What people search for in client portal and onboarding software

Which category terms carry the most searches?

"Making tax digital software", with 3,700 searches a month across the eight markets. "Practice management software for accountants" follows with 1,590 and "secure portal for clients" with 1,400, while "client portal software" itself draws 970.

The most-searched terms name a job rather than a kind of portal. "Making tax digital software" draws 3,700 searches a month across the eight markets, more than twice the 1,590 for "practice management software for accountants", the next largest term. "Secure portal for clients" names a single need, security, and at 1,400 a month it draws more than "client portal software" (970) or "accounting portal" (980). Narrower portal terms are smaller still: 260 a month for "client portal for accountants" and 90 for "tax client portal". Planner groups close variants, so a plural or a small change of spelling shares one figure, and it rounds every figure. Read the table as an order of size rather than an exact count. A term at 1,400 searches a month is clearly larger than one at 90, but 970 and 980 are, for practical purposes, the same. Searches show interest, not purchases, and four terms with 70 searches or fewer are set out further down.

Where does the demand sit: the US or the UK?

It depends on the term. The UK accounts for 3,600 of the 3,700 monthly searches for "making tax digital software" (97%), and the US for 1,300 of the 1,400 for "secure portal for clients" (93%). "Accounting portal" splits evenly, with 390 in each.

Among these terms the UK leads on only one, "making tax digital software", and ties the US on another, "accounting portal". Everywhere else in the table the US has more searches than the UK: 720 against 110 for "client portal software", for example, and 880 against 40 for "partner management software". The other six markets together matter more than their size might suggest. For "practice management software for accountants" they account for 610 searches a month (1,590 minus 590 in the US and 390 in the UK), more than the US alone. For "accounting workflow software" they account for 240 of 640, close to the US figure of 260. Language is a separate question from country, and the subject of our study of how cross-border businesses work across languages. The figures show where searches happen, not why.

What do advertisers pay per click, and what does that say?

The highest bid in this study is $119.22 per click, in US dollars, for "client onboarding software", followed by $115.18 for "accounting workflow software". The most-searched term, "making tax digital software", carries $32.05. A bid is what advertisers offer for a click, not a price a practice pays.

The high top-of-page bid is the upper range of what advertisers offer for a click on an advert shown above Google's results for a term. It is a signal about advertisers, not a cost to a practice choosing software. Read as a signal, it says where sellers expect a click to be worth most to them. The three highest bids in this study sit on terms about running a practice's work: "client onboarding software" ($119.22), "accounting workflow software" ($115.18) and "practice management software for accountants" ($98.65). "Client portal software" sits lower, at $50.76, less than half the top bid. Two of the three terms with the most searches carry some of the lowest bids: $32.05 for "making tax digital software" and $27.54 for "secure portal for clients". The top bid, for "client onboarding software", is about 3.7 times the bid on the most-searched term. Searches and bids measure different things, so a term can be large and cheap to advertise on, or small and contested.

How do brand searches compare with category searches?

They are far larger. The most-searched brand term, "taxdome", draws 44,110 searches a month across the eight markets, almost 12 times "making tax digital software". Even the smallest of the 14 brand terms here, "content snare" at 2,680, draws more than every category term except that one.

Brand figures need a warning before they are compared with anything. A search for a product's name includes people who already use it and type the name to reach their login page, so a brand figure is a signal of a product's existing user base as well as of new demand, and Planner cannot separate the two. The 14 brand terms together draw 178,750 searches a month, against 13,510 for the 19 category terms in this study, and the two totals are not the same kind of demand. Brand searches are also more concentrated by country than most category searches. Five brand terms draw more than 90% of their searches in the US: "taxdome", "suralink", "smartvault", "liscio" and "canopy tax". Two draw more than 85% of theirs in the UK: "bright manager" (4,400 of 5,060) and "accountancymanager" (2,900 of 3,180). The products are named here only as search terms, and the figures say nothing about how well any of them works.

What does almost nobody search for?

Translation and cross-selling. "Multilingual client portal" and "client portal with translation" each draw 0 average monthly searches across all eight markets. "Cross selling software" draws 70 and "upselling software" 40, against 970 for "client portal software".

Our interpretation, and it is an interpretation rather than a finding: buyers do not yet look for these things as categories of software, so they have to be shown rather than searched for. Almost nobody looks for a multilingual portal by typing its name, and a seller cannot count on being found for it. A 0 is Planner's rounded figure, so it marks very few searches rather than proof that nobody searched, but the gap to the 970 searches for "client portal software" is wide either way. Low search volume does not mean the need is absent. Many compliance clients hold work in more than one country, as our study of multi-country clients sets out, and a client already on a practice's books is the obvious buyer of its next service. EU27 builds both into the portal: messages are translated both ways with the original kept beneath, and the next service is offered to each client inside the portal, as the features page shows.

How should a practice read these figures when choosing a portal?

Start from the jobs your clients need done, then look for what no search will surface. The terms with the most searches name jobs, from "making tax digital software" (3,700) to "secure portal for clients" (1,400); translation and cross-selling, at 0 and 70, are almost never typed.

Three readings follow from the figures, and each is a reading, not a measurement. First, practice software and portals are searched for separately: 1,590 searches a month for "practice management software for accountants" and 970 for "client portal software". A practice can look for a portal without replacing the practice and accounting software it already runs. Second, a large brand figure includes people logging in to a product they already use, and says nothing about whether it suits a practice like yours, so brand searches are a weak guide to fit. Third, the features that matter most to a practice with clients abroad are the ones almost nobody types into Google. Ask any seller to show, on screen, a client writing in one language while your team reads in another, a partner abroad who sees only their part, and the next service offered to a client without a call. EU27 adds the portal your clients see and leaves your practice software in place, as the accounting page shows.

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