Search for a CRM for your accounting firm and most of what comes back is either a generic sales CRM built for pipeline stages you do not have, or a full practice-management suite where the client record is buried under workflow, billing, and time tracking you may not need yet. Of the five tools in CurateSuite's catalog that actually hold a client relationship record for an accounting firm, only two are built and sold specifically as a CRM. The rest bundle it into something bigger, and one openly says a CRM is not the right model at all.
This guide sorts those five by that split first, then by price and firm fit, so you can tell whether you are shopping for a dedicated CRM or actually need a bigger practice platform with one built in.
The short answer
- Building a CRM in from scratch, no bigger suite to fold it into: Pixie prices by client count rather than by seat, from $129 a month for up to 250 clients, with the CRM included at every tier.
- Already run tax prep on Drake, ProConnect, or UltraTax: Canopy bundles a CRM with IRS-facing tools and AI checklists from $74 per user a month.
- Want the client record tied to tax organizers clients fill in themselves: TaxDome bundles a client record with pre-filing questionnaires and a branded portal from $800 per user a year.
- Already on Senta: it still runs, but IRIS closed it to new customers in 2024, so it is not something you can buy today. See the note below before you go looking for a demo.
- Do not actually want a client record, want the team's email centralized instead: Karbon builds its client view around a shared inbox rather than a CRM form, from $59 per user a month.
- Need CRM as one piece of a bigger stack, workflow and billing included: the practice management guide compares full suites side by side rather than the CRM piece alone.
What a CRM system for accountants actually needs to do
A CRM for an accounting firm is not chasing a sales pipeline. It is one record per client that holds contact details, engagement history, notes from calls and meetings, and which services that client is signed up for this year. Compare that to a client portal, which is the surface the client sees directly to upload documents and sign engagement letters. A portal and a CRM often live in the same product, but they answer different questions. The CRM answers "what do we know about this client and what have we agreed to do for them." The portal answers "how does the client hand things to us." If your bottleneck is document collection rather than keeping client records straight, the portal guide is the better starting point.
The other thing a CRM accounting software needs to do well is stay current without someone manually updating it. A client record that only gets touched when a partner remembers to log a call is worse than no CRM at all, because staff start trusting a record that has drifted out of date.
Where CRM and accounting software overlap
The five tools here differ in how the client record connects back to the actual bookkeeping software. Senta pulls live data from QuickBooks, Xero, and FreeAgent, so when a client's details change in the ledger, the CRM record updates on its own rather than waiting for someone to notice, a distinction Senta itself markets as live sync. Canopy and TaxDome also sync client and engagement data from QuickBooks and Xero, though neither publishes the same live-sync framing Senta does, so treat their sync behavior as unconfirmed until you check it during a trial. Pixie takes the lightest approach: it connects to Xero and QuickBooks through Zapier rather than a native integration, which works fine for firms that do not need real-time sync but is worth knowing before you assume every field updates automatically.
Karbon sits outside this comparison entirely, since it does not maintain a CRM-style client record to sync in the first place; its client view comes from routed email history instead, discussed below.
Built specifically as a CRM: Pixie and Senta
Two tools in the catalog are tagged and sold as a CRM in their own right, not a module tacked onto a bigger platform.
Pixie
Pixie charges a flat monthly fee by client count instead of per seat, which matters for a firm that wants to add junior staff or admin support without a per-user bill climbing alongside it. The CRM covers client records, contact history, and onboarding, alongside workflow automation, document requests, e-signatures, and a client portal, all included at every tier.
Pricing runs $129 a month for up to 250 clients, $199 for up to 500, and $329 for up to 1,000, with a 30-day free trial. The trade-off is integration depth: Pixie connects to Companies House, Gmail, Outlook, and Zapier natively, but Xero and QuickBooks links run through Zapier rather than a direct connection. Firms that need tight two-way ledger sync should weigh that before signing up.
Senta
Senta built its CRM around live data sync: client records update automatically as figures change in QuickBooks, Xero, or FreeAgent, so nobody has to remember to log the change by hand. Every feature, CRM included, is available on every plan, with no tier gating. Pricing runs about $24 to $30 per user a month depending on billing frequency.
Here is the catch a roundup that only looks at feature lists would miss: IRIS Software Group acquired Senta in 2021 and stopped accepting new customers in 2024. Existing firms keep using it with full support, and IRIS is migrating them onto its broader practice platform on a rolling timeline, but a firm shopping for a CRM today cannot buy Senta at all. Firms comparing alternatives typically land on Karbon or TaxDome, depending on whether the firm's work is mixed compliance and advisory or mostly tax-cycle shaped, though AccountancyManager and Capium are also worth a look for firms that want to stay in the same UK small-firm price range.
CRM bundled inside a bigger practice suite: Canopy and TaxDome
The other two tools with a genuine CRM do not sell it as a standalone product. It is one piece of a larger platform, priced and packaged as part of the whole.
Canopy
Canopy's Standard plan, $74 per user a month billed annually, includes a CRM for client records and engagement notes alongside workflow, a branded client portal, invoicing, payments, and built-in AI that drafts checklists, summarizes email threads, and auto-fills forms. The CRM is not the headline feature here. It is the part of the platform that ties client contact history to the tax-resolution and IRS-integration tools Canopy is actually known for, including direct transcript pulls and notice tracking.
Canopy is US-only, and the modular pricing means a firm buying just the CRM piece still pays for the surrounding suite. It fits firms already running tax prep on Drake, ProConnect, or UltraTax that want the client record connected to those workflows, not firms that only want somewhere to store contact details.
TaxDome
TaxDome folds a CRM into a platform built around the tax-return cycle: client records sit next to workflow templates, a branded portal, e-signatures, and pre-filing tax organizers that clients complete themselves instead of over email. Pricing is annual, from $800 per user a year on the Essentials plan up to $1,200 on Business, with no free trial.
The CRM here is the record that ties together everything else a tax-heavy firm already tracks about a client: which organizer they filled in, which documents are outstanding, and what they were billed last year. Firms outside tax prep, or those wanting to trial before paying a full year upfront, will find less to like.
Karbon: the shared inbox instead of a CRM record
Karbon is the one tool here that explicitly rejects the CRM model. Its own product description states plainly that it is not a CRM bolted onto an inbox. Instead, client emails route into a shared team workspace attached to the open job, so the full conversation history stands in for the notes-and-contact-history record a CRM would otherwise hold.
That is a real design choice, not a missing feature. A firm of five to fifty staff where handovers happen through forwarded emails and hallway updates gets more value from centralized email than from a separate CRM form nobody keeps updated. Pricing starts at $59 per user a month on the Team plan, rising to $89 on Business, with automation rules that move jobs between stages and chase clients automatically for outstanding documents. There is no free trial, so plan to commit before you can try it.
If what you actually want is a structured client record with fields and history rather than a searchable email archive, Karbon is not that tool, by its own description.
How to choose CRM software for accounting firms
Start with what is actually missing today, not what the software category is called.
If your team keeps client details in a shared spreadsheet that drifts out of date within a month, a dedicated CRM like Pixie fixes that directly without asking you to also change how you run workflow or billing. If you already run a full practice suite and the CRM is one gap in it, buying a second, separate CRM creates a second record to keep in sync, which usually makes the drift problem worse rather than better. In that case, look at whether your existing platform (Canopy or TaxDome, if you use either) already includes one before shopping elsewhere.
If the real problem is that client emails live in six different inboxes and nobody can pick up a colleague's file without a briefing, a CRM record will not fix that. Karbon's shared-inbox model addresses that specific problem directly.
For UK firms already on Senta from before the 2024 sign-up freeze, the near-term decision is not which CRM to buy but when to plan the migration IRIS has scheduled, and toward which of its broader practice tools.
For a firm still deciding between a CRM, a client portal, or a full practice suite, the category directory for client engagement and onboarding tools lists every option side by side, and the CurateSuite matchmaker takes your firm's size, budget, and current stack and narrows the list to a short set of matches based on vendor-published specifications, without you having to read five separate product pages first.
Common questions
What is the difference between a CRM and a client portal for an accounting firm?
A CRM is the internal record: contact details, engagement history, and notes on what a client is signed up for. A client portal is what the client sees directly, usually to upload documents, sign engagement letters, and check what is still outstanding. Some tools bundle both; others sell only one.
Do I need a separate CRM if I already use practice management software?
Usually not. Canopy and TaxDome already include a CRM as part of their practice-management suites. Adding a second, standalone CRM on top means keeping two client records in sync by hand, which tends to create more drift than it solves.
Can I still buy Senta?
No. IRIS Software Group acquired Senta in 2021 and closed it to new customers in 2024. Existing Senta customers keep full support while IRIS migrates them onto its broader practice platform on a rolling timeline. Firms shopping for a CRM today should look at Pixie, Canopy, or TaxDome instead.
Is Karbon a CRM?
By its own description, no. Karbon centers on a shared team inbox where client emails, tasks, and deadlines live together, rather than a separate CRM record with fields and history. It suits firms whose main friction is scattered email handovers rather than missing client data.
What does a CRM system for accountants typically cost?
Pixie starts at $129 a month for up to 250 clients. Canopy's CRM comes bundled into its Standard plan at $74 per user a month. TaxDome bundles its CRM into a platform starting at $800 per user a year. Karbon, which does not use a CRM model, starts at $59 per user a month. None of the five publish a price for the CRM piece alone; it is always part of a wider plan.
