In this interview, Isaac P. from opsta.co talks with Garett, a partner at Atmos Financial, a mid‑size Canadian tax firm, about the firm’s chronic pre‑tax‑season chaos and how Opsta’s automation and support transformed their operations. Previously, the firm started tax season late, with disorganized checklists, email and folder systems, and billing processes, causing partners—who command the highest hourly rates—to spend time firefighting instead of delivering high‑value work. Their prior automation contractor vanished, leaving broken workflows, missed client reminders, and data loss, resulting in tax returns that ran over budget by more than 50%. Opsta delivered a rapid proof‑of‑concept, built the needed tools without extra input, and provided a single point of contact for swift issue resolution. The result was a distraction‑free tax season: the firm’s effective hourly rate rose 47% (from $226 to $333), average time per T1 return fell from 51% over budget to on‑budget (3% under), and client satisfaction improved. Garett emphasizes the value of reliable processes, reduced fire‑fighting, and the direct revenue impact of higher billing efficiency. The interview ends with a call to action for other firms to contact Opsta for similar efficiency gains.
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Hey, this is Isaac from opsta.co, and this video is an interview from an existing client that runs a 3-partner mid-sized tax firm out of Canada. Every year they found themselves starting tax season already behind, right? Some of the critical preparation that they needed to do in terms of their checklist, their emails, their folders, their billing, everything got pushed to like January or February, and then they were anxious, unprepared, and scrambling around to get ready for the season. Their partners, which, you know, technically are the people with the highest hourly rates who are spending time putting out fires during the busiest time of the year instead of focusing on the highest leverage and revenue-generating work fundamentally. Tax returns were being rushed, the quality of the work suffered to some degree, and on average each return actually went over the budget they had estimated by more than 50%. On top of that, they were working with an automation agency in the past that supposedly put systems in place to help, but they went silent, and then some of the key processes that the firm was relying on were broken. Ultimately, the clients were receiving reminders when they shouldn't be getting reminders, data was lost, and no one on the team really knew when the work was ready. This year, however, the firm suggests this was a distraction-free tax season because everything worked the way it was expected to work, and if there were any technical issues, we were there available to resolve them the same day. The firm's partners finally felt that they were focused on the highest value work and were able to do what they were supposed to do, as opposed to putting out fires. And they also saw some tangible, measurable results, namely their effective hourly rate jumped 47% from $226 an hour to $333 an hour. And also the average time per return went from being 51% over budget on average To just on budget, or actually three percent under budget this time around. Ultimately, clients received their return on time, and we're happier at the end of the day. If you want similar results or explore options to work with us to increase your firm's efficiency, feel free to check the link in the description to talk to our team to see if we can replicate these outcomes. And with that, I'll leave you to listen to the story of Gareth and Atmos Financial to get inspired.
We had just had a disastrous. Tax season, thanks to the previous contractors. We were you were looking forward to a really nice, good, almost relaxing tax season this last year, and it turned out to be anything but. Well, basically, we had just had a disastrous tax season thanks to. Basically the previous contractors we were using dropping the ball and not responding to us, et cetera. And so we needed to make sure that we could be prepared for tax season well ahead of time and make sure that we were confident that we were actually ready and things were working the way they should.
Yeah.
I mean, that's the core of the business. Clients were getting reminders when they shouldn't get reminders, and then were getting frustrated and contacting us and wondering what's going on, which of course used up resources that we didn't have. Things weren't coming through to our internal processes the way they should. So therefore work was lagging. You know, we'd maybe think we didn't have files in place to work on a project when we actually did. Previous tax season, we had felt like at the end we had things working very relatively smoothly. So we were looking forward to a really nice, good, almost relaxing tax season this last year. And It turned out to be anything but. The fact that you focus on working with accounting firms, and I knew you were also in Future Firm, so I knew you were looking at the same things I was looking at, exposed to at least some of the same ideas and same type of thinking as we were. So I felt like probably our goals and all that were at least somewhat aligned and I wouldn't have to Yeah, explain myself over and over.
Yeah, that makes sense. Uh, there's something else I recall you mentioning made you confident, which we don't always do. But, uh, if you recall, we shared a kind of proof of concept at the time where we presented, hey, is there anything you want, you've been wanting built? And we went ahead and built that. Could you talk about that experience a little bit?
Basically, there was an idea that we had had, and I had actually worked with a contractor through Upwork and Initially, it was going to be a very simple project according to him, and ended up dragging on and dragging on and costing us more and more. He kept wanting more and more access to our system, et cetera. And eventually, and it just wasn't happening. And I had mentioned that to you guys when you asked kind of what was the number one on our wishlist. And I think it was a week or maybe 2 weeks later, you came back and you basically had it built without any— You know, without asking us for any more information or anything. And it's, we didn't actually implement it at that point, but it looked like it was, it was ready to go. So yeah, that was, that was a big, big selling feature. The fact that you were willing to invest in us to that extent to prove that you could do what you— the other thing was right through the whole process, I was dealing, I was talking to you. I wasn't getting shuffled between various people.
Looks like when you work with that other agency, you have like a Account manager of sorts that was handling the relationship versus maybe the person that sold you in the first place.
I honestly, even at the end, I still didn't know who did what. I think I know who my account manager was, but there was two people that I never really did quite catch on whose role was what there.
So it looks like you have multiple points of contacts and there was like lack of clarity around the. Yeah.
But I will say that I, like, I do find myself getting excited for the next tax season just because it doesn't feel like we're working with last-minute stuff. It feels like we're, you know, we're actually almost ready to go.
Yeah.
Whereas other years we'd be looking at doing this stuff in January or even February, and it gets to be so last minute, it's not fun. And having a sense of organization like that, you know, you've made that pre-tax season checklist I feel way more in control of what needs to happen to get ready and to be, you know, to pull the trigger on the tax season when we get there. Okay.
Perfect.
So basically what I did here was I dumped out to Excel all of my T1 jobs that we have at all, and I filtered for ones that were up to the stage where they, they're ready to go out. For 2023 year-end, we worked an average of 4.1 hours per T1 return. You can see that our average hour allocation, our budgeted hours was 2.7 and we were at 4.1. So this is comparing apples to apples and right.
And right about on budget, essentially.
Basically on budget. Yep, exactly. The average billing rate for T1s for 2024 would be $333 an hour. For 2020, that's $226 an hour. So yeah.
$226. So we're like 50%. High average hourly rate for that particular job.
407 divided by 226, increase of 47.3%.
How do you think about the benefits or like the return on the work we do? One of the ways we like to think about it is like, to the degree that we increase an average hourly rate, it means that with the same amount of hours, I'll be able to increase the revenue of the firm in that same percentage, at least for that particular job. Do you think about it differently or is there a different way in which you approach it? Like, okay. This work leads to this kind of value.
No, no, there's a, there's a direct relationship. Like, so last year during tax season, I was very distracted because I was having to put out fires because nothing was working. Right. I spent countless hours with clients trying to solve this problem, that, and with team members because things weren't flowing. This year it was a distraction-free tax season. When there was issues, you guys showed up and fixed it. basically immediately, and I could just work. And I'm the guy with the highest billing rate. You know, I could actually, during the most productive time of the year, my work was being— my time was being used where it needs to be used. I would say that those 2 are probably related because, so one of the biggest things last year was the clients were sending stuff in and we didn't know it. It would be sitting there. So then all at once we'd find out it's there and now the client needs it right now or, you know, tomorrow type of thing. So then there was a huge rush on it and quality control suffers under an atmosphere like that. This year it was regulated. We knew when we had it, it worked through our process. We have a highly regimented process, went through the review, got out to the client. We still have some work to do on the turnaround time, but it was far, far more controlled.
Wins from our perspective. Yep.
I would agree with that for sure.
Perfect. Perfect.
Well, hope you enjoyed that conversation. If you want smoother operations, higher effective hourly rates without charging more and lower lower churn, then definitely feel free to talk to our team. Click the link below to our website to apply to work with us. There's also a free use cases guide on our site if you're not quite ready to talk to our team just yet. And last but not least, for more content tutorials and case studies like this from tech for accounting firms, feel free to subscribe to this channel. With that, I'll see you on the next one, and until then, stay efficient.
