This issue is all about knowing when it’s time for a change: when you’ve outgrown your accountant, why we’re walking away from a system we’ve invested years into, and why so many business owners are rethinking what they want from their businesses.
Unsolicited Business Advice
Answers to real questions about bookkeeping, taxes, and running a small business.
When Should You Upgrade Your Accountant?
There’s something business owners often overlook. As your business grows, your accounting needs to grow with it.
We understand this intuitively with almost every other part of a business. The software that worked when you were making $200,000 might not work when you’re making $2 million. You hire more experienced employees and contractors. You upgrade your systems. You invest more in areas of the business where the stakes have gotten higher. Accounting is no different.
You might have a great budget accountant who was perfect when your business was smaller and less complicated, but as you make more money, there’s simply more to lose. Your taxes become more important. Your financial decisions have bigger consequences. And you need an accountant who regularly works with businesses at your size and understands what to look out for.
Growing businesses need accountants who communicate well, proactively follow up, and have a point of view about how things should be done. They need someone who knows what the next step is even when the business owner doesn’t.
Building a successful business can create tremendous financial freedom, but it also comes with additional financial responsibilities. The time to take your accounting more seriously isn’t after your books become a mess or you fall behind on your taxes. It’s when your business has grown enough that you have something meaningful to protect AND grow.
Under the Hood
What we’re building, learning, and improving behind the scenes at Evolved Finance.
Sometimes the Right Decision Changes
About four years ago, we made a major investment in Salesforce to manage our internal workflows. At the time, it was absolutely the right decision. We couldn’t find an accounting-specific platform that gave us the flexibility we needed, so Salesforce allowed us to build it ourselves. We created custom workflows, automations, systems for tracking client work, and ways to securely manage client information. It was expensive and took a lot of work, but what we built was significantly better than what we’d had before.
Then things changed. Accounting practice management software got better. Evolved Finance changed as well. We added tax preparation and tax planning, and we’re even adding a business advising service soon as well.
We started using a platform called TaxDome to manage our tax clients. What we discovered was that it gave us much of the flexibility we wanted without requiring us to invent everything from scratch. More importantly, our accountants and clients loved working in it.
So we eventually had to ask ourselves a difficult question: If we were choosing our software today, would we still choose Salesforce? The answer was no.
That can be surprisingly hard to admit when you’ve spent thousands of hours and dollars on that system. But that’s the sunk cost fallacy at work. What we’ve already invested shouldn’t determine what we invest in next.
So we’re now working toward moving our entire firm to TaxDome, including our bookkeeping clients, with the goal of completing the transition by the end of Spring, 2027. The further we get into the project, the more confident we are that it’s the right decision.
Salesforce wasn’t a mistake. It was exactly what Evolved Finance needed four years ago. We just don’t need to keep making the same decision forever simply because it was the right decision then.
The Pulse
Shared insights and learnings from my conversations with clients.
Business Owners Are Ready for Something Different
I’ve had several interesting conversations with clients over the last few weeks, and two themes keep coming up. Business owners are looking for new opportunities and they’re looking for simpler businesses.
At first, those might sound like two different things. I’m starting to think they’re connected.
Technology is changing. Markets are changing. Some of the strategies and business models that worked extremely well over the last decade aren’t necessarily going to work the same way over the next decade. Business owners are recognizing that and asking themselves what comes next.
These clients are also recognizing what they want from their businesses is changing too. We’ve worked with some of our clients for five or ten years. In that time, their priorities have changed as their personal lives have changed. Because of that, some of them simply don’t want the same businesses anymore.
We’re seeing owners simplify their teams, offerings, or business models so they can spend more time doing the work they want to do, make more space for family and friends, or even just for the sake of their mental health. I think that’s perfectly reasonable.
My role as an advisor isn’t to tell someone they should maximize revenue, build a bigger team, or keep growing for the sake of growth. It’s to help them understand the financial implications of the business they actually want.
If simplifying means less revenue, what does that mean for profit? If you’re pursuing a new opportunity, how much can you afford to invest? If you want a smaller team, what does the business need to generate for the numbers to work? Once you understand the math, you can make those decisions intentionally.
Whether you’re changing accountants, changing software, or changing the business itself, the same lesson applies: Don’t let what you’ve already built dictate what you build next.
If any of this resonates with you and you’d like to experience what working with a relation-based accounting firm could look like, reach out and let’s talk!
