How Ledgers, Inc. Gains Firm-Wide Visibility Across 330 Clients and 1,800 Tax Returns with Financial Cents
As soon as we hear somebody say, I set up a spreadsheet for that, or I set up a Word document for that, we’re like, ‘Nope, nope, nope. We need to bring it back into Financial Cents.’
And there really truly isn’t anything we’ve not been able to bring into and manage in Financial Cents.”
Mindy Wirkus grew up in Clark, South Dakota, and in 1999 she turned her passion for small business development into a firm of her own, bringing years of hands-on experience in small business management, bookkeeping, tax preparation, and consulting to bear on the new firm, Ledgers, Inc.
Her goal for Ledgers, Inc. was to help guide business owners through their financial challenges with timely, intentional, and responsible service.
More than two decades later, Ledgers, Inc. has grown into a 28-person bookkeeping, client accounting, and advisory services firm in Watertown, in the northeastern part of the state.
Despite the volume of tax returns, tax work is not the center of the business. Client accounting services make up about 75% of the firm’s revenue. That means most of the team’s week runs on recurring work, from biweekly payrolls to monthly financial statements, and deadlines that can’t slip.
For a firm with this much recurring work, having the right practice management software was non-negotiable. The right software had to manage tasks, track time, and store client data in one place, and it had to work for bookkeeping and tax processes alike. Mindy and her team spent years searching for it.
The Problems
Disconnected Tools and No Single View of the Work
Before Financial Cents, the Ledgers, Inc. team used Aero Workflow to manage tasks. When Aero Workflow no longer met their needs, they then moved briefly to BigTime, which didn’t work out either. Neither gave them a single place to run the firm.
The search had gone on for years. Mindy knew the firm was outgrowing its tools, but the platforms she evaluated, including TaxDome and Canopy, were built around tax work. They didn’t fit a firm that runs payroll and prepares financial statements frequently.
While the search went on, the firm’s daily work was spread across several places. Team members managed tasks in Aero Workflow, logged their hours in QuickBooks Time, and tracked tax work in spreadsheets. With no connection between them, it was hard to see where a client’s work stood.
Asked how visible the spreadsheet-managed work was, she bluntly said, “It’s tough for individual tasks. It’s definitely tough.”
Chasing Client Documents Manually
Collecting client documents was another administrative bottleneck. Some clients prefer to send paper bank statements instead of granting online banking access.
For those clients, someone on the team had to write the request, then follow up by email or phone until it arrived. Across about 330 accounting, bookkeeping, and payroll clients, those follow-ups increased admin time significantly.
The Solution: Bringing the Firm’s Processes into One Platform
Mindy and her team have now been on Financial Cents for two and a half years. Since the switch, they’ve added employees and clients without having to rebuild the way the firm runs.
What set Financial Cents apart was its ability to give the team a single place for the three things they’d been managing in separate tools: tasks, time, and client data. It also handled the recurring bookkeeping work that made up most of the firm’s revenue.
Key Financial Cents Benefits for Ledgers, Inc.
1. Automated Document Requests Mean Less Back-and-Forth with Clients
Not every Ledgers, Inc. client hands over bank feed access. Some prefer to send paper bank statements, “the old-school way,” and those clients used to get repeated emails and phone calls. In Financial Cents, the team sets up the request as a client task that goes out on the first day of every month, with automatic reminders if the statement doesn’t arrive.
2. Time Tracking Inside the Project Reduces App-Switching
Now that their time tracking lives alongside their workflow tool, the team no longer logs hours in a separate app. A team member opens the task, clocks in, and records time against that project.
That history feeds a monthly check before billing goes out. Every project has a budget, and the team runs a report to see who is over or under.
3. Better Handoffs on Multi-Person Work
Before Financial Cents, a monthly financial statement meant three separate tasks, one for each person who touched it. The team had no easy way to tell whether a colleague had finished their part. With Financial Cents, the whole job is one project, and the work moves visibly from one person to the next within it.
4. Firm-Wide Visibility Shows Who Needs Help
Because every project lives in one place, Mindy can see a team member’s workload at a glance. She doesn’t have to open the capacity management tool to know when someone is stretched or has room for more.
The firm also looks at the same information at the department level. Ledgers, Inc. runs on the Entrepreneurial Operating System (EOS), and Mindy’s team uses past-due task tracking as a scorecard item across multiple departments. The metric tells them when a department needs to hire or move capacity around.
The same approach works for the tax team. One scorecard item counts the tax preparers with more than 25 past-due returns, a number Mindy can now pull straight from the workflow.
5. Built-In Review Steps to Train New Hires
Since starting with Financial Cents, Ledgers, Inc. has onboarded multiple employees and clients. The platform has also helped with training by enabling them to include a review step in the tasks for new team members, so their work is checked before it is marked complete.
6. An Active User Community Helps Firms Get More from the Platform
Beyond the product itself, the Ledgers, Inc. team often interacts with the Financial Cents Facebook community. When something doesn’t work as they expect, they post it there and get a fast response. There they also see how other firms use the product, which gives them ideas for their own setup.
The Real Difference-Maker: Feature That Enhanced Collaboration
Team Chat on Every Project
Mindy says the Team Chat feature in each project is her favorite Financial Cents feature. For her team, the feature puts project updates and any reasons for delays in the same place as the work, so other team members don’t have to ask.
The value also shows up on client calls. When a client calls, Mindy can check the project there and then to see what the problem is and advise accordingly.
Team Chat Also Improved Tax Return Tracking
The feature’s value grew even more when the firm moved its tax return process into Financial Cents last year. Before then, Ledgers, Inc. didn’t have a clearly defined tax process for everyone to follow.
Now, the team creates a tax project as soon as a return comes into the firm, and each project covers every step: document collection, preparation, review, client billing, e-filing, and acceptance confirmation.
The old way of answering “Where’s my return?” was slow. A client would call, and the person who answered had to work out who was preparing it before they could find out where it stood.
Results Round-up: Ledgers, Inc.’s Achievements with Financial Cents
Since adopting Financial Cents, Ledgers, Inc. has:
- Eliminated a separate time-tracking step by clocking hours directly inside client projects.
- Built a project-level history of how long recurring work takes, and used it to set and check budgets.
- Added a monthly pre-billing check. Team members explain any client project more than 20% over budget before invoices go out.
- Automated monthly document requests and reminders for clients who send paper bank statements, with no client pushback.
- Replaced a three-task handoff on financial statements with a single project that moves from bank rec to payroll to the senior accountant.
- Moved the tax return process into Financial Cents, with defined steps from document collection through e-file acceptance.
- Used workflow and past-due task views to see who is overloaded or who has more bandwidth.
What Financial Cents Does for Small Bookkeeping and Accounting Firms (According to Mindy)
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