On July 28, 2026, four weeks of Summer Workflow Camp came to a head.

For the entire month of July, a group of firm owners and their teams showed up to a weekly virtual campfire with one insomnia-inducing question on their minds:

What actually happens to my firm when I’m not in the room? 

By the time they arrived to the final session—a live “stress test” presentation—they’d spent weeks doing the hard work: building frameworks with Nick Boscia, resetting workflows with Kellie Parks, and designing out-of-office systems with Alisa McCabe.

For this final showdown, five cabins stepped on stage to present their new playbooks: real systems designed to handle real pressure. And because we love a good competition at FC, we enlisted two experienced judges to evaluate their efforts and crown a winner: Alisa McCabe from First Steps Financial and Yuri Kavamulovich from Kapilovich & Associates.

What Breaks When You’re Not There

Each team came to the Stress Test Finals with a different worst-case scenario. Some chose the expected disasters, while others got creative.

One team designed a system for when the person who “knows everything” (e.g., the industry specialist who handles half the firm’s client load) just vanishes. Like, permanently. Another team stress-tested dual leadership absence plus a brand-new hire starting at the same time.

Another team focused on the client onboarding crisis: the owner just landed the firm’s biggest new client before going out of office unexpectedly. Who onboards them? Who makes decisions? Who answers questions?

While the scenarios were different, the underlying question was consistent across cabins: Does your system work without you?

How to Find Your Blind Spots

The teams that pulled ahead had actually tested their playbooks.

One team compared their workflows against existing checklists. They also leveraged their newest hire to help them find the blind spots.

We compared it to existing checklists and SOPs, and then we interviewed our newest hire to see what could have gone more smoothly and use that feedback.”
Amanda Wood, Moody & O’Neil CPAs

Another team went further. They had a bookkeeper who didn’t know the process run through the entire workflow, following every step from engagement letter to e-filing. Perhaps not surprisingly, she found gaps, including missing automations and incomplete instructions.

The key takeaway you can apply in your own firm: testing is where theory meets reality. It’s where you discover that what you thought was clear is actually confusing. And it’s where you learn what matters.

Where You Document Matters More Than You Think

The winning cabin, “Debit and Chill,” didn’t win because they had the most creative scenario. They won because they obsessed over the details.

They built an end-to-end workflow in Financial Cents that mapped every single step of tax return preparation:

  • Who’s responsible?
  • Who’s accountable?
  • Who gets consulted?
  • Who gets informed?
  • And at each stage, what happens next?

In addition to mapping this process, they took it a step further and actually automated it. That way, clients get email updates at each stage. They also added tracking for multi-state returns and documented where everything lives. Because sometimes, the real crisis isn’t figuring out what to do, but figuring out where to find what you need in order to do it.

Everything from our very first contact with the client all the way through preparing a return and getting it out the door and finalizing all the documents afterwards.”
Debbie Highlander, Debit and Chill

One team took a different approach. They used this opportunity to centralize everything in Financial Cents, making it their operational hub. SOPs live there. Client details live there. Work lives there. Escalation runbooks live there. When they click on a client, every workflow, task, and step is linked. And it’s all updated in one place, so everyone always sees the most current version.

The client doesn’t notice if anyone goes out of office. Financial Cents really helps turn what could be a scramble into a true streamlined process for us.”
Jaime Turney, White Oak Explorers

The common thread: where you document your systems matters because that’s where people look when you’re gone.

One Size Doesn’t Fit All

Another team made a distinction that most firms miss: temporary absences and permanent departures need different systems.

Vacation? You need an out-of-office checklist. Extended maternity leave with no return date? You need an employee separation workflow. Those processes should not be the same.

We’re really good at temporary stuff. Two weeks or less, we’ve got that down pat. So how does this hold up [for longer absences]?”
Dave Kersting, Base Camp

Some systems need to scale across the firm (i.e., everyone uses them when they go on vacation). Some need to handle specialized scenarios (e.g., when your specialist suddenly leaves the firm). And some focus on first impressions (e.g., client onboarding when leadership is gone).

The winning teams clearly understood that your system is only as good as what actually breaks when you implement it.

The Real Prize

Debit and Chill won the $2,500 team retreat fund. But here’s what the judges had to say about all the cabins that participated in the finale:

Even if you didn’t win a prize, you won being part of this camp because Jamie can walk away and go on vacation. And so can Amanda at Moody and O’Neil. You win because you can walk away from your companies and know that things are getting done.”
Alisa McCabe & Yuri Kapilovich, Judges

Keep Going

This was the fourth and final session of Summer Workflow Camp. But just because camp is over, doesn’t mean you should stop improving your systems. Need more inspo? If you missed any of the earlier session recaps, be sure to check ’em out below:

Watch the stress test finals: See all five teams present their playbooks.