How Financial Cents Helps JTC CPAs to Be More Efficient

Michael McMullin

Firm Name: JTC CPAs

Firm Type: Bookkeeping, Tax Preparation & Payroll Management

Staff members: 28

Year founded: 2008

FC Start date: 2020

Location: Idaho, Arizona, Georgia, and Florida

Working style: In-person & Paperless

From Sticky Notes to unfit Apps, and Finally to Financial Cents

In search of something that “fits”

JTC CPAs offer CPA services including small business bookkeeping and tax preparation to clients from 4 office locations. Having been in business for over 14 years with a focus on exceptional client relations, their clients view them not just as accountants but business counselors and financial advisors.

With such high expectations from their clients, they can’t afford to be anything less than efficient. 

They started off by using sticky notes to document client updates, informing colleagues of important notes, and keeping track of work. Suffice to say that was a big challenge.

“We would write things on a sticky note and place it on somebody’s desk because the person wasn’t there. And then the person, while shuffling all their papers, mistakenly covers up their sticky notes and ends up not doing what they were supposed to do. The sticky notes get stuck on to something else or get thrown away. Then a client calls and they’re upset because something wasn’t done or a piece of information wasn’t shared with them. It was just total chaos. So, we were like, we need to have a better way to track things.”

Michael Mullins, CPA joined the firm in 2016 as a Managing Partner to help grow the firm and improve operations. One of the first things he did was to find ways to help the firm move from sticky notes to something different and better. He started by introducing workflows and looking for a work management solution. 

With their goal clearly defined – finding a better way to track work, Michael started looking for a software solution that fit the bill. They tried Huskey Practice Manager, which ended up being too basic for their size of firm and their goal.

“Husky was just not it. It didn’t have enough features so it was too basic for us.”

– Michael McMullen

They found Jetpack workflow and it seemed like their silver lining especially because of its robust features but over time, they realized that it wasn’t helping them to be efficient. It was complicated and required multiple steps to complete simple actions. They had a lot of clients to serve – clients who looked up to them for 5 star service, advice, and quick turnaround. They didn’t have time to waste on unnecessary additional steps.

So, again, they went searching for another software solution. This time around, they had a more defined goal – to find a software solution that helps them track work efficiently and gives them visibility on the status of work.

Finally, they found that Financial Cents ticked all the boxes for them and gave it a try. They have stayed with the application since then.

“Now, with Financial Cents we can all stay up to date on the status of work, complete actions without additional steps, and collaborate seamlessly. When a client calls to ask for an update, we can go into the project and see all the history – from the notes we’ve made, to the emails we’ve sent, with date and time stamps on them. That’s very beneficial to a manager because it helps with managing clients especially when they have a complaint. It’s also beneficial for when someone’s out of the office, and a client calls, somebody else can go into that project, read the comments, know what needs to happen next and keep the project moving.”

– Michael McMullin

How Financial Cents Helps Improve JTC CPAs’ Efficiency

• Seeing all open projects in one view: With Financial Cents, JTC CPAs don’t have to rely on memory, sticky notes, or some other clunky processes to know what projects they currently have ongoing. With Financial Cents’ project dashboard, they are able to see all their open projects in one view with key details like due dates, status, client, and assignee. 
• Easily tracking the status of work: Beyond having an overview of work, managers can now dig into each client’s project to see what’s going on with them and not miss important details about them.

“Being able to track communications and what’s happening with a project through comments and tasks, having a great visibility into the status of projects; where it stands, what we’re waiting on, and what’s next. That’s huge.”

• Distributing work appropriately across the firm: With Financial Cents’ capacity management feature, Michael and other managers at JTC CPAs can get a complete picture of everyone’s capacity and easily re-assign work for overburdened staff.

“Being able to see how much is assigned to one staff versus another so that we can spread the joy of work and make sure that each staff member has the appropriate amount of work? That’s a great thing.”

Michael

• Having more time to focus on other important aspects of the firm: Without Financial Cents, managers at JTC CPAs would have had to spend more time tracking work manually, sitting down with each staff member to go through client work, and have less time doing actual accounting work that provides value to their clients and that oils the revenue engine.

“Without Financial Cents, I would have to work a lot more hours because I would have to then go to each staff member and sit down with them to find out what they’re working on and the status of each of those projects. The nice thing about using Financial Cents, however, is that I can sit down at my computer and I can quickly see all the projects a staff member is working on. I can also look at any of the hot projects that I know of, and find the status of it really quickly. It’s a lot more efficient than having to sit down with each staff member each day and going through the projects with them.”

Michael

• Collaborating seamlessly: In the days of sticky notes, years before using Financial Cents, JTC CPAs collaborated by leaving sticky notes on each other’s desks and scribbling down updates on paper. These sticky notes often got lost and led to work falling through the cracks. But the biggest impact of these was probably on their collaboration as a team. With notes lost in transit, the absence of a staff member handling a project when a client calls would stall everyone and the progress of a project.

All that has changed now.

“We love Financial Cents’ comment section. We use it tons. The sticky notes and the little pieces of paper? All of that is gone. What’s nice is, with Financial Cents, when you make a comment, whoever is on that project will receive an email and a notification so they don’t miss it. And sometimes the comment is abbreviated, if it’s a long comment, but then they can go into the project and see what the whole comment is. And so that was a big headache that got resolved for us. Because the sticky notes and papers just weren’t cutting it as we were growing.”

Michael

How Financial Cents Makes Michael Feel

I am an orderly person and I don’t like chaos. Financial Cents makes me feel and be more organized.

– Michael McMullen, CPA

Managing Partner at JTC CPAs