Financial Manager Discovers How to Optimize Advisory Services with Tax Planning Software for Accountants

Omar Garcia, a financial manager who founded Secure Plus Financial in Brownsville, Texas, focuses on helping clients with bookkeeping, CFO, payroll, insurance, retirement planning, investment and financial planning. As he continues to look at how his firm can help businesses and individuals meet their financial goals, he recently invested in Corvee Tax Planning software. Here is his experience with it.

A Mindset Shift Happened Before Getting Tax Planning Software for Accountants

Running a multi-service accounting firm, Omar Garcia had been doing some tax planning for clients for a couple years, but wasn’t getting paid for it. As he began to follow Andrew Argue, CEO of Corvee, on social media, he slowly began to have a shift in his mindset. Mr. Garcia had come from a finance background, not accounting. It took a little time to get used to thinking about things from an accounting perspective, but more importantly, a pricing perspective.

“I realized I was not always charging the fees necessary to get the work done for clients thoroughly. I knew changing pricing would require me to have a lot of uncomfortable conversations with my clients. I had to explain to them tax prep and tax planning are separate services…CFO and accounting are separate services. Once I started charging them separately for each service, I was able to slowly begin increasing my revenue and my ability to better serve my clients.”

Originally, Mr. Garcia had to make the shift from being a bookkeeper to a CFO, but today he specializes in CFO services that integrate tax planning.

Once he made the mindset shift on pricing, he interpreted what he did for clients differently. He realized that how you deliver services needs to change if you’re going to optimize the perceived value that clients receive.

“Being an accountant, you can become resentful. I say this because you do all this work and provide all this value, but it’s not always appreciated by the client. That’s when I realized you have to deliver the services in such a way as to make the perceived value higher.”

Mr. Garcia continued, “You can do amazing work for a client, but there is always a perceived value from the client’s perspective, that even if you can save them a lot of money, if they can’t visualize it, they don‘t appreciate it, and they won’t pay you what you’re worth.”

That’s where Corvee Tax Planning software comes in. 

Tax Planning Software for Accountants Increases Value for Clients

Before investing in Corvee Tax Planning software for accountants, Mr. Garcia used to mentally estimate savings for clients using 5-6 tax savings strategies, but the number he quoted was always too conservative.

Today, the software helps him tax plan faster and more effectively. He can save clients on average two to three times as much compared to his previous mental estimates. “The software allows me to be more thorough, so I don’t just use my head. It gives me a way to deliver the information in a way that the client can visualize the savings and appreciate the value of what I do,” Mr. Garcia said.

The visualization he is referring to comes from the ready-to-send deliverables that Corvee automatically creates for each tax plan. It gives tax planners a beautiful, custom-branded PDF to send to each client that explains tax savings strategies in detail, which typically answers many of their questions.

Another major benefit Mr. Garcia has found using tax planning software for accountants is that he’s learned to ask better questions. “The tax software has allowed me to rethink what the right questions are to ask clients. I knew how to save money for clients but didn’t know the targeted questions to ask that would help me maximize their savings. This software has done that for me.”

By asking clients better questions, getting the right data and instantly adding it into Corvee, Mr. Garcia is able to get rapid tax savings estimates for his clients. The difference between using tax planning software for accountants vs. doing it all mentally, is that he is asking more questions, knowing what to ask for and adding in a whole lot more potential tax savings strategies. In essence, he sums it up as this: “I just follow the questions and plug in the numbers.”

It’s working. With 85% growth year over year in revenue, his firm has exceeded its goals this past year and is on pace for another record breaking year in 2021. Mr. Garcia feels he has all the right resources now to deliver on what clients are looking for.

Even better, he says clients are very impressed by the whole tax planning process. “While other accountants might have been doing some of the work in regards to tax planning, they never showed their work. By using the tax planning software with the ready-to-send documents it creates for me, the end result is that it’s jaw-dropping to clients,” Mr. Garcia revealed. “They’re simply not used to this level of perceived value. Almost all my clients are impressed by how quickly we’re able to give them their estimated savings, and how clear we’re able to make it for them so that all their questions are answered.”

With appreciative clients, he now can’t imagine doing tax planning without Corvee. He went from taking a week to complete a tax plan proposal prior to the software, to doing it in a few hours now.  “I’ve learned to work smarter, not harder,” Mr. Garcia noted.

That’s why he’s also using Corvee Client Collaboration features, which help him get documents back and forth between clients quicker and more efficiently. “I started my firm very old-fashioned by requesting documents through email. Corvee software has really elevated our process. We send documents safely and quickly inside the software.”

His advice to prospective Corvee users:

“You’re heading in the right direction if you’re considering Corvee Tax Planning software. Your mind is going to explode. You’re going to deliver more value to your client in a way that’s also perceivable.”