AxisIQ for CA, CS and legal practices

AxisIQ runs a CA, CS or legal practice: clients with GSTIN and PAN, compliance retainers, staff timesheets, fee invoices and TDS. It doesn't file returns.

AxisIQ gives chartered accountant, company secretary and legal practices one live workspace to run the practice itself: clients with their GSTIN and PAN, recurring monthly and annual compliance engagements set up as retainers, the work behind them as tasks with due dates and owners, staff timesheets by client, and fee invoices with GST and the TDS clients deduct. It starts from the Agencies & Professional Services template, set up at signup, and Ask Axis adapts it to your practice. To be clear about the boundary: AxisIQ manages your firm's work and billing — it does not file returns or compute tax for your clients.

AxisIQ workspace for AxisIQ for CA, CS and legal practices

Where a practice's operations break

A growing CA or CS firm is a deadline machine. Fifty clients on monthly GST, quarterly TDS returns, advance tax reminders, ROC filings, tax audits in September, ITRs in July — the work is predictable to the day, and it still runs on a shared Excel tracker, a partner's diary and a WhatsApp group per client chasing the purchase register. When an article leaves, the tracker's knowledge of who owes what leaves with them.

Fees are the second problem. Retainer fees are agreed once and invoiced irregularly. Nobody knows that one client's "simple" monthly compliance takes three times the hours of another's at the same fee, because staff time is never logged against clients. Receipts come in after the client deducts TDS under 194J, and the firm's own books are, ironically, the last ones done.

How the template covers it

  • Client holds the name, industry, GSTIN, PAN, account owner (the partner or manager responsible), billing email, payment terms, status and client-since date; Contact holds the people — the promoter, the accountant who sends the data, the person who approves your fees.
  • Retainer is the recurring compliance engagement: scope ("Monthly GST and TDS compliance", "Monthly bookkeeping"), monthly fee, hours included, overage rate, start and renewal dates, billing day and status. Each sits on an Engagement with service line audit & tax or legal, a manager and budget hours.
  • Task is a piece of work with an assignee, due date, priority and status — including blocked for the client who hasn't sent their data and client review for the draft computation awaiting sign-off. Annual and one-off assignments such as a statutory audit or a due diligence or a registration can bill on a Milestone instead, and a flow drafts the invoice when the milestone is approved.
  • Team member covers partners, consultants, associates and analysts with cost and billing rates and weekly capacity; Timesheet entry logs hours per client engagement by activity, including audit fieldwork and client meetings. Hours against a retainer's fee is client-level profitability.
  • Invoice carries the billing basis, taxable value, GST and SAC and prints as the template's GST Tax invoice PDF; Payment records TDS deducted and TDS section, so your own 26AS reconciliation starts from your records.

Calendar is switched on for client meetings and booking pages; Messaging sends reminders to clients through your own email, SMS or WhatsApp provider account (WhatsApp through Meta-approved templates); the Knowledge Base holds your firm's SOPs and checklists for the team and for Ask Axis to search.

What to ask Ask Axis to add

  • "Add a compliance task type: client, compliance (GSTR-1, GSTR-3B, TDS return, advance tax, ITR, ROC annual filing), period, due date, assigned to, status, filed on, acknowledgement number."
  • "Add CIN, date of incorporation and entity type (company, LLP, partnership, proprietorship, trust) to clients."
  • "Add a widget for compliance tasks due in the next seven days by assignee."
  • "Add a matter type for the legal practice: client, forum, case number, next hearing date, counsel."
  • "Show me fee billed against hours logged per client for the last quarter."

Ask Axis changes the live workspace under your permissions and asks before anything destructive. See Ask Axis. Two Forms come ready — Start a project for new enquiries and How did we do? for client feedback — and the example data clears in one click from Settings → Industry template.

One honest limit

AxisIQ does not connect to the GST, income tax, TRACES or MCA portals, does not prepare or file returns, and does not compute tax for your clients. It tracks who in your firm owes which filing by when, records the acknowledgement once filed, and bills the fee; the filing happens in your existing return-filing software and the government portals.

FAQ

Is AxisIQ practice management software for CA firms? Yes, in the sense of running the firm: clients, recurring engagements, staff tasks and timesheets, fee invoicing and receipts. It is not tax or return-filing software.

Can AxisIQ track GST and TDS compliance due dates for all clients? Yes, as tasks with due dates and assignees, or as a dedicated compliance type Ask Axis adds on request; the filing itself happens outside AxisIQ.

Can we store client GSTIN and PAN? Yes. Both are fields on every client record, alongside contacts, payment terms and the partner responsible.

How do we bill monthly retainer fees to compliance clients? Each retainer carries a monthly fee and billing day; finance raises retainer invoices from it, with GST and SAC, and records TDS when the client pays.

Can we see which clients take more time than their fee covers? Yes. Staff log time per client engagement, so hours and billable value against the retainer fee is one query or one dashboard widget.

Start with the Agencies & Professional Services template — or see AxisIQ in action. Back to AxisIQ for agencies & professional services.