Connecting Microsoft 365 and Google email into your practice workflow
Wire your firm's Microsoft 365 or Google mailbox into Finye so client emails become tracked work items, with clear controls over what stays private.
Most accounting practices still run client requests through a shared inbox. A client emails to ask about their BAS, the email gets read on a phone, half-actioned, then buried under twenty newer messages. Nothing is assigned, nothing is tracked, and the only record that the request ever existed lives in someone's memory. Connecting your firm's mailbox to a service desk fixes that. This guide explains how to connect Microsoft 365 email to your practice workflow in Finye, how the same approach works for Google Workspace, and exactly what stays private when you do.
Why route client email through a service desk
An inbox treats every message the same. A service desk does not. When you connect microsoft 365 email to your practice and route inbound client mail into Finye, each email becomes a work item on a board: it gets a status, an assignee, a priority, a due date, and a complete history of who did what. You can see at a glance which client requests are sitting unanswered, which are waiting on the client, and which are done.
For an Australian firm juggling BAS and IAS lodgments, ASIC review dates and income tax returns across a full client base, that visibility is the difference between a calm quarter and a scramble. The mailbox stops being a black hole and becomes a tracked queue your whole team can work from. New staff can pick up an in-progress request without forwarding chains, and partners can review workload without asking anyone to read out their inbox.
How email-to-ticket works in Finye
Finye's email-to-ticket feature turns inbound client emails into work items automatically. When a client emails the address you have connected, Finye creates a work item on the board you choose, captures the subject as the title, the body as the description, and any attachments as files on the item. Replies from the client thread back onto the same work item, so the full conversation stays in one place rather than scattered across mailboxes.
Because the message lands as a real work item, everything else in the platform applies to it. You can assign it to a team member, set a priority, add it to a checklist, break it into subtasks, or move it through your status workflow from open to in progress to resolved. Comments let your team discuss the request internally without the client seeing the back-and-forth.
If you have AI credits enabled, AI triage can read an incoming email and suggest a priority, an assignee and a category, so a quarterly GST query is sorted from a same-day deadline before anyone has opened it. None of that automation is required, but it removes the manual sorting that eats the first hour of every morning. You can read more about how the boards and workflows fit together in our guides.
Connecting Microsoft 365 and Google Workspace
The setup is the same idea for both providers. You point client mail at the address Finye monitors, choose the board where new work items should land, and confirm a few defaults such as the status new items start in and whether AI triage runs on arrival.
There are two common patterns. The first is to use a dedicated shared address, such as a general enquiries or client services mailbox, and connect that to Finye. The second is to forward selected mail from an existing Microsoft 365 or Google Workspace mailbox into Finye. Many firms start with a single shared address so the change is contained, then expand once the team is comfortable working from boards instead of the inbox.
A few practical tips for Australian firms:
- Pick the right board. Send general client mail to a client service desk board, and keep specialised work such as onboarding or compliance on their own boards so nothing gets lost.
- Set sensible defaults. Decide the starting status and default priority for emailed-in items so the queue is consistent from day one.
- Tell clients the address. Put the connected address on your engagement letters and email signatures so requests arrive where they can be tracked, not in a partner's personal inbox.
- Use the portal for documents. For anything involving sensitive files, point clients to the secure client portal to upload, rather than emailing attachments around.
What stays private
Routing email through a service desk does not mean exposing everything to everyone. Only mail sent to the connected address becomes a work item. Your team's individual mailboxes are untouched, and personal or internal email never flows into Finye unless you deliberately forward it.
Inside a work item, internal comments are visible to your staff only. They are how your team discusses a client matter without the client reading along, which matters when you are working through something delicate like an overdue lodgment or a Div 7A question. Finye is also multi-tenant and tenant-isolated, so your firm's data is separated from every other practice on the platform. Access within your firm is governed by roles and permissions, and the whole environment sits behind enforced MFA so a connected mailbox is not a soft entry point.
If you would rather keep certain conversations entirely out of the service desk, you simply do not route that address into Finye. The connection is opt-in per mailbox, so you control exactly which slice of your email becomes tracked work and which stays in your ordinary inbox.
Getting started
Connecting your mailbox is one of the highest-leverage changes a growing practice can make. It turns an unaccountable inbox into a queue you can manage, measure and hand off, without changing how your clients email you. Pair it with the boards, time tracking and compliance tools your firm already needs and the service desk becomes the single place client work lives.
If you are weighing it up, take a look at how the pieces fit together on our pricing page, or create an account and connect a single shared mailbox to see your first client email arrive as tracked work.