Pennsylvania based CPA getting support for his Fractional CFO practice from Altobooks

About the firm:

The CPA was young and emerging and started a small practice remotely. He was the sole practitioner and did not have any team to support. Since his practice cannot support him fully, he was also working side-by-side. He had a small client base. Some for bookkeeping and some for fractional CFO service. He also had around 50 tax returns, which are mix of individuals and businesses.

The problem statements:

1. This CPA was unable to do all the work himself, since he was also working side-by-side.
2. He was unable to find a reliable onshore employee, who can do specialized bookkeeping work for his fractional CFO clients like project accounting etc.
3. He was not sure what kind of team member he should hire and what could be the time commitment.

Solutions provided:

1. A competent team member along with a senior team leader was assigned for bookkeeping and fractional CFO support work on flexible staffing model. After initial training session, the team took over all the provided client assignments. These assignments were done over QuickBooks Online.
2. Over time, some other duties like project monitoring were also provided to the existing team members. The same work also handled properly the team member.
3. During the tax season the same team member was also provided with the work of preparing around 25 tax returns, which were done over Intuit Proconnect.
4. Later on, the CPA decided to focus on his business development and marketing efforts and entrusted most of the routine work to the offshore team.

How the relationship was scaled up:

1. Week 1 – Staff Accountant started working on flexible staffing mode. Started onboarding calls, some training, some bookkeeping work.
2. Week 2 – Staff Accountant along with her senior team leader started taking over fractional CFO backoffice work.
3. Week 4 – Staff Accountant was entrusted with more bookkeeping and fractional CFO backoffice assignments.
4. Week 27 – Staff Accountant was also delegated few tax returns and was able to complete all of them without any errors.
5. Week 35 – Staff Accountant was provided tasks related to project monitoring activities of some clients.

He has now realized true benefit and flexibility of offshore staffing model and is now entrusting most of the routine work to Altobooks team and is more focused on new business and marketing.

Challenges:

1. Initial skepticism around capabilities of an offshore team whether this will work or not.
2. Initially, the CPA was skeptical whether the offshore team will be able to work on all kinds of bookkeeping assignments or whether the team will be able to do bookkeeping and provide reports and dashboards required for his fractional CFO clients.
3. Despite all the support from the offshore team, the CPA was not able to scale up his practice as desired. Mainly, because he lacked proper marketing and new business development strategies and abilities.

Reasons for success:

1. He was very willing and open to the idea of offshore team.
2. Good onboarding calls and clear communication and feedback.
3. Support from Altobooks senior team leader for fractional CFO support work.

Top services provided:

1. Bookkeeper and senior team member handling bookkeeping and fractional CFO support work using QuickBooks online
2. Project Monitoring activities by the same bookkeeper
3. Tax preparation work during tax season by the same team member, since she was already having tax experience over Intuit ProConnect.