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Jenna Rodriguez, CPA
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Pedante and Company, Inc
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Accounting, bookkeeping, and consulting services
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Founded in 2018
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4 staff members
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Chester County region
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Hybrid Working Style

Since 2018, Pedante and Company has built strong relationships with businesses across Chester, Delaware, Montgomery, Bucks, and Philadelphia counties.

For more than 22 years, Jenna Rodriguez worked alongside the firm’s owner, building a successful career and cultivating deep relationships with the local business community.

TL;DR

  • The problem: Pedante and Company, a 4-person Pennsylvania accounting firm, struggled with poor workflow visibility using Airtable and email—leading to duplicate work, missed tasks, and constant time-draining check-ins, especially as the firm prepared for an ownership transition.
  • The solution: Switching to Financial Cents gave the team a single source of truth via a workflow dashboard, automated task dependencies and reminders, and built-in email integration that consolidates all client communication inside the platform.
  • The results: The firm eliminated redundant work and guesswork, achieved fast adoption with “no learning curve” for new hires, and freed up Managing Accountant Jenna Rodriguez to focus on reviewing returns and growing client relationships.
  • The takeaway: For small accounting and bookkeeping firms, Financial Cents replaces administrative overhead with clear oversight—Rodriguez notes the email time savings alone cover the subscription cost.
The current firm and I have been working together for over 22 years, and we have developed a deep relationship with a lot of the businesses in the area.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

When the firm’s owner decided it was time to retire, Jenna knew she would have to answer a critical business question: How does the team maintain operational consistency, hand off work seamlessly, and ensure the firm continues delivering the same, if not better, quality of client service?

I started searching for a practice management solution because the current owner was looking to start phasing out. I needed to hand off projects more efficiently and cut down on workflow management so I could focus on reviewing tax returns, building client relationships, and the things that really grow the business versus drain it.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

With Financial Cents, Jenna saw the opportunity to eliminate workflow guesswork, reduce administrative overhead, and position the firm to keep delivering personalized client service.

With Financial Cents, Jenna saw the opportunity to eliminate workflow guesswork, reduce administrative overhead, and position the firm to keep delivering personalized client service.

The Challenges Pendante and Company, Inc. Faced

Pedante and Company was founded to help privately-held businesses make sense of financial data, but the following challenges stood in their way:

Airtable Replaced Billable Work with Administrative Tasks

Before adopting Financial Cents, the Pedante team used Airtable to track projects. The tool combines the features of a spreadsheet, task management, and team collaboration, making it useful for generic project management.

But like Spreadsheets, Airtable is not built to manage recurring workflows, track compliance deadlines, or grow with accounting teams.

As Pedante and Company grew, tracking client work became too reactive (instead of being proactive). While the team could still tell what was going on with client projects, it came at a cost. Billable work became the opportunity cost as they spent more time second-guessing themselves.

We used an Airtable system to figure out a lot of our task management. But visibility was poor. We would have to double-check: Did we send the engagement letters? Did we get them back? What are the client’s preferences in receiving organizers?”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

Email Collaboration Made Things Fall Through the Cracks

The team also used emails for communication and collaboration, which added layers of administrative work to their project management efforts. Jenna had to email her team members every time she needed clarity on a task.

Did we get client documents? When are returns ready for review? There was a ton of administrative work to understand whose turn it is in, for example, a tax return process.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

This back-and-forth didn’t just waste her time; it forced other team members to stop what they were doing to respond. And even then, emails were easy to miss or forget, which happened often enough to slow down workflows and endanger the firm’s efficiency and growth.

“Email communication can work, but you can miss or forget to send them because you jump into another project too soon. There was a good opportunity to miss things. Thankfully, it didn’t happen very often, but it did.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

How Financial Cents Helps Pedante and Company, Inc.

Financial Cents provides the relevant automations Jenna’s team needs to minimize manual work and save time.

Here’s how:

Prevention of Duplicate Efforts and Workflow Redundancies

With Financial Cents’ Dependency feature, Pedante’s team members always know exactly what task is theirs and when it’s due. Instead of chasing updates over email, automated notifications guide each person to the next step in the workflow.

Financial Cents gives us an automated system that reminds team members about their due tasks. We no longer have to do that manually. The system makes sure of that, and it has saved our time.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

This resulting clarity has eliminated workflow redundancies that previously wasted their time and created confusion. Before Financial Cents, the same task was often assigned to multiple people without anyone realizing it. Now, once a task is completed, the next person in line is automatically notified to take over.

We don’t do redundancy anymore because if someone checks off something, the next person knows it’s their turn to do the next step.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

Central Project Management that Eliminates Second-Guesses

Financial Cents’ workflow dashboard gives the Pedante team a single source of truth. This central view of project information enables everyone to access the information they need at any time without having to interrupt teammates.

This visibility enables them to channel their time and energy into work that matters most for client service and the firm’s bottom line.

The ease of seeing the status of a project without having to ask gives us time to focus on what matters most. Another side benefit is the sanity.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

Email Integration for Maximum Efficiency

Financial Cents’ email integration has made it easier for the Pedante team to monitor client communication inside the workflow tool. The feature pulls all emails from each of their clients into the client’s profile.

This means they no longer need to leave their accounting workflow management solution to view, respond to, and archive client emails, which eliminates a major bottleneck in their workflows.

Financial Cents tracks all our client emails. We don’t have to search our email inbox to track our communication with a specific client. This makes it so much easier to find what you said to clients. It prevents second-guessing.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

Key Features that Made the Difference

Ease of Use

Jenna values Financial Cents’ ease of use the most, and that’s understandable. Many accounting firms have implemented practice management software that ended up costing them time, money, and the opportunity to grow.

Not only was it easy for the Pedante existing team to switch to Financial Cents, but their new team members also didn’t waste time catching up with the rest of the team.

No clear visibility into your firm’s workload? Keep every client, task, and deadline on track with Financial Cents.
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quote up svgrepo com 1 Our major benefit from Financial Cents has been organization. We have full insight into what our team is working on. We can assign projects, create filters, and see what is assigned to each team member to help capacity management.”
Hugo C. Sanchez, CPA, Butler & Sanchez

This has reduced training costs and improved their ability to deliver consistent client services.

There is no learning curve in Financial Cents. We recently brought on a new administrative staff member. Being a new person who is not used to what we do or don’t do, it was easy for her to get up to speed with our features and workflows.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

Responsive Customer Support

Financial Cents has built its platform around feedback from real accounting firm owners, making sure every feature solves practical firm management challenges. The leadership team, including CEO Shahram Zarshenas and CTO Abdullahi Almsaeed, regularly engages with users through their Facebook group, inviting feedback, sharing design plans, and allowing firms to vote on the features they need most.

For Jenna, this responsiveness translates into a platform that’s not only reliable today but continually improving.

I think the level of communication with users is very impressive. If there’s ever an issue, it’s quickly identified, resolved, and communicated, and those issues have been minimal and handled fast. Looking at the features the Financial Cents team keeps adding, if the platform is this beneficial now, it’s going to be even more powerful in six months because of how open they are about the roadmap.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

Results

1. Quick and Easy Adoption

The Pedante and Company team quickly settled into Financial Cents because Financial Cents is designed for the way accountants actually work. The Pedante has enabled accounting firms to customize it to suit their unique workflows seamlessly.

With the Financial Cents workflow templates, Jenna has been able to document the team’s standard operating procedures, reducing the team’s administrative time, improving the quality of client relationships, and enabling scalable growth.

Financial Cents is a powerful tool that gives firm owners and managers control and oversight. It allows you to set up your processes and workflows in a way that works for your firm because everyone works slightly differently. So, being customizable and being fairly user-friendly, the setup and implementation didn’t take long, which was wonderful.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

2. From Guesswork to Clear Oversight

Before Financial Cents, Jenna spent much of her time chasing down task updates from team members. Now, with the workflow tags, she can filter and find the information she needs without interrupting her team.

This gave her the visibility she needed to make important decisions for the firm and enable team members to do their best work for clients.

If your managing partner wants to see the status of different things, he doesn’t have to ask anyone anymore. He could set up his own workflow views to filter the dashboard by whatever information he wants. The ability to apply tags to projects has been significant.””
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant

Jenna’s Advice to Other Accounting Firm Owners and Managers

If your managing partner wants to see the status of different things, he doesn’t have to ask anyone anymore. He could set up his own workflow views to filter the dashboard by whatever information he wants. The ability to apply tags to projects has been significant.”
Jenna Rodriguez, CPA, Managing Accountant
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