At a glance:
- Use Tab Groups and Split View to organise your browser tabs.
- Use the Gemini side panel in Gmail to summarise emails and create tasks.
- Turn cloud software into standalone apps with Progressive Web Apps.
Cloud accounting software has fundamentally altered the accountant’s daily routine over the 2000s. Most notably, it has moved accountants’ work out of desktop applications and into a web browser.
And for most of us today, that browser is Google Chrome. It has now taken more than 70% of the global market, and 80% of users at the Financial Accountant website. Edge, Microsoft’s current browser, now scrapes by with just a 4% global share, according to StatCounter, and a 9% share of Financial Accountant users.
After years of neglect, Google has started adding useful new features to Chrome. Google may have been spurred into action by the growing hype around AI-first browsers like Perplexity’s Comet. But whatever the reason, the result is good news for accountants trying to stay productive while juggling a dozen open tabs.
Tab groups
Chrome’s Tab Groups feature is a simple but highly effective way to manage multiple tabs. You can group tabs by client, project or task cycle. Right-click a tab and select “Add tab to group”, then name it and choose a colour. You can then collapse the group of tabs to free up space by clicking on it once, then click it again to reopen all the group’s tabs.
Heather Smith, an accountant and founder of the Mastermind Accounting Apps community on Facebook, uses tab groups to match her accounting task cadence.
“I maintain groups of tabs, in line with my checklists. So for instance, at a high level I have daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly tabs. At a right click, all tabs are quickly opened for viewing,” Smith says.
Split view
Chrome’s relatively new Split View is a powerful feature for accountants using cloud-based software like Xero. (The feature was first introduced to Microsoft Edge in 2023.) It displays two tabs side by side within the same browser window – ideal for cross-referencing or working through multi-step tasks without jumping between tabs.
To activate it, right-click on any tab and select “Add tab to new split view”. Chrome will split your window, showing the selected tab on one side. You can then select any other tab in the window to open it on the opposite side. Want to work with two pinned tabs? Create a split view with a pinned tab and Chrome will pin the split view.
“I maintain groups of tabs, in line with my checklists… I have daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly tabs.”
Heather Smith
One tip: If you’re using split view for bank rec and you update an invoice in the other split-view tab, you’ll need to refresh the bank rec tab to see the updated information. The easiest way to do that is to select the bank rec tab and refresh using Ctrl+R (PC) or Command+R (Mac).
Accountant Melanie Morris finds Split View very useful for workflow. She uses it to reconcile bank feeds while checking source documents, to manage projects with the products and services screen open, and to review purchases alongside related transactions.
Unfortunately, you can’t save a split view in a Chrome tab group.
A custom setup
If you’re working across two or more monitors, Chrome gives you the tools to build a customised browser setup using tab groups, pinned tabs and multiple windows.
Start by organising your tabs into groups. Then pin the tabs you use constantly. Pinned items stay locked to the left of your tab bar and reopen automatically when Chrome restarts.
You can then right-click and assign a group or pinned tab to a new Chrome window or one already open, and move that window to a different monitor. This way you can have one monitor for work in your preferred accounting software and use another monitor for emails, team chat, and client messages.
Best of all, Chrome remembers your setup. If you enable “Continue where you left off” in Chrome’s settings, each window will reopen on the same monitor with your tabs and pins intact – even after a full restart.
One caveat: tab groups may reopen expanded, even if they were collapsed. The grouping is preserved, but you may need to collapse them again.
The Gemini side panel
If you’re using Gmail in Chrome, the Gemini side panel is a quiet powerhouse. Heather Smith types prompts like “Turn this email into a to-do list”, and Gemini generates a checklist. Before meetings, she’ll ask: “Summarise emails from David XYZ.” It responds with the person’s role, company, a summary of past messages and a timeline of correspondence.
Gemini also helps with scheduling. You can ask the AI tool to add an event to your calendar by copy-pasting the details from an email. Gemini will show you what the event record will look like first and then create it in your calendar on confirmation.
(Using Microsoft 365? These tips also work with Copilot in Edge, which works across Outlook and your calendar.)
Progressive Web Apps
Still pining for the days of desktop software? For accountants going through withdrawal from traditional apps, Chrome’s Progressive Web Apps (PWA) offer a neat fix: turn any cloud software into a standalone application.
Here’s how: open the application in a tab (for example, your firm’s Xero file), click the three vertical dots to the far right of the Chrome address bar. Select “Cast, save and share” and then select “Install page as app”. This strips away the browser interface – no address bar, no tabs – leaving you with a clean, distraction-free window.
Even better, the app uses the site’s favicon as its icon, so when you hit Alt+Tab (or Command+Tab on a Mac), Xero will show up right alongside Word, Excel and Outlook. It’s a genuine novelty to see your cloud ledger sitting proudly among your desktop apps.
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