Name: Navigating New Horizons: Modernizing Your Firm Through Technology & Workflow Automation
Uploaded: 2025-05-14T18:01:05.785Z
Duration: 1 h 12 s
Description: Navigating New Horizons: Modernizing Your Firm Through Technology & Workflow Automation

Transcript for "Navigating New Horizons: Modernizing Your Firm Through Technology & Workflow Automation": Welcome, everyone. I'm really excited to be here and present this session on modernizing your firm through technology and workflow automation. So let's just jump right into it. To introduce myself, my name is Nick Boscia. I'm also known as the balanced CPA, which I'll get into later in the session. A little bit about me, my background, and where I started. I joined my family owned accounting firm in 2013 named Boscia & Boscia PC, where I started working with my father who founded our business in 1975 and along with my older brother, Joe. That being said, I when I joined this firm, I really didn't know what I was getting myself into, but I always looked up to my father. I wanted to be part of this family firm, and I was really excited. But I didn't really realize how much of a journey it would be to from where our firm started to where we are today. I also put a note there that I'm both the CPA and an EA because it just kinda shows my personality. I'm really committed to continuous education. And just like everyone here on this on this webinar, we have a lot in common because when I first started, I didn't know where I could get information, where I could learn. So I was always joining webinars and attending conferences because I always wanted to learn the next best thing. So I'm really excited to to dive into my journey. And as I touched on, I'm also known as a balanced CPA, and, really, my passion is helping firms streamline their operations. And I really want to help people turn their firm to the firm of their dreams to also make you have a more fulfilling life. So that kinda leads me into something that I'm really passionate about that has nothing to do with taxes or nothing to do with accounting. I love traveling, so I'm really excited that to say that I travel about 10 times a year. I'm going on 10 vacations, some business, some personal, but I've really worked hard to build the firm of my dreams. I'm still working on that today, but, really, it's to be able to follow my passions, and my main passion is to travel and see all the amazing places all around the world. So far, I'm at 27 countries, but my goal is to visit a hundred. So just a little bit of housekeeping, just participating in the polls. You might have already seen this slide already, but when a poll is launched, just you'll see a pop up in the lower left hand area. So just make sure you're you're checking off the polling questions as they pop up, or go to the polls tab, and you'll see you and then that'll be another way that you could participate in the polls. And that this is important if you wanna obtain CPE. Some other housekeeping. The webinar works best if you're using Chrome or Safari. Turn off any ad blockers or maybe try using incognito mode. If you're having any difficulties with the presentation, just refresh your browser and that should pretty much solve most issues. And then also at the end, there's gonna be a survey. So when as the event wraps up, please take the survey. It's really helpful for us. So if you just take a few extra seconds at the end to do that survey, it really means a lot. And then you'll also get a full presentation recording, and you could use the same link that was sent over to you to access this webinar. And as I touched on, you'll this will be eligible for CPE credits. One CPE credit, but you have to just make sure that you're answering those polling questions, and you have to attend a minimum of fifty minutes. And the certificates will be emailed to you within forty eight hours. And if you have any issues, you could you could send an email down below. And just a quick disclaimer, this session is educational in nature and should not be construed as tax advice. So first, we're gonna launch the first polling question. If you're having any difficulty, just message in the chat or try to refresh your browser to make sure you're seeing this polling question. But kinda just wanna gauge the audience what your primary reason to for attending this webinar is to earn the free CPE, explore new solutions. You see all the options there. So please just take I'm gonna give you about fifteen to thirty seconds to answer this poll, and this will help get your CPE engage the audience. And I also wanted to mention while we're waiting for everyone completing the poll, we'll we'll be answering the chat right directly in the chat throughout the presentation. So if you have any questions, comments, feel free to throw it in the chat throughout the presentation, and we'll be answering them live there. Alright. So let's move on. Let's get started. Alright. So I'm very passionate about this topic, and the reason being is, as I briefly touched upon, is I started with my family firm in 2013. I really didn't know what I was getting myself into, but I was excited. And I'm now twelve years in, and that first day when I started to where I am now is almost feels like a lifetime away. My my life has completely changed because of the things that I'm gonna get into on this webinar. Using technology and automating our processes, setting boundaries, We're gonna dive into all of those things, but that's why I'm really passionate about this because now I really every year, I'm getting closer and closer to building the firm of my dreams. This tax season has been the best tax season we've had, and my goal is next year to be even better. So as I mentioned, we scaled our firm, and we started as a manual paper based firm because that's been her firm we inherited. And now we use tons of technology, and there's still more that we wanna do. But we've more than doubled our firm. So when I joined, we had about 600 clients. And I'm just saying tax clients. We also do bookkeeping, but for the purpose of the conversation, we had about 600 tax clients, and now we're doing over 1,600 tax returns annually. And I could honestly say that our team is less stressed than we were in the beginning, and our clients are happier. So it's kind of a win win that everyone is getting a better experience for all the changes we made in our firm, and that's what I wanna share with you today. So really my goal is I wanna eliminate efficiencies, buy back your time, help make your clients have a much better experience working with your firm and rave about your firm. And then, also, your firm should be making more money. As you're adding more value to your clients, you should earn more money, and that could that should allow you to do the things that you love and travel the world or whatever your dreams are. So I touched lightly on it, but I'm gonna go into how we the inherited systems our firm started with to the intentional strategy that we've designed and are continuing design in the future. So the beginning, Boscia & Boscia PC went firm values from 1975 when it was started to 2018, really, when my dad retired. Everything was about hard work, working as many hours as possible, and cert saying yes to every client. So any client who came in the door to Boscia & Boscia PC, we always said yes because the mindset was there's more money to be made, more people to be served, And it was a great mission. But what ended up happening is as our firm grew, we were burning out. My brother, my partner is very focused on bringing in new business today. But when we first started, we were just doing everything word-of-mouth, and we had very paper heavy processes. So that that was the type of client we were attracting. We would essentially I like to joke that we were like the wild wild west. Anything went in Boscia & Boscia PC in the beginning. So we didn't have any standard standardization, and we also didn't tell the client the way we wanted them to operate with us. We were very reactive. When clients came in and they had certain needs, we would be just figuring it out as we went. And it worked for clearly a long time, but I knew things had to change, especially because we were starting to attract clients that wanted things just their way, and we had so many exceptions to the way we were operating. I don't know if anyone out there could could relate to this at all, having a lot of difficult clients who don't wanna change or don't wanna use systems. And we're gonna dive really, really into this, but really, we just had such a work life imbalance. Nothing like my life today. We were working seven days a week in tax season, Saturdays, Sundays, late nights, and I'm sure a lot of people out there listening could relate in some way. And what what we're gonna get into is how we could solve those pain points and eliminate that completely. And you see my picture there, the before picture, that is really what our office looked like. We had papers all over the place, and it was it was just chaos. That's how when I look back, it really felt like chaos. Just trying to find a file was difficult because we had alphabetized them manually in in folders, and now we have a fully electronic system. So the turning point, I knew that something had to change. Because as I mentioned, my brother was out networking, bringing in tons of clients, which is awesome. We're making more money, but we're also working more. And every client had a special need, had a special exception, and had a different way that they wanted an accountant to serve their needs. And as we grew in scale, the pain points got bigger and bigger. Because now we had all these exceptions. There was no way to standardize our processes. So if clients were bringing in paper, but we really wanted to use our electronic system, now we need two different systems to get the same work done. The and paper just in general is obviously a manual process. So when I first started, clients are bringing in all their tax documents for tax season or their bank statements were paper, and we were doing bank statements. We were doing write up manually and keying them one by one into our QuickBooks. So that just just to kinda paint the picture of why I knew something had to change. I'm like, there, it doesn't make sense that we're operating this way. So I don't know if anyone out there, you might be like, wow. I can't believe that that's where you were. You might be there right now. And you you need to as you listen, just know that change is not as hard as you think, and it's so fulfilling to make this change. And, really, I just wanted to have a good personal well-being. Being the Balanced UK now, I can't say that I'm working seven days a week because I don't think a lot of people are gonna in today's day and age, people don't wanna brag about working seven days a week. But my dad's generation, that was a bad badge of honor. Working seven days a week, working weekends, working holidays was you saying, I'm a really hard worker. But I don't think today people really want that badge. I know I definitely don't. So the evolution. So I I mentioned where we were, and now this is where we are today. So now all of our processes are digital and automated. Whenever we can automate a process, we're gonna do it now. We don't really have any more paper. This tax season, we actually made a big shift because a lot of our legacy clients have been coming to our firm for longer than I've been alive. Just to paint a picture, I'm 35, and we have clients who could who walked in this tax season who've been coming here for forty years. So it's really hard to get that client to get on their new system when they've been operating with our firm for longer than I've even been alive. But as we as clients came in in person, we basically explained to them, hey. This is our new solution. You're actually gonna save time. You're gonna upload your documents directly to our document management portal. You don't have to get on the road. You don't have to you know, some of our older clients complain about walking up the stairs as crazy as it sounds, but they don't need to do that. And it's educating your clients on these tools that we've evolved in our firm. We have systematized workflows. Now we we basically have a system. First, you're gonna pay for your invoice upfront, and then that triggers our workflow to know we need to begin your return or begin your bookkeeping because our firm does booking bookkeeping and tax. So everything's gonna start with the invoice upfront. Something that we've never done the four the fifty years our firm has been around. And then this past year, this is the change we made. Was it easy? No. But the evolution has been awesome. And we like, having these systems allowed us to align with clients that embrace the technology. So don't I would be lying if I told you that every client was like, oh, yeah, Nick. This sounds great. I can't wait to get on board and change something that I've been doing totally different for forty years or ten years or whatever. But we started realizing that making these changes, a lot of clients are like, wow. This system's a lot better, and this actually makes my life a lot easier. They thought they had to come into the office, and they had to do it this way. And they realized, oh, this tool is actually gonna save me a lot of time. So thanks for implementing that. But not every client's gonna feel that way. A lot of our clients get pushed back. They're like, I don't wanna do it that way. So we had to, you know, we had to pivot and shift and try to explain to those clients the way we want to evolve our firm. Because, unfortunately, not everyone is gonna wanna evolve the way that you wanna evolve your firm. And, really, the the ultimate goal for us is the work life balance. I don't want my team quitting because we're overworking them, and we they have to work seven days a week. Because even as the business owner, I don't wanna work seven days a week. So I'm sure other people out there can relate. You you like, if I wanna be here working, but I also I want my team to have a better work life balance. When I'm going vacation, I want them to go on vacations too and enjoy the summers. So defining clients and driving change. I know this this session is really all about technology and workflow automation, but I thought it was really important to define your clients first and determine what is gonna make those changes. So I definitely touched on this, but we had a lot of legacy clients that maybe were not the ideal client for the firm that we're looking to become. So I think it's really important for everyone on this on this webinar to just think who is your ideal client. Maybe you have a lot of them right now. Maybe you have none of them. Maybe you have one of them. But if you could choose today, who would be your I t ideal client? How would they interact with you? Would they be quick to communicate, respond via email, or do you want them calling your personal cell phone? I know for sure I used to give out my personal cell phone, and I definitely don't do that anymore. So I highly recommend if you're getting your cell phone out to clients, at least have a a business cell phone. So when you're out on the weekend or you're out on a date or with your family, you should be able to disconnect. And your clients should respect that boundary. And if they don't respect your boundaries, I don't really think that could be an ideal client for you. And clients who embrace technology. So as I mentioned, the paper drop offs wasn't working for our firm. It's slowing down our system. So we need a client who knows that using an electronic system is more secure, and it helps our workflow and nothing gets overlooked. So those manual processes, there's more there's more opportunity for human error, mistakes that he made. So I think these were things that our firm, Boscia & Boscia PC decided that we need to make these changes, and we started identifying who our target clients were. So I wanna do a reflective discussion. How many of you are still still have clients that are resisting technology change? So please put it in the chat because it's really helpful for the conversation, and I'll be in there answering your questions or and and I think it's important to think about that a lot of us, we're all kinda in this together. We might have completely different firms doing completely different things or very similar things. We all have similar pain points. We all have clients who are who might be difficult, and then we all have those great clients that we love working with. So define that ideal client, who do you know there's clients that you know aren't a good fit for your firm, but you just keep them year over year? Because you're just a good person. You wanna help them, which is which is awesome. But if you keep getting clients that don't fit your ideal ideal mold for your firm, you're not gonna be able to get to the next steps, which are gonna go into the technology changes. So thanks for answering the chat. It's really helpful. And you see a lot of us are dealing with some of the same pain points, and a lot of us probably want the same type of client. Client who maybe pays on time, respects our value, but, so, anyway, thanks. So empowering change. When I first joined the firm, I was just trying to learn everything that my dad, my brother were building before I arrived. And then I started to realize that things had to change as I mentioned. But now I'm, like, being a small firm owner, there's three of us. How am I how am I learning to become a leader? How am I learning the next thing or the technology out there? As we get further into the session, I'm gonna go into the some of the technology that our firm has chosen, but I didn't know this technology existed at first. So I'm really excited that people are here to learn these things. You might know it. You might not know it. So I went out, and just like everyone on this call, I was participating webinars because at the time, I was too busy working. There's too much client work to be done. I didn't have time to fly up to a conference or to attend even a a if you're on a virtual conference, I didn't have time to spend two full days on a virtual conference when I had to get work done. But, obviously, as our firm evolved, I went from doing free webinars to doing virtual conferences to going lot flying out and going live into a conference, which to me, I think is that's the actually most valuable thing, but not everyone has that opportunity. I totally understand. But I was going to conferences, and I really got a network with, just like everyone out there. I got a network with you in person, get ideas, and tell you my pain points. And I feel like that's what helped me become the leader I am today. Going out and meeting people and saying, oh, I I'm just having such a problem with collections. My clients don't pay. And then someone I would be talking to, like, oh, I tried this tool. This really changed my firm. And that's where I got the ideas. So I started going out wanting to be this leader to change our firm as we're growing our team. But now I would come back to the office, and now I'm all excited about these new ideas, but the team just sees that as work. Like, why why do we have to do this? Everything we've been we've been doing this for such a long time. Why make a change? So being a leader, it was really important for me to to explain to the team why I wanna make this change. And I was always and I still do today. Like, when we have our team meetings, I'm painting a picture of where I want the firm to be, but I'm painting a picture a picture that is appealing to the whole team. I'm not like, I wanna make a ton of money. I want all the team to make more money. I want everyone to get raises. I want I wanna be able to make everyone love working here. And I really do think our team enjoys working here, and they see the evolution, and that's been really exciting. And setting boundaries for both the team and the clients, like, I don't want my team working late nights. I want them to you know, we have to figure out a way to get our work done in our normal work hours. I don't want my team working till 2AM. So but that's the leader that I wanna be. Everyone has is gonna have a different leadership style, but you know if you're a firm owner, manager, whatever it is, you need to make sure that you're stepping up to the plate and helping your team grow. Because if you're if you're supposed to be the leader and you're I used to be just so in the weeds of doing the work, and I didn't. I felt like I was neglecting my team and helping them grow. So my long way of saying, I love going out and learning, bringing it back, and teaching. So then once you determine the type of leader you wanna be, how how do you empower your team? So this is something that took me definitely some time to figure out. And as I mentioned, I was learning from some of the best thought leaders in the accounting community to give me ideas of how to change our firm. A pain point that we had was hiring someone new and now training them to learn all the different systems we had and how to do different tasks. So something I mentioned in the first bullet here is we use Loom, which is a screen recording tool. And now we just implemented this last year. So it's not like I've been using this for for years and years. There's all different types of tools out there. I'm just gonna say the things that I our firm uses right now. But it allows me to record processes and show someone how to do a task. So I could have a new hire come in, and they can know exactly how to do a fairly complex task watching the video. Might have to watch it a few times, of course. But before, when I was too busy to sit down with a team member, now I'm doing them a disservice to because my team definitely, they really enjoy learning new things and taking on new responsibilities. But I wanna have an efficient way to train them and teach them, but I also wanna reduce with technology the administrative test. That's so that's kinda how I explained the why in our change. I don't want the team not to spend hours just printing tax returns. We used to do that printing tax returns and mailing them out. That's a job in itself. Last tax season, we had so many clients drop off their tax returns, and we're we'd spend hours just scanning documents just to move them into their document management portal. But those manual tasks are things that we could offload our team and use technology and leverage the clients as well. So I really want so my goal is that that we should all be really empowering our teams to do more, learn more, take on more responsibility, because I think that actually makes your team stronger. I don't say dump a ton of extra responsibility on your team and make them work more hours. So that's where the balance is really important. So let's get into automation. So I know I've been going on and on about all these things I'm excited about, but where where do you begin? So I want you to find the ideal client. You know the leader you wanna become, and you wanna empower your team. Where do you start? Building your firm's tech stack. So I I it's funny. I vividly remember the first time I went to a conference, and they were talking about your tech stack, and I literally had no clue what they were talking about. I'm like, what is a tech stack? So just to kinda paint a picture, just a few years ago, I didn't even know what Tech Stack was because we had no tech. So what I did is I realized I would go to these conferences and get so excited. I'm like, oh my god. All these great tools could make my firm so much better. Well, what I would do is come back and I get overwhelmed. I'm like, I have all my client work I need to get done. I don't have time to learn these five pieces technology, implement them, and communicate it to the client. So then when I did, I got overwhelmed, and then I just completely stopped and I go, I have to I'll do this next year. And I did that year after year until I decided this has to change. Because the pain so what ended up happening, our pain points got so great. I'm like, this has to change. So things to consider, all of our firms are gonna be on different places in our journey. I would say it's a journey because we're not gonna have that picture perfect firm ever. It's like you're it's always changing. Your clients are changing. The environment's changing. So think of it as a journey, not when this happens, I'll finally be happy. But just little steps are gonna make a big difference. But things that I considered, what were the repetitive manual tasks? Where are your bottlenecks occurring? And how do clients communicate with you, and where is the breakdowns? So if you're not sure, I'm sure a lot of us already know where our our firm's pain points are, where inefficiencies are. And if you're not sure, talk with your team, talk with your clients. They're definitely gonna give you feedback and say, hey. This process doesn't really work so well. And you realize the pain points you're having is the pain points everyone's having. So I'm sure just keep writing in the chat, like, any technology or any pain points you've been having. It it is helpful. And as I mentioned, it's really it's nice to know that we're all going through it together. Not every the pain points you have, I'm sure a lot of other people are having the exact same pain points. So how to choose the right technology? So once you identify your pain point, that's gonna be your first step. What's your biggest pain point and what piece of technology is gonna solve your problem? Some things to also consider, integration. So for example, we use Lacert as our tax software, and we needed a document management solution. When we first started, we had no organized fashion that clients could get their tax returns. So what we would do, we would literally mail them out. We'd print them and mail them. The problem is clients would come, call us in the summer and say, I lost the mail, and I need my tax return my last three years returns for a mortgage. So now what we had to do was go into the cert, print out their tax returns again, and mail them. Obviously, not the best process. So when we were determining what document management solution we wanted to use, we chose SmartVault because it actually integrates with the cert. So it's a huge time saver for us. But the I'm gonna get more into that in the next slide, but I just wanted to kinda mention just an example of an integration. So if you're using QuickBooks, there's tons of different softwares out there. If they're talking to each other, it's gonna save you a lot of time. You don't wanna choose a piece of technology that works best for some other piece of technology that you're not using. So try to integrate them as much as you can. Is it gonna support team collaboration? Is the tool gonna make it easier for everyone to work together, or is it gonna make you more siloed? Before we had technology, our team with everyone was siloed because no one there was no easy way for everyone to see what was happening in the firm. Now that we have these pieces of technology, everyone could see into the billing. Everyone could see know exactly where to find files in Smart Vault, and it's organized in a clear, easy way that a new hire joins, and they know exactly how to find the file. Let's say, hey. Find John Smith's return. Send him his 2022 tax return. It's fairly simple for even a first day employee to search the client's name, find the return in the organized folder structure, where rewind back ten years, we were going into our our cabinets and searching through a paper filing system that might not be alphabetized properly. So it that's just there there's tons of great tools, and I'm gonna go into all my tools. But you should just realize that these tools, once implemented, it's it might seem a little bit overwhelming at first. But once you implement it and it gets going, it just becomes it grows and it just becomes something that's just part of your workflow, and it it just disappears. You won't have to think about it except that in initial onboarding. So this is a slide about all the tools that we actually implemented at Boscia & Boscia PC and Boscia & Boscia PC. I broke it down into phases, and then after I designed this, I'm like, I should've really just broken out by years because it might seem overwhelming. But even phase one versus phase two, phase one, some of those phases were years apart. So as I mentioned, I put our first tool is our tax prep tool that if you're doing tax returns, it's an absolute must. If you're doing bookkeeping, you need a bookkeeping software. That's a that's a compliance tool. That's a must have. It's really hard to operate. I can't imagine how you operate without that tool, but I put a legacy tool because that was that was the only piece of technology we had when I came into the firm in 2013. And the next the next item on there that I touched on is our doc document management solution, which is SmartVault. We didn't implement that till 2018 when my dad actually retired. So just to paint a picture, it's not like these were done in one year. So it is a it might seem a bit overwhelming, but just know from this slide, it's actually been a really long journey. And it's it has taken a lot of work, but now I could never imagine going back and operating any other way. So I touched on Smart Vault. I love the integration. If this tax season, we got 200 extra clients, what it does, it automatically syncs the folders with SmartVault. So now the clients know exactly where to upload their files. We get notified automatically, and they know exactly where to access their tax return. One of the best feelings is when we have a a legacy client who might not have ever even looked at the return. I'm sure we have clients who you do the work. They don't look at the return. They sign it, which I they shouldn't be doing, but sometimes it happens. And then they go, hey, Nick. I need five years of returns for whatever reason. I go, oh, well, they're all on Smart Vault. And now they're like, oh, I didn't even realize it was in there. But now once they use the tool, like, oh, wow. This is awesome. I could access it from my phone. I could get it very easily, and it just makes the client experience so much better. It was such a pain point having to mail out a return or even e emailing it when a client's asking because we do 1,600 returns. So if a hundred clients over the summer need a tax return, it's it's a job in itself just to even print them and email them if encrypted. So just little tools like this could completely change our firm. Then shortly after that, I think the next year, I implemented a scheduling tool. Because before that, if a client needed an appointment, they would literally just they would email, hey, Nick. I need an appointment. Or, which was my absolute pet peeve and still today, is they just call me unannounced for an appointment or trying to schedule an appointment. And it was just a huge waste of time, and it's also not a value add to the client. So when I thought about implementing technology, I was always thinking about three people in the picture. We have the business, we have our team, and we have the client. So if you're gonna implement a tool that makes all three of those items better, it's a must change. Is it always easy to do? No. But I knew it had to happen. So now that the scheduling tool, there's a bunch out there. I use Calendly. And when a client needs an appointment, I shoot them a link. They have access into my calendar, and they see exactly when my availability is. I promise that I have no availability on Saturdays and Sundays for appointments, and I promise I have no availability on at night. And I don't have availability on holidays, and I definitely don't have availability when I'm going on vacation. So I could block out my calendar and not have to block out the whole firm's calendar because when I'm away, other our team's still here or my brother will still be here. So just using that tool, clients have such a better experience, and I would say 95% of our clients absolutely love it. But the 5% who maybe aren't as tech savvy tech savvy, they don't really love having to book an appointment because they were so used to calling when whenever they needed something. Oh, hey, Nick. I'm just in the car. I had a quick tax question. I'm sure we've all experienced that, and I just don't think that's an efficient way to run our firms. That's how we started, and I knew that that was a pain point that I had to change. So having this calendar scheduling and it also would send reminders to clients so they weren't missing appointments. I would always prep for my meetings and then ready for the call. But when they missed the call, now I spent all that time prepping because I wanna have a really good experience with the client and they were forgetting to join. So I that's just a tool I really I enjoy using, and I think if you're not using something similar, you should definitely check it out. Then this two years ago, we implemented an electronic billing system. As I keep mentioning, a lot of our processes have been very manual. So all of our invoicing was manual. We would send out invoices after we got the work done, whether it was quarterly, we'd do our bookkeeping. We'd send all our invoices out and just hope clients mail those checks. And, obviously, a lot of clients didn't always pay. They weren't eager to open up their mail or check their emails, and we wouldn't get paid. And then the whole summer, we're going back and forth trying to collect. After I work a busy tax season, this summer, I wanna enjoy it. I don't wanna be doing collections for work that we've already done for our clients. So once we implemented, electronic billing system, it bought us back so much time. And I'm gonna get into this later, but we we use Anchor and it's just been a game changer sending out all of our agreements in bulk. And clients have clear visibility into our pricing. It answers any questions. I have a whole slide on this later, so I I'll skip through that one. And then phase two, again, it's really all these things happened year after year. In the beginning, it was definitely a slow evolution, and now I just see the value of making the change. So now I'm a lot more eager to spend the time. So a workflow management tool was a absolute game changer for our firm because when when we first started, it was just my dad. So he had all the processes, all the information in his head. I'm sure if you have a fault small firm or you're maybe the only if you're the only person in your firm, what's the point of you might think what's the point of documenting all my processes? Well, one day you might wanna hire someone or you might be out sick one day. So you wanna make sure you have your workflows documented and but I just didn't know how to do it. Like, how do you document all your processes in a Word document? We first started our our workflow management tool was printing out our client list for bookkeeping. We would print it out and highlight them as the clients were completed. And if they didn't give us their bank statement, we have to circle them, and then we've carried that forward into the next tax the next month. So just a lot of manual processes. And once we implemented Financial Cents, I realized it was definitely a bit more complex to implement than some of the other pieces of technology. But, essentially, what you're doing is you're recording all of the processes your firm does, putting it down on paper in an organized fashion. And then if you have a monthly recurring project, that's gonna recur every month automatically. You don't have to make any Excel spreadsheets. You don't have to do anything extra. Just building it out, and then it's automatic. Our quarterly task, our yearly task, I love it for documenting of those one off projects because maybe someone out there could realize your you you have your team maybe do the repetitive monthly task that, hey. It's worth showing them how to do this task because now that's gonna offload my work. But this yearly project, I'll just do it because it takes too much time for me to teach the team. I'll just do the test myself. And that's the one thing I learned as a leader is you have to realize where you could delegate and where we could add most value. So, like, I don't wanna spend most of my time doing the test that the team would love to actually learn and add on another item on their to do list. Doesn't sound exciting, but they like to learn and feel like they're making a difference in the firm. And then I could spend my time teaching them. So I know how to do all the things, but how could I organize it in an organized fashion so now everyone could do more? So building out the workflow management tool is really important. I don't know. Please enter in the chat if you're using something, if you're using nothing. But now without that tool, I wasn't able to really travel and get away. I would go on vacation. I will come back, and all the work will be sitting, waiting for me to to get reviewed or whatnot. And then I I touched on Loom earlier, but it's basically for training and standardizing our operations. When we would when I would teach one on one, you might show someone a process and then you show the next team member the process, but everyone might remember it a little bit differently. So then you start I started realizing that everyone was doing the same task a little bit differently. So recording it with Loom and then getting that recording and putting it right into our workflow management system. Now the client if a team member or a new hire goes, I don't really remember how to do this task or I've never done this task. They could watch the video and see exactly how to do it. And then they might still have questions, and I'm more than happy to help. But this is gonna save you a lot of time. And this is just my way of saying, like, these tools really change our firm. And before it, it's hard to even remember how we operated, and we definitely weren't operating efficiently. And then the last thing on here, which actually was extremely easy to implement, is use doing meeting summaries. So and so I don't know if anyone's already using an audio transcription service. So when I get a new client, this is kinda how I wrap up everything in a in a nice bow, like all this all these tools that I wanna use starting with the ideal client. So I've I've a new client onboarded. They schedule on Calendly to have that initial meeting with me. They upload their prior to your tax return in advance of our call, so I know they could use those tools. And then what and then I really enjoy having a Teams meeting. We just you we haven't used Microsoft Teams. Obviously, there's other other video conferencing tools. But Otter dot ai is just a plug on, and it records the whole meeting, transcribes all the notes. And then what's really powerful with it is I'm able to get a quick summary and send it to this new client or a current client that I'm having a meeting with, having key points that we discussed or action items for the client, action items for myself. Maybe I gave them a quote. In the past before this, I usually have a cup client a quote. And then when I bill them, they would say, oh, well, on the call, you said this amount. But now I have everything recorded, and the new clients are like, wow. This is amazing. You're giving me such a powerful follow-up with all the key points, action items, and nothing gets forgotten. So this is an example of a tool that takes no extra time, and it just adds so much value to both me, the client, and the team. So now the team, I'm saving that that audio transcription and that summary right into their SmartBold folders. So now everyone sees those summarized notes. Not everyone had to be on the call with me. So I know I went through a lot, but just realize all those tools are things that I've implemented from essentially 2018 to to today, and we're still working on fine tuning our systems. But all that I really think you should take away from this is don't forget why you wanna do this. Your why is gonna be different than mine. Maybe you just wanna make more money, and maybe you wanna work like me. I'm I don't wanna work nights. I don't wanna work weekends. Maybe you're just like, I need to get reduce my administrative manual task because I really wanted like, I'm a I'm a tax expert. I'm a bookkeeping expert. I wanna help clients analyze KPIs, and I wanna help save my clients a ton on taxes and help with entity structure changes. Like, what is your reasoning for making these change? Really, it starts with freeing up your time. Now you have that free time. How do you wanna spend it? So So another reflective discussion. So, like, what's one just put this in the chat. What's one piece of technology that you've been putting off because it felt too big, too overwhelming, or just wasn't the right time? I appreciate you guys messaging in the chat, but, yeah, I felt the same way, and I pushed it off, pushed it off. And if I could go back, the one thing I'll do is start it sooner. Alright. Thanks for everyone participating. It's helpful. And so we all we all kinda do it. So alright. Let's get into pricing. So I mentioned this is one the reason I like having this as its own slide because really at the end of the day, we're business. So you want your business to generate income whether it's for yourself, your team, or if you wanna make a difference in the world. You're gonna need to generate income to do whatever whatever you want to do with your life. But pricing with purpose is really important. When I first started, we were known as the, let's call it, the low cost solution. So we it was really easy to get a lot of clients when you're the low cost solution. Everyone's sharing by referral, like, oh, wow. This is you get a really great deal here. But the problem with that, if you wanna be a low cost solution, it's hard for you to scale in efficient way, and it's hard for you to really add value. So if you bog your team down and yourself down just by taking on so many clients, it's gonna really slow your firm down. It took us years to kinda gradually increase our pricing because we had a lot of legacy clients. But the clients who really respected our value and liked working with our firm, they stayed on board and they saw the value to working with us, and they knew how good of experience they had. Where other clients were like, hey. I I'm gonna go somewhere else that's more affordable. And that's completely fine. As as I mentioned, we're we're basically here to design the firm of our dreams that's really important for us and what we wanna work on. So, with with that being said, our big change that we made this year that I'm super excited about, was super excited about. At first, I was a bit nervous to make a big change, but it was the first tax season we actually build upfront for our services for tax season. So what we did, we took last year's fees, took it right out of the cert, and got all of our fees from last year. And we basically told the clients, November 15, we bulk sent out eight let's call it 1,800 proposals between business and personal. And we told them this was your fee last year, and if you're willing to use our new system and onboard electronically and pay electronically, it saves us a lot of administrative back and forth, and we'll lock in your last year's rate. And we had an overwhelming amount of clients sign right away, pay right away. We've never collected more money in November before tax season and December. It was, like, our highest almost our highest revenue month ever. So it was pretty exciting. And then it was really powerful because then we knew exactly what clients wanted to work with us. How if if you have a big client base, it's it's a little sometimes it can be frustrating knowing, does this client really wanna work with us? They haven't been answering my emails. Are they delayed, or they just find another account? So doing that was just was awesome. We we'll never have, cash flow issues again because now we're billing upfront. For such a long time, we billed after the fact because we didn't know how to price if something changed on a on a, for example, a tax client. They have a new tax situation. They started a new business. They got a new rental property. How do you price for that? So we always just priced at the end. But now with this tool, we were able to lock in the rate last year if they pay in advance. But then we realize when we're in the workflow that they have that new business, they have that new rental property, and you know the fee has to increase. It's very easy to go into the system, add on a bill because it's they're already connected electronically, and send it over to them for a quick one click approval. So the reason why this is so powerful is in the past, when you're in in the heat of taxis and you're super busy, how many times do you do free stuff for clients? They're like, you know what? I did this one extra schedule. They have this one new new item. I'm just gonna I'm just gonna eat it. Because it was too much work to send the invoice and deal with the collections. Now it's so easy. It's crazy to not do it. So we're already doing the work. Let's get paid for our work. And still today, I never had any clients complain. Every client goes, yep. That makes sense. I have that new situation, and it makes it a bit more complex. So I understand. And they sign and approve that in invoice instantly. So it feels really good when you're adding more value to the client. They're respecting your value, and then they're happy to pay for your services. Those are the clients that I really wanna attract. And and I really like eliminating, as I said, any manual processes, any administrative time. Because now this tax season was the first tax season. I barely had to go back and forth with any clients explaining why their fee was their fee, explaining why this increased, and they had full visibility into everything in advance. So now in tax season, I was able to give such a higher level service to my clients and help them with the things that actually mattered. Do you think a client really cares if you're reconciling your books and everything's matching up picture perfect in your firm's bookkeeping? They don't care about that stuff. They wanna know, hey. You maximize all the deductions. You save the money, and you gate had clear communication. So all this starts with the pricing because if a client doesn't see the value in your firm, maybe they're just not a good fit. And using the tools made made billing and pricing very easy. And I forgot to mention that after January 1, if clients didn't lock in their rate, we were able to bulk increase all of our pricing by 10%. So if they didn't pay on time, their fees went up, so we were able to generate more revenue. Some clients wanted to wait for whatever reason. They were okay with the fee. Some clients were not sure, and then we actually did this tiered price increase as time went on. So the the more, I would say, noncompliance or making our firm's life a little bit more difficult in the middle of tax season, so the prices went up 10% in March and then another 10% in April. For those last minute client who weren't responding to any of our emails, These were just little things we changed. It was the first year we've ever done this, and it worked very well. So I'm very happy to share it, and maybe someone out there will use something similar. But, hopefully, it's helpful to someone out there. So, yeah, message in the chat just to see what your thoughts on that if you're doing something similar. So leading with vision. So I kinda started here, kinda wrapping it up here as well. But what's your vision for your firm? I think this is the most important place to start, and I think it's what a lot of firm owners overlook. If they just get into this business or what whether bookkeeping tax advisory, whatever business you're you're building, they just get into it, and they're just in the day to day grinding, and they're not they don't see the bigger picture because and I and I was definitely guilty of it myself. I was so busy doing the work and trying to do my best to make every client happy, and I didn't think about that big picture. But now I I clearly do, and I think it's really all about balance being having a balanced life. I'm the balanced EPA, so that's something I focus on all the time is the firm that I wanna build. And when I say I'm the balanced EPA, it does it does not mean that I do not get stressed. It doesn't mean I don't work late night sometimes, but it's it's about rebalancing. I don't mind working really hard in tax season and then having a flexible summer. I don't wanna work real hard in tax season and then work really hard all summer on extension. So, like, that wouldn't work for me. But I knew that from the start. As I like I said, I started with my passions. I love to travel. You define why do you wanna do all this stuff. I do wanna grow the firm. And maybe you're at a point you don't wanna grow your firm. Maybe you wanna keep it the same, and that's completely fine. Intentionally do that. And then making it sustainable, I think, is probably the most important thing. I've only been doing this for twelve years. So some people out there might be, you know, getting started. There's might be some people out there who's been doing it way longer than myself. But we all know that success is all about sustainability. You could work real hard, make money, but then if you burn yourself out, one day you're gonna say, I don't I don't wanna do this. I just I just can't keep working like this, and I I quit. I'm at the amount of times I go to talk with other accounts, like, I just can't do this. I need to retire next year. Like, we don't wanna get to that point. So we wanna gross on a slower scale so we could make it sustainable. You could do year after year. You wanna communicate this with your team. You wanna make you wanna get everyone on board because you can't lead if you don't get everyone to see your vision. And the vision should hopefully take be taken care of everyone, your team and your clients. But, yeah, I think that chain leading with vision is really the most important thing you're gonna do. If if you have all the technology implemented or not, you automated your workflow processes or not, you have to have the vision, you and you have to lead. You have to show up on the way. So to kinda wrap get to the wrap up point, so we went through a lot in this session. I really wanna make sure I'm touching on the actionable items. So starting with that, defining your ideal client. That's something that I always heard, but I didn't think it was really that important because, really, it was that mindset that we started the firm with. Take every client. And you just realize as you grow, you're getting what you think you want, but then you realize you're not getting what you want. Because then I started burning out. I'm working too much, and I'm dealing with clients who don't respect me, don't and don't value me. So that now we're very clear on ideal client. Investing the right tech tool, definitely don't have to get into that. I told you about all the tools that we've used, and there's still stuff we still wanna implement. But what's the right tool for your firm? What's gonna help you have a more efficient here? Documenting your processes is super important, especially if you wanna take time off and you wanna enjoy your life. It's gonna be really hard. If you're doing everything yourself and you can't delegate, it's gonna be a bit tough to to have that free time for your passions. Pricing with purpose, I highly recommend if you're not billing upfront, if you have a lot of collections, just just change. People are people always say, well, we've been doing it like this for such a long time. I definitely feel you. I've been there, but you just have to make the change. And the clients who who are on board, they'll work with you. And the clients who aren't, they're just gonna go elsewhere, and then you'll probably realize that it was for the better in the end. And then just make sure you're leading with vision. Design the firm that you really want. That's why that's why I've really been so excited to to be on this webinar with you all because I wasn't in the firm that I of my dreams. I was just figuring out as I go, and now I really feel like I'm building my dream firm and I'm having my dream life. And it it was definitely a journey, but it was so worth making the changes. So I wanna just wrap it up with a a polling question. So if you wanted a perp personalized demo or consultation, what you learned from today's training event, hit yes or no, and I'll give you about fifteen to thirty seconds just to make sure you get your CPEs. But, again, I really appreciate everyone. I real appreciate your participation. It's been really great to be here. And don't don't log off yet because we we really want you to do the survey at the end as well. It'll only take a second. Alright. Thank you for doing the poll. And we're almost at the end here, so thanks for hanging with me. So if you're looking for more free training and resources like this event, just go to accountants.intuit.com/training. Again, you'll be able to access this this whole PowerPoint and all these links, so you don't have to feel like you're you have to write it down. But there's gonna be tons of live and recorded webinars, virtual conferences, self paced modules, and then there's also the tax pro center. There's a lot of great articles to read. And then the support and community. There's there's a great support system. There's a lot a lot of accounts out there who are willing to help you. So just know the resources are out there. Sometimes you feel like you're alone on an island. There's so much out there that could help you. You just have to look, and it's there. So you have the Intuit Support Center, and then you have the community center. So I highly if you haven't checked out any of these resources, I highly recommend it. It might be exactly what you're looking for. And then I kinda just wanted to wrap it up and thank everyone for their time. I was really excited to be here. To me, it's really fun to talk about my journey and from where I was to where I am now. I hope I inspired some people. Right there is my, my virtual business card. So if you just scan the QR code, you'll actually get all my contact information. So if you have any follow-up questions, feel free to shoot me an email, message me on LinkedIn, or find me on Instagram at the balance c p a. So you have all my contact information. I'm I'm really here to help. And if you ever see me around, feel free to connect with me. I really like and my my goal is really to help others, so you don't have to go through the pain points that I went through. I just wanna wrap it up by saying, let's keep elevating the profession together and stay balanced. Have a great day.