Note taker for accountants: client meetings, document requests and audit interviews

A note taker for accountants records the conversations the work depends on — a client meeting about their tax or their accounts, a call to chase missing papers, an interview during an audit, a findings meeting — so you can listen to the client instead of writing. Dalm, an app for the Mac, records a call without joining it. Speech is recognised on your Mac, and the audio is sent nowhere; what goes to our servers, automatically, is the text of the transcript, which a language model run by a third party reads to write the summary and any document you ask for. There is a Free plan.

What an accountant needs from a client conversation

Most of what an accountant, a CPA or an auditor works from starts as something a client said: how a payment was made, what changed in the business this year, which papers are still in a drawer, why a balance looks the way it does. In the meeting you are asking and listening; afterwards you need the client’s own words on each of those points, a list of what they promised to send and by when, and a way to put this conversation next to the last one with that client. Writing that up from memory is where the follow-up email starts to ask the same question twice.

Client calls, phone calls and meetings at the client’s office

On a call, Dalm records your microphone and the sound of the other apps on your Mac; nothing joins the meeting, so the client sees no bot. When Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Slack or FaceTime takes the microphone, the app offers to record; a call that was never in your calendar starts with ⌃⌥M or the Meeting button. A client on a phone on speaker next to your Mac, or a meeting in the client’s office, is recorded through your Mac’s microphone, the way any meeting in a room is. A recording you already have can be brought in as a file. Step by step: Zoom, Microsoft Teams, Google Meet and a phone call.

Client meetings, document requests and audit interviews: what you get after each

Which kind of meeting it was, Dalm works out from the conversation itself and labels the meeting with it; the label cannot be picked or changed by hand, and a conversation it cannot place is filed as a general meeting. An interview during an audit has a kind of its own; when the app labels a conversation that way, this is what you get after it:

The meeting	What you get after it	What it is for in your work
An interview with client staff during an audit	A one-screen summary, a list of who does what by when, and a write-up laid out for an audit interview	The list keeps who promised to send or look into what, and by when; the write-up is where your own notes of the interview begin

A client meeting about tax planning or their accounts, a call to collect missing documents and answers — the papers on a PBC list or a tax organizer — and an audit closing meeting to go through findings with the client’s management are each labelled by what was discussed in them, and what you get follows from that label.

After any of them you have the transcript and a summary written without you asking, in which each point keeps the words it came from and a date or an owner nobody said is left empty rather than guessed; documents take one click. The language model that writes them sees the transcript and your notes — nothing from your books — so any figure in a summary comes from what was said or what you noted: check it against the records before you use it. After an audit interview, what you get is a starting point for your own write-up, to check against the transcript; what it means for the audit stays your judgement. If you want the same document after every client call — say, what the client still has to send you and who promised it — describe it once in your own words as a template and tick the box to build it for each new meeting. The letter a client gets from you afterwards is covered on the client recap page.

Where a client’s words go after the call

What a client says is recognised on your Mac, and their voice is never sent anywhere as audio. The audio is deleted once the text exists. The text is another matter: the transcript is synced to our servers automatically, with no setting to keep it on the Mac, and a language model run by a third party reads it, with your notes, to write the summary and any document you ask for. On our servers the text has no set expiry; it is kept for as long as your account, or the firm’s workspace the meeting belongs to, exists, unless you delete it. The same holds for anyone you interview during an audit. What is kept where is set out on the privacy page.

Keeping clients, engagements and the firm apart

Give each client, each engagement or each tax year a tag — one of eight colours or one of your own — and the same tags work for your dictations. The list of meetings filters by tag, by person, by period and by the kind of meeting, and search reads transcripts, meeting names and descriptions and the text of every document, though not your notes. Next to your personal workspace you can be in your firm’s team and switch between the two. A meeting goes to the workspace that was selected when its recording started, and stays there; it cannot be moved later. In the firm’s workspace, other people may see a meeting depending on their role — who sees what is on the team page. When someone is removed from the team, the meetings they recorded there stay with the firm, and their dictations go with them.

From the first document request to the last open question

Everything you say lands in one archive you can search: meetings, phone calls, conversations in the room, and what you dictate to a model. Dalm’s assistant answers questions about one meeting at a time; asking one question across all your records is in development. When the app takes a new client meeting to be part of a series with earlier ones, what was still open last time — a missing statement, an unanswered question — comes back in the new summary, with when it first came up and how many times since. Your meetings of the same kind with different clients count as one series, so a point left open with one client can be offered in a meeting with another. It is carried over only when the app judges it came up again; otherwise it shows as “Possibly a continuation”. Before you invite a client to read a meeting, look at every carried-over point. Tasks agreed in a meeting are gathered in one list by due date, where you can keep to your own, and decisions go into a log by month, searchable by their words or by the meeting’s name; meetings of some kinds stay out of both. Every quote shows you where it was said — open it and the transcript opens at that place.

What to tell clients and their staff before you record

Dalm joins no call and announces nothing, so telling people you are recording is up to you; before your first meeting, the app reminds you of that. Whether your engagement terms, an agreement with the client or the rules of your profession let a client conversation be transcribed and kept by an outside service is for you and those terms to settle, not for this page. What you can tell people is what happens to their words: the audio stays on your Mac and is deleted, and the text goes to our servers and is read by a third-party language model. In an interview during an audit, say it to the person at the start. The rules on recording consent differ by place.

When Dalm is not the right fit for an accountant

• When a client or the engagement terms ask that the conversation not be kept by an outside service, even as text. The transcript goes to our servers, and a language model reads it.
• When you want the recording itself — to hear exactly how a client put something. The audio is deleted once the text exists, and there is nothing to play back.
• When you need a program to work out figures, check them against the books or reach a conclusion. Dalm writes down what was said; the numbers and the conclusions stay with you.
• When client conversations have to be kept for a fixed period. The text is kept with no set expiry until you delete it; documents can be saved as Word or PDF files into your own records.
• When you or your firm work on Windows or on an Intel Mac. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later.
• When the call is very short: a recording under 100 words is not counted as a meeting.

Free for one accountant, Team for the firm

The Free plan is a plan, not a trial, and recording, the transcript and the summary are on it. When an accounting firm works in a team, it shares one dictionary of terms — client names and the words your clients use — one set of templates and one set of tags; who sees whose meetings is on the team page. What the paid plans add is on the pricing page. Dalm needs a Mac with Apple Silicon · macOS 15.0 or later and an account; until it is public, the way in is the waitlist.