How Your Office Can Scale and Grow Using Accounting Workflow Management Software

In the past, scaling your business often meant capital expenditure in the form of hiring new people, getting a larger office, buying more equipment, buying out a competitor, or any combination of these.

Today, thanks to technology, small to medium-sized firms specializing in accounting can enjoy the benefits of a large-scale operation while still maintaining their current footprint.

How is this done?

Using accounting firm automation that uses sophisticated software to minimize the amount of manual labor needed for a task.

While automation in accounting firms is not a new concept, it is a more powerful business driver today than ever before. We’ll outline the benefits of accounting workflow automation and how TaxDome can help your firm achieve its goals in this regard.

What is Accounting Workflow Management Exactly?

The CPA Journal outlines the exact technical definition of accounting workflow as a process for gathering information, such as client data or employee timesheets, processing that data, and providing a report of that data in the form of an invoice, paycheck, report, or tax return.

Further, accounting workflow management involves organizing human resources and key workflow documents as well as both internal and external communication and client relationship management. In sum, accounting workflow management software helps firms effectively manage resources, keep projects and deliverables on time, and meet client expectations without fail.

Not only does this make work easier and more efficient, but also it allows for expanding business opportunities due to more streamlined resource management.

Four Powerful Ways Accounting and Tax Workflow Automation Can Change Your Company

Scaling Your Base of Clientele

With the increased efficiencies offered by accounting workflow automation products like those from TaxDome, companies are able to grow their clientele base and their revenue as a result. In fact, Joseph and Hetrick, LLC plans on revenue growth of some 50% in 2021 using TaxDome.

This mother-daughter team enjoys the optimization that services like TaxDome bring to the workspace, and they are relying on it to help them scale their business in a sustainable way. A veteran of the accounting space, Randy Joseph Hetrick decided to leave retirement to help daughter Deva start her own accounting firm.

“This fall [2020], we thought a lot about our growth goals, we decided to hire an admin and switch to TaxDome. We really wanted to up our game with all the remote technology. So we’re in the process of getting rid of a lot of old software now everything can be done within TaxDome,” Deva Hetrick explains.

Effective Human Resources Management

TaxDome is also helping firms grow their teams in a manner that watches the bottom line and keeps quality of service at the forefront of activity.

One interesting case study of just this in action is that of Brooklyn FI, a solopreneur company that has since expanded to 13 people using TaxDome in the first year alone. A CPA for over ten years, Brooklyn FI founder Shane Mason credits TaxDome’s accounting workflow management software with his explosive growth.

“In terms of scaling the service-based business, we have landed on a model that works really well. Process, workflows, how often we communicate with clients, and the deliverables we give them, and the prices we charge. It’s important to manage expectations, our staff, and bring on clients that fit into our wheelhouse. This will keep everything on track and allow us to grow exponentially.”

Increased Efficiencies Lead to More Capital for Expansion and Other Projects

When companies operate more efficiently, they expend fewer resources on mundane tasks, thus freeing up capital and labor for other projects. This could be exploring new business opportunities, growing your current market, or even paying staff better wages. Accounting firm automation seeks to reconcile those processes that can be effectively handled without human intervention with the expertise and skills of your staff, thus allowing them to more effectively operate and cater to client needs.

Five macro-level features of TaxDome’s Workflow management tools include a simple and intuitive user interface, a template format for business processes, a task management board, streamlined onboarding processes, and a universal monitoring system to track workflow progress.

As a universal solution for firms of varying sizes, TaxDome is used effectively by everyone from solopreneurs to multi-employee firms. Jessica Smith of Tax Savvy Jessica and Brian Newman of Brian Newman CPA are two great examples of TaxDome users who have not just found a solution to their workflow management needs but also a way of enabling growth through productivity efficiencies.

Superior Client Management

As with any business, the key to sustainable growth is consistently superior client management and customer service. No matter how well-intentioned a company is, having too many projects ongoing at one time will necessarily lead to a degradation in the quality of client management and customer service delivered.

The best way to head off this potential issue is to implement effective, universal management systems that squeeze out efficiencies and deliver on multiple fronts. TaxDome has not only helped companies scale their ability to process incoming work, but it has also helped them grow their base of clientele with a superior management system.

Total Tax Services realized the benefits TaxDome could bring to their business, and they haven’t looked back since. In fact, TaxDome’s superior conversion capabilities – or, in other words, the software’s ability to onboard an incoming prospect – has helped the company double its clientele base with the help of Internet marketing.

Owner of Total Tax Services, Cassandra Centeno, explains: “I saw that TaxDome can automate onboarding — it’s huge for converting clients when they come to my site from ads. I’ve had two people sign up, and I don’t even know who they are. Sometimes I post videos on TikTok with tax tips — and I put my website in my profile. They went to my website, clicked on get started, and they got started in the portal without me doing anything.”

A total of 86% of TaxDome users report being happy with their client portal as opposed to 14% of CPAs in general. Further, a whopping 93% of TaxDome users consider it intuitive and easy to use, while the same can only be said by 35% of accounting and tax workflow management software in general.

Some of the benefits of the TaxDome portal include a custom website URL, electronic signing for documents, a private messaging system, trackable client tasks, holistic process integration, dedicated help, and two-factor authentication for security, among others.

Planning Your Firm’s Accounting Workflow Automation

With a little bit of hard work on the front end, accounting firms can automate their workflow for years to come – and TaxDome can help. Here are the five planning stages to integrating accounting and tax workflow automation:

Gather

The first step in transitioning to an automated workflow is to gather all of the information related to your business and workflow. This would include emails, invoices, and other day-to-day business items.

Optimize

Next, conduct a thorough review of your current workflows for each and every process. Document every step in detail. Be sure to answer the questions who, what, when, where, why, and how. Look at these processes in light of automation and how to transition to that format with a focus on the customer experience at every stage.

Leverage

Use your current documentation and research to test and tweak your automated processes. Allot at least 40 hours for testing various services to determine what best suits your firm’s needs. Be sure to document this process as well.

Document

Using the collected work you have completed up to this point, document and catalog your new procedures with an eye towards future training of current staff and future incoming hires. Develop a plan for training and rolling out the new way of doing business.

Standardize

As with any process, where you start is not where you will end up, and, over time, changes will need to be implemented. Look for ways to harmonize your ideal scenarios with realities on the ground and establish a feedback mechanism for improvement that involves employees and clients. Constant refinement of these processes will lead to efficiency gains over the long haul without the need for a serious expenditure of human resource hours to achieve them.

Automate Your Practice Today with TaxDome

Are you ready to bring the benefits of automated accounting practice workflow management into your practice? Schedule a TaxDome demo and learn how this revolutionary productivity solution can change your firm’s workflow today.