Accounting Firms
Client due diligence and risk management for accountancy practices
Accountancy and audit practices providing services in scope of anti-money-laundering rules — tax, audit, insolvency, trust and company work — carry client-due-diligence, screening and record-keeping obligations alongside professional-conduct duties. OnyxOne gives practice risk and compliance functions and partners one operating system to run client and engagement diligence, screening, ongoing monitoring and record-keeping, so a growing client base stays defensible and inspection-ready.
How OnyxOne fits your operation
Your compliance, risk, audit and legal teams work in OnyxOne, which centralises risk, controls, policy, obligations, cases and evidence, and connects to the systems, screening and data providers your deployment requires.
The pressures this sector carries
The compliance and regulatory realities that shape how firms in this sector operate. Described generically — your obligations depend on your jurisdiction, licence and activities.
How professional obligations map to the controls a practice operates, and how those controls mitigate the risks it carries. Labels are illustrative.
In-scope services carry AML duties
Practices providing accountancy, tax, audit, insolvency and related services are typically expected to run risk-based client due diligence, screening and monitoring, and to keep records. The platform supports this programme shape; whether and how the rules apply depends on your jurisdiction and services.
Beneficial ownership of business clients
Serving companies and other entities brings a duty to understand ownership and control, and to keep that understanding current as clients change.
Professional-body oversight and inspection
Practices are commonly supervised for AML purposes by a professional body that inspects files and expects a demonstrable, risk-based programme.
Confidentiality and data protection
Handling sensitive financial and personal client data brings confidentiality and data-protection duties that compliance tooling must respect with access controls and configurable retention.
What makes this hard today
The operational realities compliance and risk teams in this sector wrestle with.
Diligence seen as overhead
Client and engagement acceptance checks compete with chargeable work, so they are inconsistently applied and sometimes rushed at busy periods.
Inconsistency across partners and offices
Different partners and offices apply client due diligence differently, leaving the gaps professional-body inspectors look for.
Business-client ownership hard to keep current
Understanding and refreshing beneficial ownership across a large SME client base is difficult with manual processes.
Spreadsheet and folder record-keeping
Client due diligence tracked in spreadsheets and folders is hard to search, hard to evidence and easy to let slip.
Inspection-readiness at scale
Producing a defensible file for any client on inspection is slow when evidence is scattered across systems and drives.
How OnyxOne serves the sector
A single client and engagement acceptance gate
Client and engagement acceptance runs through one workflow that captures identity, ownership and risk, with screening built in — so acceptance is one evidenced step across the practice.
Consistent diligence practice-wide
The same defined workflow applies across partners and offices, so client due diligence is consistent and the gaps close.
Beneficial-ownership capture and refresh
Business clients follow a defined workflow that captures ownership and control, with scheduled and trigger-based reviews keeping it current.
Screening at acceptance and continuously
Clients and connected parties are screened against sanctions, PEP and adverse-media sources at acceptance and on an ongoing basis, with matches captured against the client.
A searchable, inspection-ready record
Every check, review and decision lives in one place, searchable and retrievable, so any client's file exists when an inspector asks.
The end-to-end workflow
A defined, sector-specific process with clear ownership at every stage.
Every result, decision and override is captured against the record it belongs to.
Accept the client & engagement
Client and engagement details are captured and screened against sanctions, PEP and adverse-media sources at acceptance.
Establish ownership & risk
For business clients, ownership and control are captured, and the client is risk-rated against your methodology.
Apply proportionate diligence
Standard clients follow CDD; higher-risk clients route into enhanced due diligence with approvals recorded.
Monitor & review
Ongoing screening plus scheduled and trigger-based reviews keep diligence current across the relationship.
Escalate & report
Concerns and alerts route into structured cases, with suspicious-activity content prepared where required.
Keep the record
Every check, review and decision is preserved in an immutable, retrievable trail ready for professional-body inspection.
How teams in this sector use OnyxOne
Standardising client acceptance
Give every partner and office one evidenced acceptance gate so diligence is consistent across the practice.
Refreshing SME beneficial ownership
Schedule and trigger reviews so ownership information across a large client base stays current.
Replacing spreadsheet client registers
Move client due diligence into a searchable, evidenced system instead of folders and spreadsheets.
Preparing for professional-body inspection
Retrieve a defensible, timestamped record for any client on request instead of a document scramble.
Modules that matter most here
The parts of the OnyxOne platform this sector leans on most. Turn on what you need and add more as your programme scales.
Works with your existing systems
Described as capabilities — OnyxOne connects to the systems your deployment requires, configured per implementation.
- Ingests client and engagement data from your existing practice-management systems
- Connects to the sanctions, PEP and adverse-media providers contracted for your deployment
- Integrates with your existing corporate-registry and beneficial-ownership data services
- Connects to your existing document stores so diligence records live with the client file
- Routes acceptance checks, reviews and approvals through your existing email and messaging tools
Security & reporting
Security & data handling
- Client, engagement and case data are encrypted in transit and at rest.
- Role-based access controls who can view, edit, approve and report on client files.
- Every check, review and decision is written to an append-only audit trail.
- Sensitive and suspicion-related data are restricted to authorised roles under need-to-know.
- Data residency and retention are configurable to your jurisdiction and record-keeping obligations.
Reports & returns
- Suspicious-activity / suspicious-transaction report content (SAR/STR)
- Client screening-coverage and disposition reports
- Client risk-rating distribution and review-due reports
- Beneficial-ownership and diligence evidence packs
- Management information for the MLRO and practice principals
What your team gains
Consistent acceptance across the practice
One workflow closes the gaps that vary by partner and office.
Ownership kept current
Scheduled and triggered reviews keep beneficial ownership accurate over time.
A searchable client register
Every check and decision is retrievable, so the file exists when asked for.
Inspection-ready at scale
An immutable trail keeps the practice ready for professional-body inspection continuously.
Questions, answered
Is OnyxOne an accountancy or audit firm?
No. OnyxOne is a technology vendor providing compliance and risk software. It is not an accountancy or audit firm or a regulated provider, and is not an obliged entity. Responsibility for obligations remains with your practice.
Can it keep beneficial ownership current across many clients?
Yes. Business clients follow a defined workflow that captures ownership and control, and scheduled and trigger-based reviews keep that information current across the client base.
How does it standardise client acceptance?
Client and engagement acceptance runs through one defined workflow across partners and offices, with screening and risk rating built in, so acceptance is consistent and evidenced.
Will it help at professional-body inspection?
Every check, review and decision is preserved in an immutable, retrievable trail, so preparing for an inspection is a matter of retrieval rather than reconstruction.
Do you provide the screening data?
Screening and data providers are contracted and configured per deployment rather than fixed to a single named partner; OnyxOne applies your chosen sources through configurable match logic.
See OnyxOne for Accounting Firms
Book a walkthrough and we'll show how the platform fits your sector's obligations, workflows and systems — then scope an implementation.