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Botkeeper’s Growth Partner & Implementation Specialist Help JHR Upskill
As Evan got more comfortable with Botkeeper, he started to see how his Botkeeper Growth Partner would alleviate stress.
“With any solution, you're entrusting our client’s information to someone new,” Evan said. “When we first onboarded clients to Botkeeper, I felt like I needed to make sure I was staying on top of things to ensure they were flowing the way that I would expect. Since those beginning stages, I now put my trust in my Growth Partner Kori. Kori brings items to my attention that I would have naturally asked about before I even have time to go into the platform and review. It is such a sense of relief to have her as part of our team.”
Botkeeper’s onboarding process inspired JHR to evaluate their own.
“Botkeeper’s onboarding process is incredibly down pat,” Evan said. “You've got your checklists, you have your processes, you go through everything! Alane, our Botkeeper Implementation Lead, goes through and figures out exactly what's what, what's where, and what's missing. She develops a plan and implements it to make sure we get the client onboarded correctly. Botkeeper then allows us to provide quicker value to our clients. We want to model that here at JHR. I want to get our client onboarding process down pat just like Botkeeper.”
JHR Is a Different Firm With Botkeeper
After 2 clients were onboarded to Botkeeper for bookkeeping work, JHR made a decision to bring all new clients with bookkeeping needs onto the Botkeeper platform. They’ve since reconfigured their pricing to accommodate having Botkeeper as part of their team and are seeing an 80% reduction in the time spent performing bookkeeping work for new clients. In particular, JHR relies on the Botkeeper Scoping Tool to easily pull in client information to evaluate if they’re a good fit for the firm.
“Now when we bring on a new client, if they need bookkeeping we bring them right on to Botkeeper,” Evan said. “Botkeeper allows me to take what I would charge a bookkeeping client and charge them a lower rate since I don’t have to have a controller or a CFO perform the work. This then allows me and my team to focus on being in that controller position, effectively being able to charge an hourly rate of around $160 to $170 for this higher-level work. In the end, Botkeeper is saving my team about 80% of the time per week we would have spent doing the bookkeeping for new clients. I am also now using the Botkeeper Scoping Tool to make sure I am scoping out proposals correctly, even for non-Botkeeper clients. You simply initiate the tool and pick which client you want to scope from QBO, and it does the majority of the work for you. It saves me at least 30 minutes per client!”
Botkeeper is now taking care of the timely cash and accrual basis accounting JHR performed for their clients.
“The Botkeeper team is very responsive and consistent,” Evan said. “They have been great to work with! No one is 100% consistent, and I feel you are very lucky to get 80% consistency, but I would probably put Botkeeper north of 90%. I actually don't remember the last time I said anything to my Growth Partner Kori that something went wrong. I mean, it's been at least a few months, but when something is wrong or something unexpected happens, it is Kori who addresses it with me first. Kori has us down at this point.”
“In addition to staying on top of the day-to-day transactions as they're coming in from the banks, Botkeeper is also performing the accounts payable side of things,” Evan said.
“We have two clients who are on a cash basis, so as they receive cash, it needs to get categorized based on what line of business it relates to. The JHR team has been forwarding the remittance docs and original bills that show the line of business directly to Botkeeper. Botkeeper then categorizes these 100’s of receipts for us! For our accrual clients, we forward the actual remittance information as we receive paper checks to Botkeeper. Botkeeper then figures out where to apply the deposits. They are doing AP, AR, and bank reconciliations of categorizations. And then at the end of the month, Botkeeper is closing and reconciling the books, doing some journal entries, payroll reconciliation, and payroll categorization. This takes a big load off our plate, and we get our clients closed by Botkeeper in 10 calendar days, and then it takes us just two to three business days to finalize the close and present to our client!”
Botkeeper has empowered JHR to shift its bookkeeping business model from a traditional bookkeeping strategy to an outsourced finance department.
“Having Botkeeper has allowed my staff to move away from supporting our clients with their traditional bookkeeping work,” Evan said. “We no longer spend the first two weeks of the month closing the books, taking time away from CFO and controller services we want to be focusing on. This has allowed us to focus that time we have been given back by Botkeeper onto other things such as payroll, dealing with vendors, answering client questions, and operations. We get to stay on top of things and truly be an outsourced finance department for our clients.”
Time Savings & Consistent Results
JHR leveraged Bill.com with Botkeeper and saw a savings of 20 hours per month on accounts payable on just their first five clients.
“All our QBO and Xero clients are being put on Bill.com,” Evan said. “What I am seeing is that my controllers will spend some time doing the bill processing initially, but after a couple of weeks, Botkeeper is onboarded, and then they are fully taking care of the transactions. My controllers have their time back and are focusing on adding value in other areas. On the AP side, after the first couple of weeks of us learning the ropes, things just start flowing with the Botkeeper team in there. We are processing the initial intake of invoices, checking to see if there's already been a duplicate, and Botkeeper handles the rest. We are saving 20 hours per month on accounts payable alone for five clients.”
JHR’s partnership with Botkeeper has brought responsiveness and consistency.
“The Botkeeper team is very responsive and consistent,” Evan said. “They have been great to work with! No one is 100% consistent, and I feel you are very lucky to get 80% consistency, but I would probably put Botkeeper north of 90%. I actually don't remember the last time I said anything to my Growth Partner Kori that something went wrong. I mean, it's been at least a few months, but when something is wrong or something unexpected happens, it is Kori who addresses it with me first. Kori has us down at this point.”
JHR Wants to See Their Client Load Double — With Botkeeper Enabling Growth
JHR is targeting 100% client growth, and Botkeeper is helping them get there.
“With seven clients currently using JHR services, my goal is to double our client base to 15 by the end of 2022,” Evan said. “I want to continue to onboard our clients who need bookkeeping services onto Botkeeper. As of now, I plan to bring at least two more clients onto Botkeeper this year. Botkeeper is helping me do so with this awesome Accounting Partner Ecosystem landing page they set up for my firm. I have already received four leads from it!”
What does future staffing look like for JHR? There’s no definitive answer, but you can bet there will be zero bookkeepers.
“As we grow our client base, I am also hoping to bring our staff from 2.5 to five,” Evan said. “The ideal scenario would be me as CFO, a financial analyst to do projections and forecasting, two controllers to do the blocking and tackling day-to-day for our clients, and then one staff person. This staff person in most firms would be a bookkeeper, but this person’s position would be to grow into a controller. I don’t need a bookkeeper now that I have Botkeeper. They are eliminating my need to bring on three bookkeepers, a savings of $180,000 in salaries per year! I am so glad to have found Botkeeper.”
