Auxilia Accounting
Auxilia Accounting has grown ~17% annually over the past three years. This success is linked to their use of technology, specifically SmartVault.
“Our tax prep has grown progressively year over year,” Christa Skoupy, CPA and the firm’s founder said. “I can honestly say that we’ve seen this growth because our operations are very streamlined. We are so much more efficient now that we use SmartVault.”
Prior to using SmartVault, Christa emailed encrypted PDFs to clients, which she acknowledged wasn’t an efficient process. “Sometimes we had to email a client numerous times because they would lose the email or forget to download a document. It really became time-consuming. We needed to organize our processes.”
Learning about the power of technology.
In 2013, she attended a CPE course where the facilitator talked about streamlining processes with client portals and online document exchange in SmartVault. She was immediately interested, knowing that she wanted to streamline her workflow too. After researching SmartVault, Christa decided to implement the system for her firm.
She found the system incredibly intuitive for both her firm and her clients. “It’s so easy,” she said. “The majority of our clients were on board right away.”
The next big step was to implement SmartVault’s Connected Desktop, which she said has further improved processes and helped to streamline overall operations.
“I can go into our tax software [ProSeries] and pull the info into Connected Desktop so that everything I need is there. SmartVault knows what kind of engagement it is and populates it with all the proper folders. It’s so helpful,” Christa said.
Further streamlining workflows with e-signatures.
Christa was excited to bring integrated e-signatures into her SmartVault workflow. The third-party solution she was previously using didn’t integrate with SmartVault, which added extra steps to her process.
When asked what she’s looking forward to the most with integrated e-signatures, Christa shared: “It will save me the three extra steps it takes me to get a signed document into the system. Over the course of a year, this will add up to big time savings. I’m always looking for ways to further streamline processes.”
Gaining efficiency and increasing organization equals time and money savings.
Christa says SmartVault brings many benefits to her firm, including efficiency, organization, and value. “We see great gains in efficiency internally, but I’m most pleased with the time-savings in client communications,” she said.
SmartVault has also helped the firm organize their files in a way that makes more sense. “The level of organization we’ve been able to put in place is great,” she shared. “The file structure is intuitive, so we can easily locate files at any time.”
And, she appreciates how SmartVault allows her firm to offer the same level of support as larger firms. “[SmartVault] is reasonably priced, which allows a smaller practice [like mine] to offer the same level of service as a big firm.”
When asked what else she appreciates, she commended SmartVault commitment to consistently updating the product with helpful, time-saving features. She also finds the training options valuable. And, in those times of need, she stated with great confidence, “SmartVault has so many options that you can always easily find support when you need it.”
