How Capovario Uses Financial Cents to Stay Ahead of Deadlines and Support Time Off

Customer Stories » How Capovario Uses Financial Cents to Stay Ahead of Deadlines and Support Time Off
Dave Kersting
Founder & CEO
Capovario
Firm Name
Accounting, Bookkeeping, payroll, auditing, forensic accounting, concierge consulting, and business owner coaching
Services
6
Staff Members
2020
Year founded
Denver
Location
Remote
Working Style
Every firm owner is in business to help their clients and teams. For Dave Kersting, this means:
- Providing excellent client services to improve compliance, lower operational costs, and deliver timely insights for efficient performance.
- Building a firm that helps team members maximize the “life” aspect of work-life balance.
Founded in 2020, Capovario is an accounting and bookkeeping firm on one hand, and a concierge consulting firm on the other. They connect business owners with the service providers they need to solve their business challenges.
We are concierge accountants and consultants, but we don't do tax. The concierge part really excites us because we like to connect the dots for our clients. We want to be the first our clients call when they have even a non-accounting business challenge."
Dave Kersting, Founder & CEO of CapovarioThe Denver-based firm is fully remote, which means having a digital workspace that centralizes work and client information for team members to get work done is non-negotiable.
However, knowing when to move from manual systems to a software solution can be difficult. For Dave, he got to the point where he risked losing his team.
One of my team members, who is local to me, would come over and grab my sticky notes and put them into Financial Cents, so that I could track work there instead of my sticky notes.
Now, Financial Cents is the hub of my company. Everything comes out of the platform. That's where we start and end our day."
Why Running the Firm with Sticky Notes Failed
Before switching to Financial Cents, the Capovario team managed its projects, communication, and clients using sticky notes and Outlook (email and tasks). When things got busier, they switched to a physical multi-level folder, which contained sticky notes and printed emails.
With this setup, most of the workflow processes were in Dave’s head, and he knew too well that this was not sustainable.
Before starting Financial Cents, I ran everything off my multi-level folders. Everything got printed in it, and I utilized Outlook and Outlook tasks. I had to individually tell my team what they needed to do because 90% of the procedures were in my brain, and that's not a great place to manage workflows."
When it became clear the time was right to move to practice management software, he chose a different solution because Financial Cents was new, and he wasn’t sure what it would look like in the long run.
Having worked with other firms using Financial Cents, his team members had seen its features set and how easy it was compared to the system Dave had implemented, so they demanded that Dave move Capovario to Financial Cents. And he listened.
I went with a different software because I felt Financial Cents was too new and that it would be a shiny object.
I thought I had made the right call until my team said, ‘Dave, stop. We like this other program, and it's called Financial Cents."
How Financial Cents Keeps the Capovario Team Organized
Dave might have moved the firm to Financial Cents based on his team’s evaluation, but it wasn’t long before he started seeing the benefits:
1. Better Client Service through Task Assignment and Project Management
Financial Cents enables the Capovario team to assign tasks, clarify responsibilities, and keep itself accountable to client promises.
This is important to their profitability because their projects and workflows are tied to client contracts. Once a client signs the proposal, Financial Cents creates projects directly from it.
This helps them work within the agreed scope, balancing quality client service with efficient use of the firm’s resources.
I think that the largest benefit is for our clients. Financial Cents enables us to provide more quality care to our clients by showing us what we told clients we're going to do, what success looks like, and whether we are getting the work done."
Dave Kersting, Founder & CEO of Capovario2. Ability to Stay Ahead of Client Deadlines
Using the Financial Cents due date feature, Dave and his team have learned to stay ahead of client deadlines.
The due date feature displays every project’s deadline on the workflow dashboard, which helps assignees understand the urgency of their assigned tasks.
The feature also reminds team members to complete their assigned tasks, eliminating the last-minute rush to meet client deadlines that increases the chances of errors.
Internally, my team is ecstatic because we are no longer forgetting stuff. With the due dates, we know when every task is to be done. We're getting ahead of what we need to do because we can easily see the future and how much work is coming."
Dave Kersting, Founder & CEO of Capovario3. Visibility into Workflow that Clarifies What Every Team Member Needs to Do
Visibility into team workflow is a game-changer for accounting firm owners. For Dave, this has meant the ability to weigh his firm’s resources against future workload, which has been crucial to the team’s consistency in meeting client deliverables.
I love the ability to look into the future and know that we have the time and the right number of team members to complete all our projects. It also shows my team members what they need to get done."
Dave Kersting, Founder & CEO of Capovario4. Centralized Storage System that Makes Information Retrieval Easy
Dave remembers the days when his team stored information and managed work in multiple places (sticky notes, emails, and Outlook Tasks), and team members depended on him to personally tell them what to do, when, and how.
Since switching to Financial Cents, all files, tasks, and information have been centralized and easy to find, which saves them the time and energy of jumping between tools to retrieve information.
Everything that needs to be done is in one place. It's easy to find and organize information."
Dave Kersting, Founder & CEO of Capovario5. Supporting Time Off without Worrying About Tasks Falling Apart
Since everything is organized in one place, Dave and other Capovario team members can now afford to take vacations or take time off to attend to personal emergencies without worrying about tasks slipping through the cracks.
Financial Cents clarifies responsibilities for tasks, defines priority levels, and keeps information at each assignee’s fingertips. This also enables team members to fill in for absent colleagues, ensuring uninterrupted client service.
You can take a vacation as a firm owner. Your team members can also take a vacation, and nothing will be missed because somebody else can pick up where they left off."
Dave’s Favorite Financial Cents Features
Dave finds it hard to narrow down his team’s favorite Financial Cents features because, in his words, “there are so many features in Financial Cents that are just so spectacular,” but he managed to mention a few, including:
-
Work-related Resources within Projects
Dave’s appreciation of the Work Resources feature boils down to the ability to store project-related information within the work, which saves them the stress of forgetting information that will affect the quality of service delivered.
To me, that has saved us from creating multiple projects because each project has everything that the client’s work needs from beginning to end. It keeps the clutter away and ensures we don't forget something somewhere else."
Dave Kersting, Founder & CEO of Capovario-
Integrated Workflow and Billing Solution
Dave finds the billing feature in Financial Cents “super exciting to see” because it integrates their payment processing needs with their workflow, team, and client management needs, making Financial Cents their all-in-one app.
Having the billing feature helps to streamline what we're doing, allowing us to stay (and manage our firm better) in Financial Cents."
Dave Kersting, Founder & CEO of CapovarioWhat Makes Financial Cents Different (for Dave)
While Dave appreciates Financial Cents’ features and functionality, the most outstanding aspect of the software for him is the company’s desire to build a tool that truly serves its users. This has informed the creation of several communities to interact with users and understand what’s working and where to improve.
Financial Cents as a company listens. They pay attention to their users to create features that we're looking for. They have a Facebook group where they ask for users’ opinions and address their challenges. Their support team is amazing."
Dave Kersting, Founder & CEO of Capovario“They also have the Next Level Firm Roundtable, where they bring accounting firm owners together to help each other grow. They always strive to understand what it’s like to be a firm owner before and after implementing Financial Cents,” Dave added.
How Financial Cents Makes Dave Feel
Financial Cents gives us peace of mind, comfort, and less stress. They do that well."
Dave Kersting, Founder & CEO of CapovarioSubscribe to our newsletter for an awesome dose of firm growth tips.