What Your CPA Wants You to Know
A podcast for entrepreneurs! We are a husband and wife team running our CPA firm together. We know just how difficult it can be to take your business dream to a reality. Our mission for this podcast is to guide, empower, and educate entrepreneurs in an easy-to-understand way! We want business owners to have the information that they need when they need it, AND without the hefty accounting invoices from a CPA! Follow along for practical advice, tips, and tricks from a CPA who knows what it is like to run a business, and strategies to keep your business thriving from an MBA! We will also show you how to run a business while keeping your family and sanity intact along the way!
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What Your CPA Wants You to Know
75. Streamline Your Business: Our Tools + Tips for Efficiency and Growth
Ever wondered how a small CPA firm can handle a large workload efficiently and produce record breaking profits? This episode is your gateway to understanding the secret sauce behind our firm's growth and productivity. In this episode we share basic tools like phone apps and spreadsheets to advanced solutions like monday.com.
Discover how adopting the right tools can significantly enhance your business's efficiency and profitability.
A favorite tool of ours is Calendly. Learn how integrating this scheduling tool not only streamlined our appointment process but also reduced no-shows and ensured upfront payments.
This episode covers the significance of gradually implementing efficient business practices over the years. By staying organized and finding creative ways to cut down on time, we've managed to grow our client base while maintaining high-quality service.
Don't miss out on these valuable tips that can transform your business!
Here are the products mentioned in the episode that we use and love :
Calendly - for booking meetings
Flodesk - for emailing customers
Nextivia - For internet phone system
Square - for invoicing, payroll, and more!
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we really needed something that was more specific to our business to keep track of all of these due dates and lists and specific things, because we were dropping the ball on things that should have been set up as, like a reoccurring list.
Speaker 2:Welcome to what your CPA Wants you To Know.
Speaker 1:Tax and accounting help can be expensive, so we've created this podcast to help guide you through it all and make you feel like you have a CPA in your back pocket.
Speaker 2:I'm Carson Sands.
Speaker 1:And I'm Taryn Sands.
Speaker 2:I'm a CPA with over 10 years of experience helping people start and grow their businesses.
Speaker 1:And I'm an MBA with a specialization in marketing and entrepreneurship. Taxes suck and we their businesses and I'm an MBA with a specialization in marketing and entrepreneurship. Taxes suck and we want to make sure you don't pay more than your fair share.
Speaker 2:We're here to share everything your CPA wants you to know in a fun and easy to understand way. Let's get started.
Speaker 1:Let's do it. Let's do it. Hello, hello, happy June everyone. I really can't believe when this episode actually aired is going to be. June 2024 has just flown by.
Speaker 1:Our kids are officially on summer break and that is why Carson is not on this episode with me today. We still have like a huge list of tax returns to do, which is great. We are happy for the business, but our kids are out of school and in the past, since we've been building this business, we have always been slower in the summer and that was ideally where we wanted to be as our kids got older and were in school and had these longer breaks. But we're just not quite caught up yet. So he is working on those. And then I just did want to let everyone know, if you listen, every week we are going to be changing to biweekly episodes during the summer. That gives us more time with our family and some more time to get caught up on tax season, because we're still not through it yet. But we were trying to think what would be a great episode for me to do personally, and there's one that we've been wanting to do for quite some time, and that is about efficiency in our business and the processes and things that we use to help us be as efficient as possible, and for us, efficiency means more profit. So that's what this episode is going to be about. Today, I'm going to talk to you about how we have created our firm with basically just two full-time employees us two. Our firm with basically just two full-time employees us two and we've grown it to a top 10% for profitability accounting firm. So this is exactly where we wanted to be in our business down the road. We're about seven years in, but it took a lot to get here. So I'm going to explain kind of the processes along the way, how we've done this and what we use, so that you can implement that in your business too.
Speaker 1:So when we started out, we wanted to make sure we had as little overhead as possible, because we know when businesses spend too much money in the very beginning, when businesses spend too much money in the very beginning, that's when sometimes they make their first wrong step. So for an accounting firm, there's just not a lot of upfront expenses. Now, of course, you can spend lots of money on things that are nice to have, but we didn't need a lot. Our initial investment was less than $5,000. And that was just to get some basics and computer equipment all of that. So that's where we started and as we continued to grow, it was making the decision to either hire some help or implement some things that would make us more efficient. So first we started there ship. So first we started there Initially we were scanning everything in on my phone on an app that creates PDFs.
Speaker 1:We didn't have a lot of in-person paperwork that we needed. We did deal a lot with emails and everything on the computer, so I was just using my phone to scan in things that we had in person. That quickly got very overwhelming as our business grew, so that was something we needed to upgrade very quickly. Also, we were just using a cell phone for our business, so it was just a number that Kirsten had had forever and we just made that our business line. So that was very simple, very inexpensive and that's what we did starting out. Once again, we needed to change that a few years down the road. Another thing we did was we were tracking all of our work in process just on a simple spreadsheet, which was completely fine for the time and it was free. But as we had so much more work and so much more responsibility with monthly clients and quarterly clients and more filings. We really needed something that was more specific to our business to keep track of all of these due dates and lists and specific things, because we were dropping the ball on things that should have been set up as like a reoccurring list. So we've continued to implement small things in our business that has allowed us to be more productive and has ultimately been the reason why we've been able to grow so quickly and have so much profit for a CPA firm.
Speaker 1:One of the very first things that we tried out is called mondaycom, and I heard about this on a podcast for entrepreneurs and I downloaded the initial trial. So you got like 30 days free and we built out our work in process. So this is something that's supposed to help pretty much any business make a board for different things, so you kind of can make a spreadsheet. So obviously, for accountants, the way it looked was very appealing, but it's a very user-friendly spreadsheet, so if I have something in one row, I can drag it anywhere I want to. So it's just so much better than a spreadsheet once you get to working with it. Well, after that 30-day trial, we had everything built out for our businesses. You can do automations. Whenever you click ready to review, it will let Carson know that a tax return is ready to review. When you're done with something, it will automatically move it to a different board. So we had everything built out and we absolutely loved it.
Speaker 1:Now we've been using Mondaycom for years and it has really helped us stay focused. So if we have a tax return come in, we put it on the tax return list. We also assign who's doing it, what date it came in and what date it's supposed to come out. So we give a client a turnaround time and say this is the day that we anticipate your tax return being done and that keeps track of the dates. We also make sure not to overboard us with too many tax returns so that we're not over promising and under delivering. So that really helps us. With dates. You can add so many different things. So another column we added was how much we would charge for each thing at work. So it's very easy for us to say right now in work, in process, we have $20,000 worth of work. So that helps us with just the numbers of our business, the profit, and just weekly goals, daily goals, things like that. So mondaycom has been a huge game changer for us.
Speaker 1:Since then we have added a lot of boards to it. So not only do we have just our work in process, we have other quarterly. So if we are going to do quarterly projections, we have a list of that and who we generally do them for, so at that time we can reach out to them and get those done. So we're not always backtracking, thinking, oh yeah, like this is a client that we know we should contact. We have everybody in two different boards so that when the time comes for a different deadline we can look at that group of clients. We also have one that is for our monthly clients and in that board has all of the information we need to process either monthly bookkeeping, monthly payroll deposits, monthly sales tax. Everything we need is in that board. So this is something we look at every single day. It will also alert me if Carson leaves a note on someone's. So if there's like a line item, just like you would in a Excel spreadsheet, but you can put a note in it, so it'll send me an email and say Carson was working on this, but he's missing this piece of information, and then that lets me know that I need to do something with that client. So we absolutely love it.
Speaker 1:I highly recommend, if you don't have a good system in place to keep track of what is going on every single day in your business, especially if you have clients like we do. Try it out, because they do have a free trial and I bet you you're going to love it just as much as we do. So not only did that help us get super organized compared to how we were doing things, it also has helped us stick to our revenue goals. So if we're thinking of taking a couple days off and we still want to hit that weekly revenue goal, then we will make sure that these tax returns are done so that we hit our revenue goal for the week. And sometimes that might mean working, you know, at night or in the morning, a little bit before or after children activities, or it might mean turning off meetings for those few days so that we can get some work done.
Speaker 1:A second thing that we learned whenever we were trying to make our business more efficient was that we need days for work days and we need days that we will meet with clients. So maybe you don't have clients, but I guarantee you have days that need to be spent on the phone or on a Zoom meeting or on meetings of some sort, and what we used to do was we would just open up appointments for any time and then we would try to work around those appointments. That is not very efficient for so many reasons, but it is very hard for the person doing the meetings. So if Carson was doing like a two-hour consult and then he would have to go back, try to get in the mode of tax return preparation, work on that a little bit and then he would go back to meetings, it just didn't feel right. So now what we've done is we have specific days for meetings and we have specific days for getting work done and we block off the calendar for those days for getting work done and we block off the calendar for those days. Now in tax season that changes a little bit. We need much more work time and then in the summer we open up more times for meetings. So we've really stuck to that schedule and it has helped us a lot. Not only are our meeting bookings up, because we're basically batching all of our meetings, but our productivity is up significantly because on those days when we don't have meetings, we completely shut down the office, meaning people can't just walk in all of the time and talk to us and just basically waste a bunch of time whenever we should be working. So we do have those dedicated work days and that makes a huge difference. Those days we get a ton done and it has really, really saved our sanity because it's so much easier to get stuff done. Those are two huge changes we've made in the last few years.
Speaker 1:And then one thing that isn't necessarily a product that you can use, this is just a weekly check-in. So what we do every single Monday is a Monday morning meeting and in that meeting that's when we pull up our mondaycom sheet and we go through our boards there are a lot of work in process marked stuck so you can mark them any sort. You can label anything. It's so customizable. So we have one where it's marked stuck. Every Monday we go through the stuck ones. Do we need to follow up with a client? Is there something we should be doing? Do we need to add notes to this client, figure out what's going on with all the things that work in process? Then we look. This week all of these three things were anticipated to go out, and then we go through those. We also file tax returns and make sure we talk about anything outstanding that has popped up, like a client IRS letter or just something out of the ordinary.
Speaker 1:On Monday, we spend that time, even though sometimes it feels so much better just to get into it because it's been the weekend and we just want to start right away. It's so much better and we're so much more productive and efficient if we start off every single Monday with a Monday morning meeting. Now, if I had a group of people, I would also do the same thing, so I would make sure that we're all on the same page and our goals for the week look the same. So a Monday morning meeting may sound very simple, but I promise you it is life-changing. If you own a business, that's not even just business advice, but even marriage and parenting advice. Having a state of the union meeting on Sundays helps us make sure that we're on the same page for the week with what games we have, what practices we have, all of that. So that's what we do in our business as well, and that has made our revenue go up and that has made us more focused on what we're doing so that we could take on more clients because we're so more efficient and our profit has went up because of it.
Speaker 1:Do you want to start your own business but have no idea where to start? Does the tax and accounting part of business ownership scare you? Or maybe you just don't have the budget for CPA services right now? If this sounds like you, listen up. We've created a new business guide to help you through every step of the process so you feel confident and supported when starting your business. Our guide will help make sure you don't miss any important steps and educate you on the tax and accounting side of things. The best part is that it's priced for less than one meeting with the CPA, so don't ignore this part of the process. Use our guide to educate and empower yourself without the hefty cost of multiple meetings with the CPA. We will guide you through the initial steps, provide yearly checklists and give you things to put on your radar for the future as your business grows. And just for being a podcast listener, you get a discount. Find the link in the show notes to purchase the guide and use code podcast at checkout to use that discount. Now back to the show notes to purchase the guide and use code podcast at checkout to use that discount. Now back to the show.
Speaker 1:Next, we got into this problem in our business that our phone was ringing all the time and I was usually answering it. Sometimes Carson was answering it, really depending on who had the cell phone and mostly it was to book meetings. So hi, I have this issue going on and need to book a meeting. So we were kind of at this place where we needed to decide do we pay for someone full time to sit there at a desk and answer the phone and maybe come up with some other things for them to do, or do we get something else that could help us book appointments? Another thing was we were having people come in for a consult so they maybe would stay for two hours. We charged $200 an hour and then we were billing them after the fact.
Speaker 1:We were having so many people. Though they knew what the price was and they knew how long they were there, they were not paying those invoices. That is not okay with me. I am not the business owner that lets people get by with that. Carson is a little bit nicer and he probably would let invoices go for so long, but that's why we make a good team. So we wanted to find a way that maybe they could look at our calendar and see what we have available, because it's so much easier that way than me being on the phone saying, yeah, I have Tuesday at this time or Wednesday at this time. Oh, that doesn't work for you. Well, next week I have this. It was just taking so much more time, and then for me, I wanted them to pay for it, right then, because if they really want time with us, then they need to pay for it, and they definitely don't need to get all of the things that they want and then never pay the invoice.
Speaker 1:So that's when we found Calendly, and Calendly is just a software that allows you to have a calendar and people can book a meeting with you. So this could be for new clients or if you have anything that you're selling. Let's say, you build polls and someone wants to jump on a five-minute call a 10 minute call with you and ask you some questions. This easily allows them to click on the link. It pulls up your calendar and it says these are the times that I'm available. Would you like to book a time? They can click on it, they put their email in and it sends them a confirmation. It also reminds them you can also put any information that they will need for your meeting. There's so much you can do with Calendly, but what we would do is we would have them book and then you can also add the option for payment. So that has been huge for us.
Speaker 1:People can not only book the appointments themselves, which is saving me a ridiculous amount of time. They can also see what do I need to bring to my meeting. If this is a new client meeting, it says this is what they need to bring. If this is a meeting for QuickBooks, it says this is what they need prior to the meeting and how to prepare. So we're not walking every single person through all of the same steps, every single person through all of the same steps. And lastly, probably most importantly, it reminds them. So we had so many no-shows and now that people pay prior to it and they're getting like a text and email reminder before their appointment, I don't think we've had any no-shows. So it went from being like a huge problem in our business having no shows to not. But if you are not a paid service, like we are.
Speaker 1:You can also use Calendly for anyone to get in touch with you if you want like if you have a sales lead or anything like that so that you can load your calendar. Let's say your son has an assembly or a field trip or something on Tuesday. You can block that off and then it shows them that you're not available that day. So it is such a handy tool. I do not remember how much it is because it is not very expensive. It also runs everything the payments through Stripe, so it is so, so simple to accept those payments and book the meetings with pretty much no time from you. All it is is just getting it set up, and they actually have really great customer service. If you need help implementing that. You can also add a second calendar if you need a calendar for different people. So it's an awesome tool and we put it in our email signature so all of our clients know that's how they book a meeting with us and they do it anytime that something comes up. They can book like a 15 minute phone call if they need something quick, or they can do an in-person consultation.
Speaker 1:That leads me to the next big thing that we incorporated into our business, and it took us quite some time to do this, but it has been huge and I'm sure that you have heard this before and that is to have an email list for your clients or your customers, however you do your business. We have always used Square for payments, so we already had every single person that has ever done business with us. We had all of their emails. So a few years ago, I ended up pulling all of the emails. So awesome, we already had this email list just waiting for us and we started sending emails to our clients. Now we use what's called Flowdesk, and I will put all of these different things I'm talking about in the show notes so you can easily find them. So don't worry about it if you don't catch all of these. So Flowdesk is just a way to send out emails to your email list and it makes it so easy to do. They look so pretty, and there's a lot of other things Flowdesk can do I won't get into, but you can offer freebies and collect emails that way if you're using social media.
Speaker 1:We absolutely love Flowdesk, but the way we started was just incorporating it into our business, using it to communicate with our clients. Now, the reason why that is so important in especially a service-based business is because we are constantly teaching our clients. We're teaching them how to be more efficient. We're telling them how to get their documents to us. We are showing them this is where you book appointments. We have slowly, over the years, taught them how to work with us and our business. And that takes some time, especially when you don't have all those processes set up. But now I love it because we can send out a mass email to all of our clients saying hey, just a reminder, this filing is due next month. You know you have a month. Please contact us if you still want us to file that for you and all of these things. We can let them know what's going on in our business. I know at some point in tax season like our road was completely flooded and we knew a lot of people were coming to drop off documents that day.
Speaker 1:That was a way we could let them know what was going on in our business, so I love being able to contact all of our clients at once, and that was something that wasn't set up originally, and I'm sure you've seen this through so many other businesses. But that's not something that you do from the very start. That is probably a mile down your to-do list. That is probably a mile down your to-do list. So this is just a simple reminder that it is incredibly helpful to do that, and you probably already have email lists collected somehow. If you don't, that's a good start to start collecting email lists from your clients and then you can use it in so many ways. Moving forward, it's also a really good tool to advertise any sales that you have with people who have already bought from your business, so that's the easiest way to sell. First is people that you've already sold to.
Speaker 1:And we do that here and there with our business guides. But what I love it so much is just to check in with our clients. I can tell them at the start of tax season hey guys, here's our current turnaround times. Let us know. If there's a reason you can't extend, you need to get us your documents by this date and we'll make sure to have it done. Or if I want everyone to email their documents or upload their documents, I can give instructions. I can also send every single client on our email list a checklist at the beginning of tax season so that they know what tax documents they need, and it reminds them these are the things that I'm looking for and gives them instructions on what to do once they're ready for us to file their tax return. Not only does that make our clients happy because we're in constant contact with them, letting them know what's going on, giving them any updates in our industry, like a tax change, or reminding them of a due date, but it also makes it so much easier for us. It has made us more efficient and we're not having the same conversation a hundred times with all of our clients and we're able to offer step-by-step advice to every single person at once.
Speaker 1:Like I said earlier, we were also using a personal cell phone number for our business. We had no sort of business phone, and I think a lot of people start out that way. That is completely fine and a great way to do it. But two years ago we were actually looking for some other sort of phone system that would be better for giving information to our clients, updating things like hours and just all of the things that you know when you call someone and they're like press one for this, press two for this, press three for this person. We wanted something more formal. That would just be easy for us to do, but we didn't want to get like a traditional landline or anything like that. So we went looking at different options and that's when we found Nextiva. Nextiva is an online phone system and it gives you a lot of options, but you can still use your cell phone with it or you can use a phone that is connected to your computer. So why we wanted to do that?
Speaker 1:Like I said, I thought that would make the processes so much better, and it definitely has. So what we've done is, when someone calls, it will definitely give them our mailing address if they're mailing documents to us. It will also tell them our hours, that we're open, our location, and it will also let them know if we're closed any periods of time. So it is updated whenever it's not tax season because we're closed on Fridays. So it'll say as a reminder we're closed on Fridays. So it'll say as a reminder we're closed on Fridays. It will also let them know that if we don't answer the phone and they're looking to book a call, then they can book using Calendly and it gives them the link.
Speaker 1:So because we are just a small firm, we're really not having someone answer the phone all of the time and that might freak some people out or that might make you feel uneasy if you have a business where your phone is ringing all the time. But we found that people are completely fine with that. They're fine leaving a message and then knowing that we're going to call back within a certain amount of time. They also know that we deal with email a lot and so if it's a quick question like hey, can you send me last year's tax return? I don't know where my copy is, but I need it for my mortgage Then we'll respond to that very quickly. So it's kind of taught our clients how to reach out to us the best way and to get the quickest result. It also does have where, if someone calls, they can directly dial Carson's extension, dial my extension, and if they do leave a voicemail, that voicemail goes directly to our email. And I think this is a great thing because we can label those voicemails and we can say that you know, this was from this person and we need to follow up on their IRS letter or whatever they were calling about, because it's giving them most of the information they need and it's telling them what to do next in case someone doesn't answer the phone, and it doesn't make them feel like, oh my gosh, they're not answering and it's going straight to this general voicemail. So it's so much more professional and it also gives you so many more options and features that you can use if you want to do something like that. If you are just kind of done with having your own cell phone, it also gives you the option of adding someone else so it could transfer to a different cell phone even if you're not in the same room. So a lot of times I'll transfer to Carson in office on our like actual phones, but if he's not in the office, I can still transfer a call to his cell phone because of the app, and you could do that with an employee or contractor or whoever. So if your business is starting to grow, nextivia is a really good thing to look into because it is pretty inexpensive and has a lot of features.
Speaker 1:One last thing I just want to talk about that we've used from the beginning is Square, and we use that for all of our invoices. And yes, there are credit card processing fees on Square or whichever one you choose to use, but we have loved Square because there are so many other features, but it is definitely easy to send an invoice and they get paid very quickly. And then there's also instructions on there. If our clients do want to send a check, it tells them exactly what to do and we don't spend a lot of time, you know, doing checking invoices and is this paid? Is this not paid? Because everything gets done for you and the only thing that you really have to do is check off if something's been paid in person Like we don't get paid with cash, but if something was paid with, like, a check in person, you mark that as paid. Other than that, everything is tracked so well and all the reports through there can be pulled so easily. We love the interface. We love the software. They've added so many more things, like pulling your email list from there texting to all of your clients. You can even add Square Payroll so many things to do on there. We do love Square. We know there's a lot of other options out there, but that definitely cuts down time on us sending invoices. It is just so easy and quick to send an invoice and people usually pay very quickly.
Speaker 1:I know that is a lot of information thrown at you all at once, but I just want to remind you.
Speaker 1:If you have a business and you're just getting started, this might feel like a lot, and it is because these things are implemented slowly.
Speaker 1:Like I said, we are about seven years in and this has all been done very slowly to help us, as we grow, continue to provide great service to our clients but get creative in ways that we can cut down time and increase efficiency, and we have done a really good job of that Not to pat ourselves on the back, but with just two people, we put out so much work and we have so many clients and we do a really great job providing service to them.
Speaker 1:Even though we have a lot of work on our plate, I think that as we have implemented these things, that has just allowed us to grow even more because we have more time, just because we're organized and efficient. I will put all of these things in the show notes if you want to check them out and try them in your business. I hope that everyone found this episode helpful or intriguing, or at least something you can save for the future, and if you did, I would really appreciate it if you would share it on Instagram and tag what your CPA wants you to know Until next time. Thank you so much for listening to what your CPA Wants you to Know podcast you.