Blueridge Tax Accounting on TaxDome: client retention went up to 90%, “You’re making things so easy for me and my team” 

Allow us to introduce Lisa Sheldon: tax specialist, chartered accountant, and founder of Blueridge Tax Accounting, an Australian accounting firm providing financial advisory, taxation, and business advisory services (BAS) to more than 100 clients and counting.

In this article, we’ll explore TaxDome’s impact on Blueridge Tax Accounting’s internal processes, along with the impact that also spread through to their clients.

Blueridge Tax Accounting’s clients: “[TaxDome] just works. It’s simple to use and they like it; they enjoy it.”

Lisa’s firm implemented TaxDome in August 2023, a switch that initiated:

• time savings of 40 hours per week
• improved firm-wide operational efficiency — between 1.5–2 hours saved for onboarding clients, collecting client info, preparing tax returns, and sending proposals
• a superior client experience, increasing client retention to 90%
• reduced monthly software costs by AU$2300+ thanks to an all-in-one platform

Before TaxDome, problems for Blueridge Tax Accounting included time-consuming manual processes, inconsistent client communication, and rising software costs. 

We had the pleasure of sitting down with Lisa, who gave us the full story of how TaxDome helped her overcome these problems and build on her firm’s success.

The problems

Manual processes

For many accounting firms today, inefficiencies stem from manual processes. For Lisa’s firm, the inefficiency was not having a secure platform that allowed them to easily store and access client information.

My software system before TaxDome was very much pen and paper, or manual, email-driven… But it’s a constraint on growth when all the knowledge is in my head. How do I explain that to my staff member? How do they find the right document when I’m in a meeting and I’m not available?

Without a platform providing these advantages, Lisa and her staff had to manually share client docs and data with one another, taking up more of their time than necessary.Inconsistent client experience 

Another issue Lisa’s firm faced before TaxDome was difficulty standardizing client communication — specifically, in terms of brand voice and the information sent to clients.

They’re used to talking to me, they come to me for my advice. How does the client get used to talking to a team, not just one person?

As an experienced accountant and business owner, Lisa knew that improving client communication was vital for conveying professionalism and expertise — and for enriching her firm’s client experience.

High costs

Before switching to TaxDome, Lisa and her firm had to use different software tools to manage core processes, some of which included communication, document management, and e-signatures.

Lisa saw the inefficiencies of having these processes scattered across different tools, as well as the rising monthly subscription costs as her firm grew.

It was getting a bit expensive to have ‘X’ dollar value per month, per user for signatures, documents — every single little feature that I needed.

More customer success: explore how Kompas Regnskab cut admin time by 50% with TaxDome

The solutions

Centralized document and workflow management

Lisa’s team no longer has to manually share client info with one another thanks to TaxDome’s centralized document management and workflow management — tools that allow each team member to access client documents quickly and securely, collaborate with ease, and complete client tasks faster. For Blueridge Tax Accounting, this shift resulted in savings of 3.5 hours per client between onboarding and collecting information:

• 1.5 hours saved in onboarding new clients — from 2 hours per client to 30 minutes
• 2 hours saved collecting client docs and info — from 5 hours per client to 3  

TaxDome has those features and they’re things I use every day without thinking about. They’re the most powerful things, the simplest of things, to move documents forward. And also for me to approve them. If my team member’s doing work, they don’t need to tell me when it’s finished. TaxDome auto-notifies me if I want it to… It just smooths communication and makes it automatic.

This didn’t just improve quality of life for Lisa’s team, but for her clients too: “Clients actually now say to me, can they share documents through my system, not the other advisor’s system, because [TaxDome] just works. It’s simple to use and they like it; they enjoy it.” 

Simplified client communication — and a top-rated client mobile app

Blueridge’s client retention — already at an impressive 80% — jumped to 90% thanks to streamlined client communication in TaxDome — plus a mobile app the firm’s clients actually enjoy using.

With TaxDome’s customizable, industry-standard templates and automated messages, Lisa found the solution she was looking for to elevate and standardize the quality of all client communication. 

In Lisa’s words: “I really do like those templates. It’s consistency of information that I send through to clients… Even if my staff member sends it, it can come from my email address. So I’m getting that brand consistency, voice consistency. And my clients love it.”

Taking her firm’s client experience up another level, TaxDome’s client mobile app made it easy for her clients to communicate with her team, upload docs, and more, without needing guidance.

It’s not just one, it was dozens of clients self-solving… saying, ‘No, don’t worry about it. It’s all in the app.’ That’s 20-something emails most days I could just file away and delete because they’d solved it. They were that happy using the system and getting used to it… I’ve got 70-year-olds who are CFOs and/or retired now, and they said, ‘No problem — easy to use!’

One platform for tax, bookkeeping, and full-service accounting 

TaxDome consolidated core processes for Lisa’s firm, which hasn’t just cut software costs by more than AU$2300 per month, but also boosted operational efficiency: 

• 2 hours saved preparing tax returns — from 5 hours per return to 3
• 2 hours saved preparing proposals — from 4 hours to 2

“TaxDome replaces three or four other systems that I had for email templates for ATO correspondence, for document management, for signatures,” Lisa told us. “Now I can do all of that in three or four clicks in one program.”

Alongside her staff, Lisa’s clients have also benefited from having one centralized platform that serves all their needs, as they no longer have to navigate, or learn, separate tools to submit information and track work updates.

TaxDome has been wonderful to make that simpler, simplify the software stack, both from a cost perspective, as well as just user-training, client flexibility — they’re now used to logging into one client portal, seeing their documents, seeing their signature requests.

Easy implementation thanks to dedicated, hands-on support

“I’ll be honest and say I was very nervous at the onboarding,” Lisa admitted when we asked her about the implementation process. However, TaxDome’s customer success team provided Lisa with the necessary hands-on support to get set up quickly and easily, and now she wishes she had implemented TaxDome earlier.

Your team was so generous on time. It was wonderful. We were always just going through one feature, explaining it, embedding it down, showing me some training videos for me to do in my own time. And then, the next week, we’d do another system or another build on that education sequence. So, I liked it because it wasn’t a big-bang change for me or my firm. I could take it as fast or as slow as I wanted — in hindsight, I wish I’d done it faster.

Due to her seamless TaxDome onboarding experience, Lisa concluded with a cheerful recommendation to her peers: “If someone asked me, should they use TaxDome, or if they [should] do a trial and test a few features, I would say, it’s worth your time. You’ll quickly find time savers for yourself and your team, and also cost savers of software that you can switch off — and go back to enjoying the sunshine in Australia!”

More customer success: find out how startup firm Numeralis implemented TaxDome to position itself for growth

The results

In less than a year with TaxDome, Blueridge Tax Accounting has achieved:

• time savings of 40 hours per week
• increased operational efficiency and improved quality of life for staff
• a superior client experience, boosting client retention to 90% 
• reduced monthly software costs by AU$2300+ thanks to consolidating their tech stack

TaxDome is now integral to Lisa’s daily operations: “It’s the program that I log in to first thing in the day and close down last of an evening. I don’t know how I’d operate without it now.”

You’re making things so easy for me and my team… it’s hard to justify an extra team member, even though I’m growing rapidly. It’s not replacing labor; it’s just letting accountants do accounting work — the software does the things that we don’t want to do.

A sincere thank you to Lisa for being part of the community! The TaxDome team will continue to support your firm’s success and growth.

New to TaxDome? Experience the difference for yourself — join Blueridge Tax Accounting and more than 10,000 firms that have taken their success to new heights with our award-winning, comprehensive practice management solution.