The number behind this is documented. Research from Suralink found that only 36% of client requests are completed accurately on the first attempt. Almost two thirds need a second round. Sometimes a third.
That is not a client problem. It is a structural problem with how professional services firms collect information.
How a typical request list flows
The audit team builds it in Excel. It gets emailed to the CFO. The CFO forwards parts of it to controllers. Controllers forward parts to operations. Each handoff loses context. Each handoff lives in a separate thread. The version everyone is working from depends on whose inbox you check.
The 2023 Accounting Practice Management Survey found that 92% of accountants say they spend too much time on administrative work. Workflow issues were the single biggest reported challenge in 2023, cited by 63% of firms. The downstream effects were specific: missed deadlines, lost revenue, and poor work-life balance for 55.9% of firms.
The cost is different in each engagement type
For audits, the cost is regulatory. Audit Report Lag, the time between fiscal year end and the signed audit report, gets attention in capital markets because investors rely on it. Delays correlate with negative market reactions and, in some cases, auditor changes. The cause is rarely the audit itself. It is the coordination layer that surrounds it.
For M&A advisors, the cost is the deal. Buyer questions queue up during due diligence. The seller's team is small. Information requests come in parallel from six potential acquirers. Each one needs the same financial schedule but in a slightly different format. The advisor becomes a switchboard. Deadlines drift. Bidders get impatient. Leverage erodes.
The pattern repeats across legal due diligence, compliance reviews, and broker submissions in insurance. Wherever structured work flows through unstructured pipes, the coordination cost dominates.
Wolters Kluwer's 2026 research on audit workflows put it plainly. The most painful part of the traditional audit is "chasing documents and then going back for Round 2 after realizing the client uploaded the wrong form." Asking clients for access to password-protected files. Emailing the client yet again to get answers to questions that are holding up the entire process.
This is exactly the layer Alkmist replaces
Document requests live as structured items with owners, deadlines, and clear acceptance criteria. Clients see what is required and what is pending in one shared view. Professionals see who owes what by when, without asking. Every interaction is traceable, accountable, and visible.
With the new Inbox Agent, emails that still come in from clients, partners, or third parties get parsed into the same structured system. A reply with three attached PDFs and a question about the next steps does not sit in a thread. The attachments get filed against the right request lines. The question becomes a new task with an owner. The professional sees a clean queue instead of an inbox.
The first time around for those 64% of requests that currently need a second pass starts to look different when the request itself is unambiguous, the format is specified, and the person responsible can see what is expected of them. Behavioral science calls this reducing friction on the decision path. In practice it means deadlines get met.
The expertise in your firm has always been there. The question is what surrounds it.
If you want to see how structured collaboration would look for your engagement type, we'd be happy to walk you through how other firms in audit, accounting, M&A, and legal are using Alkmist.
