The client service desk: work items, boards and statuses

Set up boards, statuses and work items in Finye so every client request and compliance job has a clear owner, stage and due date.

The client service desk is where the day-to-day work of your practice lives. Every client request, BAS preparation, query from the ATO or internal task becomes a work item that moves across a board through a series of statuses. This guide walks you through setting up boards and statuses, creating and managing work items, and using the kanban and list views to keep nothing from slipping.

Understanding the building blocks

Before you start, it helps to know how the three pieces fit together:

Work item — a single piece of work, such as "Prepare June quarter BAS for Acme Pty Ltd". It has a status, a priority, an assignee, a due date, and can carry comments, attachments, checklists and subtasks.
Board — a collection of work items, usually grouped by team or type of work (for example a Compliance board, a Bookkeeping board, or a Client queries board).
Status — the stage a work item is at. Statuses are the columns on a kanban board and define your workflow, such as To do, In progress, Awaiting client, Review and Done.

Step 1: Create a board

Boards keep different streams of work separate so each team sees only what is relevant to them.

Open the Work items area from the main navigation.
Create a new board and give it a clear name that matches how your team thinks about the work, for example "BAS and IAS" or "New client onboarding".
Decide who the board is for. A small practice may run a single board for everything, while a larger firm often splits compliance, advisory and bookkeeping onto separate boards.

Step 2: Define your statuses

Statuses are the columns your work moves through from left to right. A clean workflow makes it obvious at a glance where every job sits.

Set up the stages your work actually passes through. A common accounting workflow is: To do, In progress, Awaiting client, Ready for review, and Done.
Keep the list short. Five to six statuses is usually enough; too many columns make the board hard to scan.
Use an Awaiting client status if you frequently wait on records or signatures. It separates work you can action now from work that is blocked, which is invaluable when chasing outstanding information before a lodgment deadline.

Step 3: Create a work item

With a board and statuses in place, you can start logging work.

Add a new work item and give it a descriptive title that names the client and the task.
Link it to the relevant client so the work shows up against that client's record.
Set the priority (for example low, normal, high or urgent) so the team can triage at a glance.
Assign an owner. Every work item should have a single assignee who is accountable for moving it forward.
Add a due date. For compliance work, align this with the ATO or ASIC deadline so reminders surface in good time.

Step 4: Add detail with checklists, subtasks and attachments

Work items can hold everything a staff member needs to complete the job without hunting through email.

Checklists — break a job into tick-off steps, such as reconcile accounts, review GST coding, and confirm figures with the client.
Subtasks — split larger jobs into separate trackable pieces when more than one person is involved.
Attachments — store source documents, working papers and correspondence against the item.
Comments — keep an internal discussion thread so the history of the job stays with the work, not in a mailbox.

Step 5: Work the board day to day

The kanban view is built for triage and flow. As work progresses, drag a card from one status column to the next so the board always reflects reality.

Start your day on the board filtered to your own assigned items.
Move cards rightward as they advance, and into Awaiting client the moment you are blocked.
Switch to the list view when you need to sort or scan by due date, priority or assignee. The list view is ideal for a Monday morning workload review or for spotting items approaching a deadline.

Turning client emails into work items

Inbound client emails do not need to be re-typed. With email-to-ticket, messages sent to your monitored address become work items automatically, landing on a board ready to be triaged, prioritised and assigned. This keeps client requests out of personal inboxes and gives every query a status and an owner. If you have AI credits enabled, AI triage can suggest a priority, assignee and category for each incoming request to speed up that first sort.

Tips for a tidy service desk

Make sure every active work item has an assignee and a due date — these two fields drive accountability and reminders.
Review the Awaiting client column regularly and follow up, so blocked jobs do not quietly stall before a deadline.
Keep board names and statuses consistent across the practice so staff can move between boards without re-learning the workflow.

Once your boards are running smoothly, the next step is automating the jobs that repeat every quarter or year. See our guide on projects and recurring work to set up templated jobs such as quarterly BAS, and the compliance engine guide to tie due dates to Australian lodgment obligations. You can start with Finye and have your first board live in minutes.