How Harvey and Simons CPAs Organize Their “Multiple Irons in The Fire” with Financial Cents
TL;DR
- Harvey and Simons, CPAs LLC, a 12-person hybrid firm in New Mexico founded in 2011, moved to Financial Cents in 2021 after cycling through Karbon, Practice CS, Accelo, Big Time, Jetpack Workflow, and Aero Workflow.
- One dashboard instead of one brain: workflow visibility means Chris and his partner are no longer the sole repository of what’s happening with client work.
- Documents that stay put: client task turns document requests into an organized list, with uploads stored directly on the project instead of scattered across staff inboxes.
- Time tracking as a team scoreboard: reviewing staff dashboards helps Chris see how the team is doing and use time more judiciously, starting with tax returns.
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.
Their Goals
Find practice management software that
- Gives them better control of the firm and keeps things from falling through the cracks.
- Allows the team to receive information and communicate with clients effectively.
- Makes information available to staff members.
- 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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,
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.
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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.
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.
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.
