How The Profit Constructors Keep Multi-Firm Projects Clear and Consistent Using Financial Cents
Tonya Schulte
Name
The Profit Constructors
Firm Name
Construction Accounting (CAS)
Services
2016
Year founded
6
Staff Members
Arizona
Location
Remote
Working Style
There are so many solutions that different people tell me they're using out there, but they are mostly round pegs in square holes. Every accounting firm should find a practice management software solution that prioritizes everything accounting firms need. Recurring work is a huge one, but that's not the only thing, and so really finding the solution that takes what accounting and accountants need into consideration is key."
Tonya Schulte, Founder of The Profit ConstructorsTonya founded The Profit Constructors after realizing that the traditional corporate environment no longer fit the life she wanted for her family.
With years of experience in construction accounting and a growing desire for a more flexible and remote-friendly work system, she set out to build a firm that operated differently.
After returning from a maternity break and struggling to ease into work, Tonya decided to use her expertise to create a virtual accounting practice that would give her and her team the freedom to work from anywhere.
Since 2016, the team has helped trade contractors build real profit into every job, drawing on Tonya’s background in construction accounting.
I worked for different construction corporations before taking some time off to raise children. I tried to ease my way back into the whole work thing. It just wasn't a great environment.
It was not a fun place to be, so I spoke with my husband, and we decided to figure out a way to use my wealth of experience in construction accounting to help businesses in the industry.
That's exactly how we became what we know today as the Profit Constructors."
As the firm grew, its remote work model and partnership with multiple collaborating firms made recurring work automation and seamless coordination essential.
When Memory Wasn’t Enough to Keep the Firm Aligned
Tonya and her first staff could comfortably rely on their memories to manage projects because they had worked together for about 20 years. They understood themselves and what each client engagement required, even without spelling things out.
But as they took on more clients and added more staff, they now needed a system to document workflows and collaborate effectively to standardize their processes across the board.
We tried so many things before we landed on Financial Cents. At first, everything was in my brain. Then I brought on my first team member, who's someone I have worked with for about 20 years. Since we knew exactly what we were doing, all our processes remained in our brains.
Then at some point, we needed to translate that information, either to clients or to the new team members we were bringing on."
Why Spreadsheets Couldn’t Support Their Growing Needs
The first tool Tonya used to document their processes and centralize their projects was, like most new accounting firm owners, Excel spreadsheets.
At this time, another challenge had come up. The addition of more clients meant that their project management needs were no longer as simple as when they had just started.
They needed a more robust accounting project management system to prevent things from falling through the cracks. All other combinations of spreadsheet-related programs also fell flat.
When it was clear we needed to write some of our processes down, we went through so many iterations of spreadsheet programs. We used Excel, workbooks, and other similar tools. We did all of that, and it didn't work."
Tonya Schulte, Founder of The Profit ConstructorsAsana Worked Until They Needed to Automate Recurring Work
When the team decided to move to a full-fledged project management software, they chose Asana, one of the most popular tools on the market.
As great as Asana was at project management, it also didn’t have the recurring work feature that had become essential to the team.
They tried to work around it by scheduling their recurring tasks in a Calendar. Apart from being an additional app to manage, this workaround didn’t hold up long enough, and Tonya realized they needed a tool built for accounting firms.
We tried to make Asana work for the main problem that we were trying to solve (recurring work), but Asana only helps you through all the steps of a project. It's hard to get it to remind you to do those same steps every month, quarter, or year. We also tried to recur projects on the calendar, but none of that was working."
Tonya Schulte, Founder of The Profit ConstructorsHow Financial Cents Keeps Tonya’s Team Aligned Internally and With Partner Firms
1. Ensures Consistent Work Quality Across Teams and Partner Firms
Tonya runs a co-firming system. Her team works with other firms in the same project management tool, using the same templates and often serving the same clients.
The co-firming arrangement has a dedicated Quality Assurance Manager, who ensures all co-firming teams meet quality standards and performance expectations, and that’s where Financial Cents comes in.
Financial Cents centralizes all project and client information, providing the clarity the Quality Assurance Manager needs to review every team’s work and give timely feedback. This has helped the Profit constructors to meet every client’s deliverables.
One of the biggest benefits of Financial Cents for us is the consistency of client service.
We have six people on our internal team. We also participate in something really fun. We call it co-firming, which means working alongside other firms.
Financial Cents gives our Quality Assurance Manager the clarity to set the expectations and define what she is looking for when reviewing everyone's work. This has ensured consistency in work, alignment with client expectations, and adherence to timelines.
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“It gives us the confidence that everything is going to be done well and on time, even when we’re co-firming and using outsource partners to help do the work,” continued Tonya.
2. A Product Team That’s Always Listening and Always Improving
Despite Financial Cents’ features and benefits, Tonya believes that its greatest strength is in the product team’s ability to listen to its users.
When asked about what she thinks the team does best, she exclaimed:
Listening! No, 100%.
Here is one instance: I was with KellieParks at the Financial Cents booth at Intuit Connect, and Kellie said, ‘Tonya, come on, tell these guys, this is a thing we need.’ I was like, ‘What? What do we need?’ And she explained it to me. I was like, ‘Oh, yeah. We definitely need that.'
I got a Slack message literally the next day that it had been built overnight."
Key Features that Made the Difference
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Workflow Filters (Provide Firm-wide Visibility and Eliminate Bottlenecks)
Since The Profit Constructors shares their project management platform with other firms, their workflow dashboard displays so much data that important tasks or information could easily fall through the cracks.
But Tonya hasn’t had any such challenges, thanks to the Workflow Filters, which give her visibility into the status of client work.
Tonya uses workflow filters to find the projects her team members are handling more quickly, enabling her to manage the firm without blind spots.
I'm always trying to manage work and see what is getting done, so I love that I can see everyone's projects from the main screen. I can filter and sort for specific information.
Workflow filters let me see what each bookkeeper, team, or partner is doing to make sure that things are getting taken care of.
So, from a management standpoint, that's my favorite feature in Financial Cents."
This firm-wide visibility has also improved the team’s capacity management strategy. Tonya uses it to track team members’ workloads and understand when to hire more staff before their current capacity is maxed out.
From a capacity management standpoint, Workflow Filters also help. I can see the workload of the new staff member to know when she has some room and can assign more tasks.
I'm also always looking ahead to see if we need to add capacity. The workflow filter feature is just so fantastic."
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Unified Team Task and Client Task that Improves Organization
The Profit Constructors team values the unified view of Team and Client Tasks because of its unique benefits for their co-firming arrangement.
Instead of simply using this feature to track team and client tasks, they have also adapted this feature to separate one group’s projects from the other when serving the same client.
know one thing that my team is super excited about is the ability to see all of the team tasks and client tasks on one screen in the project. It makes it very easy to see who has done what.
A lot of people in the teams are using this feature to separate each team’s tasks, and because we co-firm, and we can have three different partner firms working on one client's project, this feature is even more helpful."
Tonya added that,” we can now say, ‘here are the tasks for our internal teams,’ So everybody’s really streamlined and can just look at their grouping of tasks and know what to do. My team members love the feature.”
What Financial Cents Does for Accounting Firm Owners (According to Tonya)
Financial Cents gives you that high-level overview of what everyone is doing. For a firm owner, just knowing that everybody on the team has one place to get everything out of their brain and put it into an organized system (to ensure it all gets done) is the very best thing.
We have a lady on our internal team who does not do accounting. In fact, she'll tease and laugh that she doesn't like accounting and doesn't want anything to do with accounting, but she has her to-do list and all of her task lists in Financial Cents."
Why Solo Firm Owners Need Practice Management Software (in Tonya’s Words)
I don't know how many times I have brought this issue up with solopreneurs about the need to use Financial Cents, even when it's just them in the firm. Whether you're growing your firm, adding clients, or clients are coming back to you and asking for more services, our brains can only hold so much information.
Whether you have a single person or multiple people on your team, Financial Cents is one of the best ways to collate and manage all the information (about the work that needs to be done) in one central place."
