First AML Alternatives for Client Onboarding

Tax Genie is the best First AML alternative for Australian accounting practices that want due diligence and complete client onboarding together. It combines identity and AML/CTF checks with corrected client details and a signed engagement letter, so your team spends less time chasing information.

Tax Genie for Due Diligence and Onboarding

Tax Genie connects the checks your practice needs with the information it needs to start the client’s work. One request covers the people and entities involved, with each person seeing their own part.

Your client completes a guided form. Tax Genie checks ABNs against the Australian Business Register and checks the format of ACNs and TFNs. Rules check the answers and missing documents, then AI reviews common client mistakes. Every TFN is removed before that AI review.

When something needs fixing, Tax Genie emails the client a plain list and reopens the affected sections. Automatic email and SMS reminders chase anything outstanding. Your team receives the corrected answers without writing each follow-up message.

Identity verification and beneficial-owner checks sit in the same request as the client details. Tax Genie screens for politically exposed persons and sanctions, with background and adverse media checks and ongoing monitoring. Staff record the risk determination and reasoning. The risk register shows the next review date.

Tax Genie drafts your engagement letter from the client’s answers and keeps the signed version. Approved details then go into your tax software. This is the reason to replace a separate due-diligence step: the checked information carries through to the work your practice starts next.

What Must Survive the Change

Preserve the evidence and decisions behind each client’s due-diligence record when you change how you onboard clients. Moving a client’s name and contact details leaves much of that history behind.

First AML documents identity verification, ownership discovery and risk assessment, together with case exports and ongoing due-diligence alerts. Its existing records can contain findings that your staff need after the change. A completed case and an unresolved case need different handovers.

For each client, account for the following records before closing the old account:

• The identity method, relevant evidence details and staff determination.
• The ownership chain, beneficial owners and evidence supporting those findings.
• Screening results and the reasons staff resolved or escalated possible matches.
• Open questions, outstanding documents and the staff member responsible.
• The risk determination, its reasoning and sign-off, plus the next review and any monitoring follow-up.

AUSTRAC’s initial due-diligence guidance requires sufficient, accurate records of collected information and decisions. It distinguishes those records from scanned identity documents, which its guidance does not require you to retain.

Keep the required history accessible under your practice’s record-handling arrangements. Give every open case a named staff owner and next action. Carry forward review obligations even when the new client form is complete.

Compare other onboarding software alternatives when another part of your client work also needs replacing.

Replacing a Check With a Complete Client Journey

Choose Tax Genie for the combined result: due-diligence findings alongside corrected client details, signed engagement and the handover to your tax software. Treat existing records as a separate transfer task.

The table describes what Tax Genie does with the client’s onboarding work. First AML’s case export is a way to obtain records, not a promise that those records populate Tax Genie automatically. Plan a reviewed handover of historical material and keep its original context.

Staff can review matched client fields before Tax Genie updates Xero Partner Hub + Practice Management. That review helps avoid a second record for the same entity. A historical screening decision also needs its explanation, even when the new request contains the same person’s details.

A Company With a Trust Shareholder

The practice needs to identify the individuals behind a trust’s ownership and control as well as the company’s contact person. Consider this fictional example of an Australian practice onboarding a private trading company.

The company’s only shareholder is a corporate trustee acting for a discretionary trust. Its director completes the company details but leaves out the trust deed variation. The company contact, the trustee and the individuals controlling the trust have separate roles in the file.

Staff request the deed and variation, then trace who controls the trust and the corporate trustee. They identify the relevant beneficial owners and establish the authority of the person acting for the company. AUSTRAC’s company due-diligence guidance explains the ownership and control assessment behind that work.

In Tax Genie, staff include the relevant people and entities in the request and collect the missing document. Identity and screening results sit alongside the answers. Suppose a screening result needs investigation: a staff member records why it is a different individual before completing the assessment.

In this fictional practice’s AML/CTF program, the ownership layers and proposed service call for a Medium risk determination. The staff member records that reasoning and sign-off, then sets the next review. A completed identity check supplies evidence for the staff member’s determination.

Tax Genie uses the corrected answers to draft the company’s engagement letter. Staff review the service scope and the person authorised to sign, then send it for online signature. Approved client details go into the practice’s tax software after the required review, while the due-diligence record retains the ownership findings.

Cost Scope and Transition

Compare the cost of the whole onboarding job, including checks and staff time spent chasing or typing client details again. First AML’s Australian plans use quoted pricing. Its published software terms describe included or fixed unit allocations, with further units billed monthly in arrears.

Those terms charge business-verification units for each analysed entity layer, with weightings affected by the entity’s jurisdiction. Selected ongoing monitoring is billed annually on the verification anniversary. A layered company-and-trust case therefore needs a different usage estimate from an individual check.

Tax Genie includes generous usage, including identity and AML/CTF checks, in its price. It is the most affordable option on the market and saves your practice time on the client work surrounding those checks.

Make the change with a clear record handover. Export the required case material while access is available, check that it contains the findings and decisions you need, then reconcile it against your client list. Assign the remaining cases and reviews before ending the old service under your agreement’s terms.

Tax Genie brings due diligence into the same request as corrected client details and signed engagement. Talk to us about moving your practice to that combined onboarding approach.