“We Tried In-House. An Automation Agency Is a Better Investment.” - $10M Accounting Firm:

process that we think are inefficient. We also lost controls. I'm the laziest person ever, so like, but the more things I can create automations around, I'm all for it. There's— that's money well spent on my side. I, I find this to be, from an investment on the firm standpoint, super valuable for the relationship and the ability for us to learn what's possible.

Hey, this is Isaac from opset.co. In this video, you'll hear from Matt Patrick, who runs Patrick Accounting and works at $10 million accounting firms with hundreds of accounting and And payroll clients. He knew that he has certain workflows where the team just wasn't as efficient and they had lost some internal controls along the way. He tried doing automation himself, even tested other providers, but felt like they provided just cookie-cutter automations that didn't truly improve efficiency. They even tried bringing someone in-house hoping that that person could uncover opportunities, but ultimately that person lacked the day-to-day context to better understand what things could be automated in the first place. And although Matt knew some of the things that they could potentially automate, he didn't know exactly how to technically execute it and build a roadmap. So after working with us and us having a deeper look at their workflows, their onboarding, and their reporting, we were able to put some automated solutions in place. And Matt admits that he now has visibility into their numbers they never had before, and that just the regular conversations that keep automation front of mind and help you uncover new opportunities, not only from the things conversations we have, but the things that come up after that in internal conversations has made his relationship with us money well spent, in his own words, and extremely valuable as an investment for his firm. So if you'd like similar gains in efficiency, control, and scalability for your firm, feel free to reach out to our team to explore whether we can help to replicate these results. There will be a link in the description below. And with that, I'll let you hear Matt Patrick's story.

Matt Patrick. We are a small business-focused firm. Yeah, we have 40 3 people as of today. We'll probably just be— fall short of $10 million this year in revenue. We've got 390 monthly accounting clients and about 750 payroll clients. Just from a bigger picture standpoint, your expertise and working in the industry was really intriguing to me. We're always looking at ways to connect our systems better. Anything that we think we can automate and/or improve upon, either with people or process or tech, I'm all for it. I like that you had worked with some friends and they had kind of practices to kind of a similar mindset of mine of how can we automate some of this stuff. I know what I should be automating, but I don't know necessarily how to technically do it. And so that's how we reached out to you in the beginning. I've tried to do my own automations. I had explored using other companies to do that. And they kind of gave me what I think is like canned automations that while maybe useful, they weren't necessarily that impactful. They were trying to systematize their service offering with, uh, here is the 4 or 5 automations we could do for everybody. And some of those were beneficial, don't get me wrong, but didn't necessarily have a direct— Yeah, it was not, well, it wasn't like, that's great, we did it, but it didn't create a huge impact in our efficiency. It didn't improve our workflow. It just, okay, instead of clicking this button now, we could click this button now. So like, it really wasn't thinking through like, what's the goal you have in mind that you're trying to achieve? Let's find the best solution for that. Well, we hired a person who we thought had the ability to maybe uncover potential opportunities. And even if it would have been, this person can help me uncover potential opportunities and we would use a third party to help us actually build the things, that would be fine. He probably wasn't best suited. He didn't understand the day-to-day work. If I could find them, you know, that's the hardest part. Other thing also is I don't think we would get with an internal hire enough perspective. So even if I had somebody that was really talented in doing these things, the ability to see what other firms have already done and doing, and that knowledge base is so much broader than we would be able to do it internally as a firm going, well, your team's expertise on the toolset that's already available, and then what you've already done for other firms, but also what you've seen works and doesn't work is a huge perspective for us to have. That knowledge is not something we really could hire for. I'm the laziest person ever. So like the more things I can create automations around, I'm all for it. Our goals when we first signed up with this is, hey, there's some things in our process that we think are inefficient. We also lost controls. And then on the reporting side, it's visibility in our numbers that we've never had before. I mean, since we've been on Count now for 4+ years, been kind of manually trying to create our reporting and being promised from Count that we would have better reporting. I've also just enjoyed the process of thinking through what we could be improving. Having that perspective of, and the conversations we've had on a routine Which was we're constantly putting automation into the front of our thought processes. Just the keeping automation service in front of mind, like with us brainstorming stuff, that's money well spent on my side. They are going to help you figure out, they might challenge your processes, which is fine. And they're going to ask really clarifying questions, which will help you build your process better. I find this to be, from an investment on the firm standpoint, super valuable for the relationship and the ability for us to learn what's possible. I would recommend any firm, I mean, obviously, Budget will dictate how much they can do with you guys and then their ability to absorb it and make the changes they need to make and how much capacity they have to make those changes. But yeah, I think any firm that is looking to explore options, ways to improve their automation, this would be a huge step. You have, you have a bunch of skill sets that I don't have, so I'm like, I have no idea how you're going to connect this, who's it, and this, what's it, but I want to know how to do it. Been great. Thank you, man. I appreciate all the work you guys been doing for us.

Perfect. So thanks for watching that conversation. As I mentioned earlier, if you're ready to streamline your to improve your reporting and scale like Patrick is doing, feel free to click the link below to apply to work with us and see if we can replicate some of those results for you. If you're not quite ready there to engage or have a conversation, feel free to subscribe to the channel for more client stories, tutorials, and practical strategies from modern accounting firms. That's all for now. I'll see you on the next one, and until then, stay efficient.