Harvey and Simons, CPAs LLC

Firm

Payroll, tax, financial planning, and QuickBooks services.

Firm Type

12

Number of Employees

2011

Year Founded

Artesia & Carlsbad, New Mexico

Location

2021

Financial Cents Start Date

Hybrid

Working Style

We wanted a tool that could help us manage our workflows and distributed teams and not have stuff fall through the cracks. And we found that Financial Cents meets a lot of those criteria. We like it. I've got buy-in from the staff."

Chris Simons, Partner, Harvey & Simons CPAs, LLC

Meet Harvey & Simons, CPAs LLC

Harvey and Simons, CPAs LLC is an accounting firm that provides payroll, tax, financial planning, and QuickBooks services to individuals and businesses.

Based in New Mexico, United States, the firm strives to produce accurate work that consistently sets itself apart from other firms. And Chris Simons, the firm’s managing partner, believed that they just needed the right practice management software to streamline their processes and help team members work to the best of their abilities.

That is why the team jumped between project management tools (like Karbon, Practice CS, Accelo, Big Time, Jetpack Workflow, and Aero Workflow) before finding Financial Cents.

We've looked at every practice management software that I could find. Financial Cents is the first one that we truly bought into."

Chris Simons, Managing Partner, Harvey & Simons CPAs, LLC

Their Goals

Find practice management software that

  1. Gives them better control of the firm and keeps things from falling through the cracks.
  2. Allows the team to receive information and communicate with clients effectively.
  3. Makes information available to staff members
  4.  Helps them document work processes to enhance consistency.

Their Challenges

Chris wanted to ensure organization, visibility, and accountability in the firm, but struggled because of:

1. Disorganized Workflows

As the team grew, it was becoming too confusing for staff members to understand what was most urgent amidst the several tasks and projects they were involved in. This threatened the team’s ability to prioritize and meet client deliverables.

 

We have a lot of staff members and projects. How do we solve the problem of having multiple irons in the fire? How do we keep things structured so that we can deliver on what we're trying to do?”"

2. Difficulty Receiving Documents from Clients

As if chasing down clients was not enough, the Harvey and Simons team also struggled with knowing where clients would send requested documents. Some were fond of sending documents to staff members’ emails, which gave the team the additional responsibility of scrolling through their various email accounts for client documents. This led to a waste of productive time and energy.

A client sent in bank statements via email. We didn't know. I sent an email and they're like, "But we already did that in your staff's email."

3. Lack of a System to Make Information Available to Staff Members

Chris understands how much productivity and efficiency require knowledge sharing, but for a long time, he and his partner found it difficult to share what they knew with the team, and this was a course of concern for them.

One of our complaints was that we felt like we were the sole repository of everything; knowledge, communication, and status of client work, and it all ended with my partner and me. How could we get something that would make that information available, so that I'm not the sole repository?"

4. Previous Tools like Karbon and Accelo Were Too Difficult to Use

The team found Karbon and Accelo too tedious to use so they kept them aside as soon as they could.

Karbon and Accelo had some great things, but I don't have an IT person to manage their technicality. So, we couldn’t figure it out."

5. Ineffective Team Communication

Running a medium-sized firm like Harvey and Simons CPAs LLC requires an environment that fosters communication between the different people in the firm. Chris was determined to find a tool that would enable the team to communicate in a way that everyone found useful.

How do we communicate effectively with the different people, work styles, and amid the numerous things we have going on at the firm?"

Chris

The Benefits

Chris believes that the future of work is remote and that accounting teams do not have to sit in physical offices to get their jobs done.

We're not going to be having all of our staff members sitting in a traditional brick-and-mortar office. We're already partially there. I have people that are not even in the same country. That's going to become more and more normal. So, I want to put in those building blocks for the future."

Chris Simmons, Harvey and Simons CPAs LLC

By implementing Financial Cents, Chris has given his firm the project management tool they need to thrive in terms of:

1. Structure: Ability to Define Roles and Streamline Processes

Financial Cents gives Chris’s team the needed clarity of roles and deadlines through workflow visibility and the ability to organize work information in one central place. It allows each team member to view their dashboard to see what’s most urgent at any time.

Chris said,

I can now see at a high level what's not getting done so I can put it in, and not forget it."

2. Real Time Communication and Collaboration

Thanks to Financial Cents’ collaboration features (like Comments), communicating with staff is now very easy for Chris, who said that “We like the comments. We use them extensively.”

Chris also likes that Financial Cents centralizes the firm’s client communication in one place, instead of making him keep track of client communication in many different places.

I like the idea of the client chat. For one, it helps to centralize where client information is instead of being spread out in emails and phone calls. We've had clients respond or send us a chat about certain things. And I like that idea"

Chris

3. Having a Single Place to Receive Documents from Clients

Instead of exchanging several emails with clients to get documents from them, Chris now uses Financial Cents’ client task feature to create a list of the documents they want from their clients.

Chris likes the fact that the documents clients upload are stored directly on the project and client profile. It makes  it easy to confirm which documents they have received from clients and assignees can easily find them to use for the client’s work.

What I like about Financial Cents Client Task is that the documents are stored in their related projects, so it's there and you can go see it. Sometimes when memory falters, you can pull it up."

Chris Simmons, Harvey and Simons CPAs LLC

4. Tracking Time for Profitability

The team has also been learning to improve their use of the time tracking feature to make their staff more productive (and the firm more profitable).

As a manager, Chris logs into his staff members’ dashboards to see how they are doing and helps them use their time more judiciously.

Timekeeping is a scoreboard for us. I can go to a staff dashboard to review how they're doing. It's been very helpful. We've started to roll this out for our tax returns. And we're learning as we go. But it's good, and it's working."

Chris Simons, Partner, Harvey and Simons CPAs LLC

The Results

After wasting money and time on unfit practice management solutions, the Harvey and Simons CPAs, LLC team has found the right tool to give them better control of their firm.

Chris Simons, the firm’s managing partner says that the visibility Financial Cents gives them enables him to hold the team accountable.

The team is looking forward to exploring other features in Financial Cents, such as setting up client tasks for ad hoc requests.

We bought into Financial Cents because it does most of the things we need it for. And as long as we see improvements, we will keep using it. We like it and I’ve got buy-in from the staff."

Chris Simmons, Harvey and Simons CPAs LLC
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