Case Study

Accounting Practice Software Helps Successful Accountant Improve Efficiency

Goals Goals

  • Optimize client follow up process for missing documents
  • Reduce time searching for documents sent via email
  • Have a “birds-eye” view client dashboard to visualize real-time request statuses

Key Benefits Experienced Key Benefits Experienced

  • Improved firm administration efficiency by 25%
  • Improved communication with clients for file requests
  • Streamlined client questionnaire process and documentation

“Simple is always better—especially for clients.”

ED LLOYD, CPA

Ed Lloyd is the founder of Ed Lloyd & Associates in Charlotte, North Carolina. His firm provides virtual CFO and strategic tax planning services to help business owners run and build a better business. He uses fixed price-agreements that include accounting services to help clients save on tax dollars. After being in business for over 20 years, he recently has implemented Corvee Software into his firm. Here is the story of the impact it has been making.

An Already Efficient Accounting Firm Becomes More Efficient

Ed Lloyd & Associates is not a new firm—they’ve been around for a couple of decades, so they had smooth processes already in place moving into 2020. As Mr. Lloyd explained, “We were relatively efficient with the tools we had, but I’m always looking for ways to improve, so we decided to implement Corvee Software.”   

His belief is that Corvee is a key piece to improve their firm’s way of interacting with clients. They already have a cloud-based filing system, systemized by client and year. “Systems and structure are very important to me,” Mr. Lloyd explained. “If you don’t have good systems in place, your firm turns more inefficient, so I’m always looking to sharpen our processes.” 

His goal with Corvee was to improve how they collected data from clients because the previous way wasn’t ideal. “Every accounting firm I believe struggles with inefficient data collection,” Mr. Lloyd said. “It’s not just frustrating for us, it can be frustrating for the clients.” 

Mr. Lloyd was referring to the fact that when the firm needed to gather information for an engagement with a client, it usually involved an email. The problem with email is that sometimes a client will only send back, for example, 80% of the documents requested. Then, you have to start a thread asking for remaining documents. Later, it becomes a hassle trying to find various documents inside a thread of an email. 

Other times, something new comes up and you send a second email, then the client gets confused because there’s more than one email. Sometimes a client will claim they never got the file request, or maybe it went to their spam. The point is, email is a scattered approach when it comes to sending and receiving multiple documents. 

We might have a client blow us off for two months saying they never got the questionnaire, even if we sent it to them in an email. The problem with email is that you don’t know for sure if the client actually gets the request. That’s one reason we chose Corvee—we wanted a nice visual dashboard so both our clients and our firm can see exactly what documents have been sent and which documents are still needed from the client.” 

Corvee accounting practice software was created with the idea that when all the file requests are in one place, it makes it easier on both staff and clients. “The bottom line is we saw Corvee as a very simple way to do file requests with clients and have it be an easy way for them to respond to us.”

Accountants Shouldn’t Be Gathering Data

Mr. Lloyd explained to us that as an accountant and tax professional, you continually need data from clients in order to do your job. At some point, the question becomes, is it the most effective use of your time to be gathering this data? Do you need to be the one sending file requests and receiving back client data? The short answer is no, sending and receiving data is better suited to an admin. 

Yet even if you have an admin taking care of these tasks, they can still be efficient at it. This is because a core problem with collecting data from accounting clients is that there has been a lack of a simple, user-friendly way to send and receive sensitive documents while keeping them organized in one place. 

Having Corvee accounting practice software has saved my admin time by improving her efficiency. Let’s say a client buys a car, and we request a document for it. Instead of going into a file cabinet or email to find something, we know exactly where that request is now—inside Corvee. We’ll also know exactly where to find it when it’s sent to us.”

Having a good missing-information request system is key for efficiency. “Every Tuesday my admin does follow ups for missing information. She doesn't have to pull files like she did before.” He estimates it’s a 25% improvement over his old file request system.

Future Implementation of Corvee

You have to get the clients in the system to interact with them, so we imported clients into the system. We’ve probably only implemented 60% of what Corvee can do, so we aren’t finished yet,” added Mr. Lloyd. “We will be modifying engagement letters to customize them for our business. We’re working on selling our services on Zoom and sending engagement letters during the strategy call from Corvee for quicker responses.” Mr. Lloyd continued, “We’ve had a form on our website that clients could fill out as a questionnaire, but we will be doing questionnaires inside Corvee soon as well, so the information is already where we need it to be.”

It’s been a smooth transition so far because of the easy, intuitive nature of Corvee. “Simple is always better—especially for clients,” said Mr. Lloyd. “For example, we had a large audit client with two entities we will consolidate. We were able to do a quick job of making sure we got the data we needed back from the client while determining what was still missing.”

As the firm continues to grow and build out its Corvee implementation, Mr. Lloyd hopes the customers will appreciate the newer, easier-to-use interface and that it will cause less back and forth for all his engagements.

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