or an app — which is the only method that survives contact with a builder in a van. Links expire on completion or at 30 days.
The reply comes back, and gets read
If they send one account's statements and no receipts, Obtainr says exactly that and follows up asking for the second account and the receipts, on the same thread. “They've replied” stops meaning “we can start” and starts meaning what it should.
A case, end to end
A client sends a ZIP file on the 9th with “all of it here mate”. It contains February's statements, not March's, and eleven photographs of receipts, three of which are the same receipt.
Obtainr reads the reply against the requirements — March statements for two accounts, receipts over £50, mileage log — reports which of the three are satisfied, and sends a short reply naming the month that's wrong and the two items still outstanding. It does that without you opening the ZIP at all.
You open the job when it's complete. The relationship survives another month.
Where it stops, plainly
Where it stops, plainly. Obtainr is reply-driven. When a reply arrives it reads it and, if your requirements aren't met, sends the next chase. It does not yet follow up on a timer against total silence — if someone never responds at all, the chase waits and you make the call. That's a real limitation and it's on the roadmap. Everything else it doesn't do.
The client who goes properly silent for a month is a client you probably need to ring anyway — and that call is usually about more than the receipts. The volume problem is the partial reply, and that's the one Obtainr handles without you.
Questions bookkeepers ask
How is this different from the reminders in my bookkeeping software?
Those send a fixed reminder on a schedule and stop there. They don't read what comes back, and they can't tell the difference between a client who sent everything and a client who sent February when you asked for March. Obtainr checks each reply against the requirements you set and follows up on what's actually missing, in your words, from your address.
Can I set up the same chase for every client each month?
You describe the chase per client, and because the requirements are yours you can keep them consistent across a portfolio. There's no bulk scheduler yet — each chase is started deliberately, which for a monthly cycle means a few minutes at the start of the month rather than an unattended sequence running against clients you haven't thought about.
My clients are not technical at all. Will they cope?
The QR code is the reason this works. There's no account, no password, no app and no portal. They point a phone camera at the email, tap the link that appears, and photograph the documents. That's the entire journey, and it's the one workflow that survives clients who don't use computers.
Does it work with Xero or QuickBooks?
There's no direct integration today. Obtainr chases people for documents and hands you the documents; posting them is still your job in whichever ledger you use. If you're chasing a client for a bank statement, that's the same chase whatever your bookkeeping software is.
Honest numbers
Small numbers, and real ones. There are no client logos on this page because we haven't earned any yet — here's the full data set.
Obtainr is used for the same problem elsewhere
The document changes. The shape doesn't: you need something from a person who doesn't work for you, and no portal will make them log in.
Conveyancers
See what Obtainr chases for them →
Accountants
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Estate & letting agents
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Mortgage brokers & IFAs
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Recruiters & HR
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Insurance brokers
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Construction
See what Obtainr chases for them →
Try it on this month
14 days free, no card. Pick the three clients who are always late and let Obtainr ask them.
£49 per user per month, with 100 chases included. Billed to the practice.
14 days free · no card · cancel any time