How Back Office Stars Used Financial Cents To Make Their Firm More Profitable
Author: Financial Cents
Back Office Stars
Firm Name
Bookkeeping & Payroll
Firm Type
Toronto, Canada
Location
6
Staff Members
35
Number of Clients
Virtual
Working Style
We bill a fixed amount every month, so every client has an estimated number of hours based on what they are being billed. And we needed a system that would help us see how we are doing vs. that estimated time. If we are consistently working more hours than the client pays for, we are losing money, and we need to adjust things with the client. At the highest level, that’s answering are we making money each month on every client."
Jonathan BurnsWhen they were smaller, they used google sheets to track this information. However, as they grew, it quickly became obsolete.
We used to manage it with google spreadsheets, but the problem was as we grew, we started having to track different types of hours like out of scope or catchup hours, and then the spreadsheet became too unwieldy across multiple bookkeepers. Like most things, the spreadsheet was an okay way to handle it when things were simple, but we quickly outgrew it."
Jonathan Burns, Back Office StarsWhat I needed was a simple way to see when projects for clients were over their estimated time."
Jonathan Burns, Back Office Stars
They tried out solutions, but it didn’t give them the insight they needed. Eventually, he heard about Financial Cents, which provided him visual metrics to identify his unprofitable clients quickly.
In Financial Cents, what I needed was built right into the main dashboard, and when a project goes over, its hours go red. So simple, but exactly what I needed!"
Jonathan Burns, Back Office StarsIn the past, an unprofitable situation with a client would go on for several months before rectifying it, which makes it hard to recover the lost profit. For example, you go back to a client after three months and tell them that they agreed to pay for 5 hours of work a month, but we have been doing 8 hours for the past few months. Could you pay us the difference? The longer that time goes by, nobody wants to do that."
Jonathan Burns, Back Office Stars
With Financial Cents, Back Office Stars could identify the amount of time spent per client and see when the time spent was higher than expected. Also, having high-quality data helped them have a more productive and successful conversation with the client.
Being able to see it on the dashboard in red, we are able to act faster. I can then get in touch with the client and say we need to increase your fees. It has helped us nip in the bud unprofitable changes in client scope needs sooner and match billings to actuals with a faster reaction time. Instead of identifying unprofitable clients in 3 – 4 months, we can now do it in 3 weeks."
Jonathan Burns, Back Office StarsInstantly download this customer story as a PDF
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