When Tyler Otto set out to grow his accounting firm, he quickly realized that managing day-to-day operations was a bottleneck in and of itself. Without a clear system for organizing tasks and workflows, his team relied heavily on him to stay on track—a challenge that only grew as his client list expanded. He knew his firm needed structure and efficiency to scale.

As an early customer of Keeper, Tyler could see that this tool had the potential to revolutionize his operations, starting with tracking his clients’ month-end close progress. Keeper’s task management tools provided the structure his team needed to take ownership of their work, freeing him to focus on bigger-picture goals. By viewing tasks across all clients in one place, his team could easily identify snags and ensure no deadlines slipped through the cracks.

One standout item for Tyler’s firm was Keeper’s 1099 management capabilities. Keeper simplified W-9 collection by allowing the team to send vendor requests with a single click, turning what used to be a tedious process into an automated routine. This efficiency not only saved time but also demonstrated added value to clients, showing that Tyler’s firm was proactively taking work off their plates each time they paid a new vendor.

Another key differentiator for Tyler is Keeper’s commitment to its users. Whether through responsive support, active user communities, or transparent product roadmaps, Keeper’s focus on customer collaboration made a significant impact. Tyler also appreciated Keeper’s client-based pricing model, which allowed his firm to scale without the burden of increasing software costs.

We can actually see what [features are] coming up, weigh in, vote on it… it makes it so much easier for us to feel like we have a sense of ownership of the product.

Today, Tyler’s firm has grown into a 17-person team with systems in place that foster efficiency, collaboration, and growth. Keeper played a pivotal role in helping Tyler achieve the structure and scalability he needed to turn the vision for his practice into reality.

Curious to see what Keeper can do for your practice? Book a personalized demo today.

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[Keeper] is worth it for that one feature.

Nancy McClelland, also known as The Dancing Accountant, runs a hyper-local bookkeeping and tax firm in Chicago. Before getting started with Keeper, Nancy noticed that her senior accountant, Kendra, was juggling critical accounting responsibilities while simultaneously supervising the junior bookkeepers. Nancy sought out a solution that could ease Kendra’s workload without compromising the quality and efficiency of the firm’s operations, and she landed on Keeper.

In comparison to other practice management apps on the market, what struck Nancy most was Keeper’s ability to automate those month-end reviews that consumed so much of Kendra’s time. Additionally, tasks that previously fell to the supervisors were delegated to the junior staff with ease, thanks to Keeper’s task management features paired with the intuitive dashboard.

That dashboard also allowed for Kendra to have a clear, at-a-glance view of each team member’s progress on their assigned tasks. Keeper even flagged when someone was “stuck” somewhere in the month-end close process. This new system saved Nancy’s whole team tons of time, simply because they no longer had to engage in endless check-ins and back-and-forthing about who was doing what. Everyone was equipped with an increased awareness of the tasks at hand.

Nancy also highlighted one of Keeper’s standout features: automatic 1099 tracking and W-9 collection. “It is worth it for that one feature,” she said, noting that some of her colleagues initially added the entirety of their client base solely for this functionality. But for Nancy’s firm, Keeper’s use cases went far beyond the 1099 season. Features both large and small were being consistently implemented at a pace that made sense for her team—thanks to the expertise of Keeper’s support reps.

Today, Keeper helps Nancy’s firm operate more efficiently, allowing her team to continue delivering exceptional services to clients. Plus, her 1099 seasons are no longer headache-inducing.

You can find Nancy McClelland, CPA’s award-winning blog at thedancingaccountant.com, and be sure to check out Ask a CPA, which is a community for bookkeepers looking to enhance their accounting skills and increase collaboration with their clients’ CPAs and tax preparers.

Curious to see how Keeper can solve the capacity constraints at your firm? Book a personalized demo today.

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• BSFS significantly reduced time spent on manual bookkeeping tasks and email communication with Keeper’s QuickBooks integrated review tools and client portal.
• Keeper’s dashboard and customizable client templates replaced their spreadsheet-based workbooks, giving management a high-level view of all client activities.
• In their first month on Keeper, BSFS saved over an hour per client across their 50 clients.

The post How BSFS Saves Over 50 Hours Per Month With Keeper’s File Review Tools appeared first on Keeper.

Highlights

• Adopting Keeper helped Springstead Solutions transform their month-end close, cutting down turnaround times by 10 working days.
• By transitioning to Keeper, the firm moved from tabbing through multiple platforms and manual tasks to focusing on scaling and improving the business.
• With newfound efficiency and time, Springstead Solutions was able to onboard 3 new clients in their first month on Keeper.

Springstead’s start

Christina Springstead has had a lifelong knack for numbers. After taking an accounting class in high school and joining Business Professionals of America, it was clear which path she would take after graduation. However, after two semesters into her accounting degree, Christina pivoted to study sports management as she believed it would be more exciting. Ultimately, all roads led back to accounting as she launched her bookkeeping side business in tandem with her full-time career, to ensure she could provide for her daughter as a single mom.

In 2020, the time had come for Christina to focus all her efforts on running her bookkeeping business, Springstead Solutions. Simultaneously, COVID-19 presented a need for businesses to update and organize their books in order to apply for relief loans. Drawing from her experiences in accounting, management of a brick-and-mortar business, and participation in the Profit First program (PFP), Christina identified the true impact disorganized accounting systems had on small businesses.

“So many businesses’ books were messy, which led to them making bad business decisions. That’s where I found my passion.”

Flipping through tabs to complete the month-end close

That passion was recognized and appreciated by a growing book of clients, which brought with it a need for an additional employee and new processes. As a self-proclaimed “deep-dive software user,” Christina was not afraid to test out tools to organize her practice. At first, she relied on a workflow platform to track daily tasks, QuickBooks Online to manage and reconcile accounts, a spreadsheet to review the monthly close process, and Keeper for final quality-control checks. These spread out procedures caused Springstead Solution’s rapid growth to seem daunting rather than exciting.

“Before diving into Keeper, our process was made up of many changing systems and a lot of wasted time flipping between tabs and tools, with no single source of truth for oversight of operations,” said Christina. “We were always running into the new month scrambling to get things done and books closed out.”

Closing the books 10 days faster with Keeper

After scheduling a call with Keeper to answer some lingering feature-related questions, Christina took the initiative to coordinate a collaborative work group with her Customer Success Manager and her fellow PFP peers to determine the best use of Keeper for bookkeeping firms. As a result of those interactions, she made use of what she learned throughout those weeks in order to do her own software “deep-dive,” and was amazed by the results.

“I built out 20 different templates based on our work strategies. I tested, retested, and tested them again. It worked, and the transformation was overnight. From the moment I showed it to my staff, I had more hope in my business than I had in months,” said Christina. “With the ease of Keeper, I actually had oversight of what was happening for all of my clients.”

Springstead Solutions found a powerful way to condense their month-end close process, all in Keeper. And more than cutting down on extra clicks each day, Keeper reduced the actual time spent closing their clients’ books; to the tune of roughly 10 working days per month.

“When we started completing our month-end closes in Keeper, we had more than half of our client work finished by the 12th of the month. Previously, that was not the case – we would often spend up to the 25th of the month getting these tasks finished.”

Using Keeper to scale the practice

This newly freed up time was historically spent tracking specific client workflows and drudging through tedious and manual bookkeeping processes – while simultaneously researching, testing, and seeking out better systems. Now, Christina was fully invested in Keeper’s various tools, and decided to go further by switching and subscribing to Keeper Receipts.

Springstead Solutions’ tech stack was effectively and intuitively condensed. “I just need QuickBooks and Keeper – and almost minimally QuickBooks – at this point in time.” Christina recognized this as the perfect time to scale her business.

“With Keeper, we didn’t need more employees, but we could bring on more clients. The amount of time I’ve saved in the last five weeks has been so immense that my client success manager told me she needed more work to fill her plate,” said Christina.

Christina took advantage of this additional time by adding extra TLC to her website and business operations. She revamped her pricing calculator, updated her health check template, and held a few discovery calls with prospective clients.

“I have been able to work on my business instead of in my business because I know the month-end close has been taken care of,” Christina said. “I was even able to move up a discovery call appointment because it was important to the prospective client. In my first 28 days on Keeper, I’ve been able to sign 3 new clients.”

“Hands down, the best decision you will make is using Keeper to its full potential for streamlining your operations. I love it.”

Continuing the momentum

Springstead Solutions is just getting started, and the team is identifying new areas to scale and build out by leveraging Keeper to manage the practice. Looking ahead, Christina is eager to build out new financial tools, improve her branding, and engage in discovery calls with clients to find true alignment.

“I can now have a clear mind to actually go through and understand the work that needs to be done each month. Our books have always been clean, but now they’re sparkly clean.”

 

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