S02 E12: How to Better Understand the Health of Your Accounting Firm with Streamlined Systems in Place

Roman Villard 
Today, we are blessed to have Mr Timothy Wingate Jr., the founder of GNF. Timothy, I’d love for you to briefly overview your firm, what you’re doing, and how you’re doing it.

Timothy Wingate 
Yeah, we are specialized in the area of construction. So we focus on construction clients solely, and we’ve been doing, you know, the firm has been around for eight years, and my dad has been in construction all his life, so I didn’t start as a construction accounting firm. I converted to a construction accounting firm when I learned that I needed to streamline some processes and make it easy for my firm to grow, and construction was just a low-hanging fruit for me because I knew the language. My dad worked in it for years and had been around it for a long time, and I knew that I could serve this underserved population very well.

Roman Villard  
It’s in your blood.

Timothy Wingate
It’s in my blood.

Roman Villard 
All right, so for the audience’s benefit, you’ve been in the construction business for eight years. What services do you offer to construction clients?

Timothy Wingate
Yeah, so we provide them services like the whole back office suite. We’re doing integrations, ensuring that we can integrate all their tech, and then we provide bookkeeping and accounting services to them. We also provide tax preparation and advisory industry services because I advise them on operational things. So it’s pretty cool.

Roman Villard
Okay, very good. And then tell us about your team dynamic today. 

Timothy Wingate
We have a team of four. We have two bookkeepers, Melissa and Gabe, who are smart and the best at what they do. Our all-star virtual assistant, Becky, supports the whole team and gets things going for us. Then we have our seasonal tax preparer, Ashley, who does a phenomenal job with all the individual clients we serve during tax season. This makes up our core team. Additionally, our social media marketer, Alan, is based in Georgia and has been working with us for the last four or five years. It’s a great team.

Roman Villard
Shout out to Alan on the social media side of things. That’s great. Today, we will discuss how you gauge the health of your firm, clients, and team. What comes to mind when assessing and reviewing the firm’s health?

Timothy Wingate
When I think about the firm’s health, I think about the health of my people. How are they feeling? Are they overwhelmed? Do they need more training? To capture this information, I use a tool called 15Five. It sends out a weekly check-in at the end of the week. Team members rate their feelings on a scale of one to five and answer if they feel overwhelmed or need assistance. A few standard questions are asked every week, but I also include some that change every month or quarter to get more detailed feedback from the team.

Roman Villard
All right, you’ve already got a system to help gauge feedback and the team’s health. I love how you lead with that because it’s so intentional. When you have a team that’s engaged and moving in the right direction, they’re getting the help they need, which results in a better experience for the client.

Timothy Wingate
Absolutely.

Roman Villard
How long have you had this system in place?

Timothy Wingate
15Five has existed for at least four years, probably a little longer. It has become an integral part of operating and maintaining a healthy team dynamic.

Roman Villard
Okay, and has that resulted in changes on a monthly or quarterly basis? How often does feedback from the system lead to changes in management?

Timothy Wingate
Sometimes, it leads to changes the next day if I see something concerning. For example, if someone feels their workload is a nine out of ten, I address it immediately. I need to understand why they feel overwhelmed and how we can adjust their workload. Maybe they are doing things the long way instead of the easier, shorter way. These insights are crucial for making quick adjustments that improve efficiency and morale.

Roman Villard
That’s interesting because you internally have expectations and look at data. If a team member comes back saying they’re at 90% capacity, a 20% gap needs to be addressed. How can you help them become more efficient or better understand the workload? Is that accurate?

Timothy Wingate
Spot on. When we get this feedback from the team, it happens every week. If a team member reports feeling at 90% capacity, we must explore why there’s such a high workload. It could be due to inefficient processes or an imbalance in task distribution. Addressing these issues, we help them become more efficient and reduce their stress levels. We can rebalance the workload, provide additional training, or implement new tools to streamline their tasks.

Roman Villard
So when you get this feedback from the team, does that data make its way into the employee review process? How do you then holistically take that one step to say, “Hey, we’re on track. We’re moving in the right direction. Here’s the promotion path”?

Timothy Wingate
Great question. The 15Five tool allows us to consolidate all the data and use it for performance evaluations. We use 15Five to conduct our performance evaluations as well. Initially, we did evaluations quarterly, but now I’m thinking about making them biannual because quarterly is often too quick to see significant changes. Having biannual evaluations gives us a broader perspective on performance and growth.

This approach is beneficial because we don’t rely solely on memory or sporadic observations. We can reflect on the consistent feedback and data collected over weeks and months. This helps us create a comprehensive evaluation reflecting the employee’s performance and development needs. It also allows us to track progress and set clear promotions and professional growth goals. By consolidating all the feedback, we can provide meaningful insights and support to our team members, ensuring they stay on track and continue to develop in their roles.

Roman Villard
I like that a lot. Since we’re on the topic of the firm’s health as it relates to people, how about for yourself? How do you gauge your own health and ensure you have the right balance of time and management so you’re not micromanaging but also not too high-level? How do you assess that for yourself?

Timothy Wingate
For myself, it’s all about how much time I have to spend with my family. If I see a lot of time being taken away from my family, it indicates that the team might be doing something that’s not helping me out enough, and I might need to delegate more tasks. Sometimes, it’s about realizing that I’ve been holding onto certain responsibilities that I need to release. If I’m consistently working weekends, it throws me into a different headspace, and I need to sit back, evaluate, and possibly delegate more.

Roman Villard
Your prioritized approach demonstrates your intentionality and empathetic leadership. I can relate because I evaluate myself similarly. Sometimes, work gets heavier, and you have to make concessions, but if family priorities are out of order, it impacts your ability to deliver at work. Is there anything you use to track that, or how do you evaluate it beyond weekend hours?

Timothy Wingate
I look at my schedule. If it’s full of meetings and I can’t get actual work done, that’s a red flag. If I have work items overdue or the team is waiting on me to review and check things, things are a bit hectic, and we need to find a way to reduce the tension.

Roman Villard
I like that a lot. When your calendar fills up with meetings and responsibilities, it diminishes the white space you have to contribute to the wellness of others, whether it’s your team or family. So, I like that as a benchmark. Okay, let’s shift to the client side of things. When you’re thinking about the health of your firm, do you have similar metrics and tracking for client success?

Timothy Wingate
I realized with clients that sometimes, they don’t know what success looks like when working with an accounting firm. So, we have to give them benchmarks or goals upfront during our onboarding process. We let them know what the wins will be. For example, they should celebrate with their office and team once we achieve a certain goal. This helps them understand and recognize their successes.

For me, a high engagement level means we communicate effectively and timely. Most client complaints about accounting firms revolve around poor communication. By nailing down consistent and effective communication, clients feel we are always accessible and responsive. We focus on high-level communication, ensuring it is meaningful and not just random information.

Roman Villard
I like that. So, when you think about the firm’s health as it relates to client success, you immediately focus on communication during the onboarding process. Can you give me a more tactical example of what success looks like beyond attentive communication for onboarding within your firm?

Timothy Wingate
Sure, hitting deliverables is crucial. Every client is different. For example, one client wanted to eliminate paper time cards. We started them with Gusto, got them used to the system, and had their employees submit time cards online or through their phone app. This eliminated the hassle of collecting data manually, which often led to overstated hours due to miscalculations. By solving this problem, we made their process more efficient and less cumbersome. We focus on easy wins that significantly change their operations, making them unlikely to revert to old methods.

Roman Villard
It’s transformation, right? You’re taking them from a legacy approach to a more efficient process with new tools and software. Along that journey, you emphasize celebrating wins, which is monumental for clients even if it seems routine for us as accountants. This is true advisory, and when your clients feel the impact of these changes, it’s a huge indicator of the firm’s health.

Timothy Wingate
Yes, absolutely. Clients will often tell you what has made a difference in their lives, and many times, it’s not what you expected. Sometimes, the small things are tedious and hard to manage from their perspective. When we introduce a more efficient way to handle these tasks, saving them hours, they become clients for life.

Roman Villard
I love it when there’s a tangible outcome, like reducing a task from four hours to 30 minutes. But what about in cases where the benefits are less tangible, such as cleaning up books from the past to have comparable financials moving forward? Communicating that value can be challenging. How do you convey those smaller, less obvious benefits to clients?

Timothy Wingate
When you want to budget, you must know how much to spend on various things throughout the year. If you start a new QuickBooks file fresh in 2025 without cleaning up the books for 2024, you won’t have the data to create an accurate budget. However, if we clean up the books for 2024, we have a solid baseline and can create a budget for 2025 using that data. This way, you can make informed adjustments based on actual data instead of waiting a year to gather new data.

Roman Villard
Exactly, that makes a lot of sense.

Timothy Wingate
And sometimes that’s enough to convince clients. They realize they don’t want to wait a year for a solid baseline. Cleaning up the books now allows us to work from a strong foundation.

Roman Villard
I think that’s a good framework for anyone listening. You’re taking a concept that might be difficult to understand from an accounting perspective and translating it into something very practical for the client. You’re showing them the tangible output they can expect once the process is complete. I like how you connect complex accounting tasks and their practical outcomes. So, let’s talk about niching. You serve the construction industry and have developed processes around that. How has niching enabled you to better evaluate the health of the firm? Have you always been niched, or did you start without a niche?

Timothy Wingate
Before we niched, we served many different industries, which made it hard to be a superstar in every area. I had subscriptions and resources for multiple industries, which drove up costs and created chaos. Employees struggled to keep up with the different requirements of each industry, making it hard to scale and train them to be competent in any specific area. It was a lot of back-and-forth, training, correcting, and rework.

Once we decided to niche, everything became easier. Marketing was streamlined because we only focused on construction ads. Training bookkeepers and accountants also became more straightforward because we only needed to master a few systems and processes. This allowed us to perfect our approach and ensure new team members could be trained efficiently. As we grew, Niching created new roles within the company, making everything more manageable. Now, all my studies and continuing education are focused on my industry, which makes it easier to stay updated and provide the best service to our clients.

Roman Villard
If anyone joins us now, you’ve just heard a masterclass in niching. I love how you described the transition from a non-niched environment to focusing on construction. It allowed you and your team to concentrate, educate yourselves more, reduce expenses, and provide better client service. This focus must have given you mental clarity about the firm’s health because you’re familiar with what you’re doing and the clients you serve. You probably felt a lot better once you fully transitioned.

Timothy Wingate
Yes, absolutely. It made so much more sense. I was able to spend more time with my family because we were dealing with the same issues with every client. Clients trust you more when they know you specialize in a certain area. I always say you wouldn’t ask a general practitioner to perform heart surgery, but you trust a heart surgeon with anything heart-related. Before becoming an accountant, I pursued becoming an orthopedic surgeon, but an internship revealed that the doctor didn’t have time for his family. He only took a month-long vacation each year, which wasn’t the life for me, no matter the money. I’ve always wanted to be a specialist.

Roman Villard
I’ve seen many firms niche successfully, and you’re a great example. However, generalist doctors still play a big role in medicine, often referring patients to specialists. As a firm owner, I love variety and discussing their challenges with business owners. But your wisdom-highlights that differentiation can strain the team. You must carefully set up processes and learning opportunities to serve clients well; sometimes, differentiation can inhibit team success. That’s awesome.

Alright, we’re going to jump into a live reaction session now. We’ll take some tweets and quotes from Tax Twitter and get your initial reactions. I’ll share my screen. Let’s start here. Lisandra Everett, an EA, says, “Telling me how much less someone else charged you is not an enticement for me to reduce my rate. It only angers me that someone else doesn’t know their worth.” What are your thoughts on that?

Timothy Wingate
I always tell people when you think about pricing, consider where you want to spend your time and how you want to free yourself from your business. $50 or $100 an hour won’t free you from the day-to-day operations. You have to price yourself to eventually step away from the day-to-day. Each firm owner’s price will differ based on the benefits they want to provide to their employees and themselves. For example, offering free Uber vouchers every week requires a higher price than a firm that doesn’t offer that benefit. You need to price yourself to achieve your goals and support the benefits you want to offer.

Roman Villard
That’s a great point about communicating value. Providing benefits like Uber vouchers means you must price accordingly, even if it doesn’t directly translate to a value prop for the client. When prospects compare your rates to a cheaper competitor, explaining the difference in services is important. If you reduce rates due to competition, ensure it doesn’t compromise the quality of service. It’s about finding the right balance to serve clients well.

Timothy Wingate
Yeah, I spent a lot of time setting up my pricing software. I used GoProposal and went through many scenarios to develop the pricing model. The idea is that when I meet with a client, they’re not debating with me on price; they’re debating with the software. For example, if the software says we’re doing 200 monthly transactions and servicing six accounts, it calculates the price based on those inputs. If the client wants to lower the price, we can adjust the inputs, and the software updates the price accordingly. This approach breaks the tension because the software I programmed determines the price.

It took me four or five iterations to get the pricing structure right. I realized some initial prices weren’t sufficient, especially for new services, so I had to adjust. Over time, we transitioned new and old clients to the updated pricing model. It’s a process, but starting with solid pricing software helps you deliver the message without being the one setting the price manually each time.

Roman Villard
That’s great. You’ve outlined a very transparent approach to pricing, which I like a lot. It also allows repricing with each new client or prospect and correcting past mistakes. All right, let’s do one more. A funny one from Matthew Cords, another EA. He says, “My Tax Twitter timeline confirms it’s not just me. There’s an epidemic of sending PDFs of spreadsheets. I think it’s contagious.” Do you get PDFs from clients? How do you intake your data?

Timothy Wingate
I never get PDFs of spreadsheets. I guess it’s because I often invite clients to collaborate on Google Sheets, which cuts that out. When I send an Excel spreadsheet, my clients send it back as an Excel file, not a PDF. We also use Loom videos to explain how to use the spreadsheet and what we need from them.

Roman Villard
I like that a lot. You’re introducing a new process to better educate your clients on interacting and communicating with you, setting clear expectations. That’s awesome.

Well, this has been a fantastic conversation about measuring the health of your firm and different tactical ways to do that for your team, clients, and yourself. Timothy, I’m stoked to have had this conversation with you.

Timothy Wingate
Awesome. Roman, thank you for having me. I enjoyed it.

Roman Villard
Yeah. And just to reiterate, for construction accounting, Timothy’s your guy. Timothy, what’s the best way for people to reach you or your firm?

Timothy Wingate
The best way to reach me is through my website, gplusf.com. You can also go to the construction. Accountant, which will reroute you there. LinkedIn Messenger is the best way to contact me for personal conversations, and I usually respond within a day or so.

Roman Villard
Great. Before we started, you mentioned having a great conversation with another firm owner about onboarding clients. I know you’re generous with your time and help others a lot. So, I encourage everyone to connect with Timothy on LinkedIn. Hopefully, you don’t get too many messages that eat into your family time. Thanks again for joining us, Timothy.