Issue #51 - Do More With Less (Like, For Real)
Four firm owners who have figured out balance
Welcome to “Get Work Done,” where we discuss the complexities of efficiently running accounting and bookkeeping firms. This newsletter is brought to you by Financial Cents and delivered to your inbox every 2 weeks.
Small Change, Big Results
To be flexible, you’ve gotta have structure. It might sound like an oxymoron, but it’s actually a cardinal rule of firm leadership—one that we tackled in the final session of our Proudly Small webinar series:
Running Lean and Loving It: Operations, Tech, & the Art of Doing More with Less
Four successful firm owners who’ve made flexibility a reality for themselves and their teams sat down with Shahram Zarshenas, CEO of Financial Cents, to talk through how they did it. For them, “flexible” does not mean “loosey-goosey” (the exact opposite, actually).
None of these firm owners work less because they’re winging it. They work less (or work weird hours, or take random Tuesday afternoons off) because they’ve built a strong foundation of delegation, documentation, and automation that makes balance possible:
Christine Salvatore of In Line Management logs in at 5 a.m. some days so she can be present for her kids in the afternoon, and her team handles 85% of client-facing work because she’s gotten ruthless about handing things off.
Katie Helle of Scaled Accounting Solutions caps her own hours at 40 a week, even during tax season, because she built the necessary systems on day one instead of “eventually.”
Angela Jenkins leverages AI thoughtfully to extract processes out of her own head and make them replicable for her team at Mindfull Money Matters.
Dave Kersting of Capovario makes workflow documentation a team sport to ensure instructions are clear enough for anyone to follow, at any given time, with any client.
And those examples are just the tip of the iceberg. So, if summer is your systems-building season (and we’d argue that it should be), this session recap is basically free consulting. A few things you’ll walk away with:
Why hiring before you can technically afford it is sometimes the smartest financial move you’ll make
How to build a tiered delegation system based on client risk
The one process almost every panelist wishes they’d automated from day one
A blunt reminder that “protecting your time” is a viable business strategy, not a luxury
Ready to unleash your firm’s efficiency? Peep the panel recap (or watch the full recording) below!
Community 🫶
Snag your copy of the Modern Firm Growth Guide
If your firm feels scattered, overwhelming, or just harder to run than it should be, this one’s for you. Justine Lackey built one of the first virtual bookkeeping firms in the U.S., grew it to 100+ premium clients, and sold it in 2023—and she’s packed 88 of her best tips into a free guide covering the four essentials of firm growth: Systems, Sales, Service, and Skills. It’s a solid roadmap if you’re trying to get organized, serve clients better, and start leading like a CEO instead of doing everything yourself.
Join Roundtable Labs for a free monthly workflow discussion
Looking for people who actually get it? Roundtable Labs is a community where accountants, bookkeepers, CPAs, EAs, and firm owners all sit at the same virtual table—literally, in a round table format built for real conversation, not another webinar you half-watch. Find the round table that fits your firm and your stage of growth. While you’re there, check out the Next Level Firm Roundtable with Dave Kersting and Richard Roppa-Roberts, a free, lively monthly discussion on workflow, strategy, and best practices for running your firm with Financial Cents—held every third Wednesday, 11:00 AM–12:30 PM Pacific.
H🔥t Today
Consolidation at the top keeps rolling, even while small firms lean into staying small
Top-15 firm EisnerAmper just announced its fourth combination of 2026, adding Silicon Valley restructuring firm Sherwood Partners to its roster. It’s the latest data point in a bigger trend: while giant firms keep rolling up specialty practices, plenty of owners are proving there’s real staying power—and real client loyalty—in remaining independent.
The burnout epidemic in middle management
A new piece from Boomer Consulting’s Jacqueline Lombardo digs into why middle managers at accounting firms are burning out and walking away: leaders keep piling more clients and initiatives onto the people who handle it best, mistaking their silence for capacity. Sound familiar? For a small firm, “middle manager” might just be your most senior team member—the one you keep leaning on because they never say no. Worth a gut check before they throw in the towel with no warning.
Swipe this workflow template
Swipe this Extended Office Closure Template from Peter Piluk
Get more templates from firm owners like you in our community template library.
Meme
Relatable? 😆
Firm Spotl💡ght
How Katie Helle built Scaled Accounting Solutions to run without her
Katie Helle spent 15 years in a traditional public accounting firm before realizing she’d had enough of measuring her life in billable increments. So in October 2024, she launched Scaled Accounting Solutions—and got hit almost immediately with a wave of referrals far bigger than the slow ramp-up she’d expected.
Rather than white-knuckle her way through it, she spent the next few months building her workflows from scratch inside Financial Cents and documenting every step so her small team—two contractors based in the Philippines and her niece, who handles admin locally in Arizona—could operate without waiting on her. These days, she hasn’t worked more than 40 hours in a single week, even during tax season, and you can regularly find her at a Pilates class in the middle of a random weekday afternoon.
Check out Katie’s full story in Two Cents Magazine →
Events
📍 NATP Taxposium — July 13–15 (Cleveland, OH)
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame city, meet tax nerds. NATP’s in-person conference brings tax pros together for sessions on AI workflows for small firms, multi-entity tax planning, and high-income client strategy (plus CPE credit and a full expo hall of tools built for tax practices).
📍 Summer Workflow Camp: The Workflow Reset — Tuesday, July 14 (Virtual, 2:00–3:00 PM ET)
Bookkeeper and cloud accounting leader Kellie Parks walks through a real before-and-after of how she personally rebuilt her own firm’s workflows; then, you’ll build or update one live workflow of your own during the session, mapped to real gaps in your firm. It’s part of Financial Cents’ free, four-week Summer Workflow Camp, and yes, there are prizes on the table (including a $2,500 team retreat fund for the winning cabin).
📍 Tech Stack Demo Day — Thursday, July 16 (Virtual, 11:00 AM–3:00 PM ET)
The only thing you should be tending on vacation is the campfire, not your firm. Tech Stack Demo Day rounds up five live software walkthroughs from tools built to keep your accounting firm productive and profitable while you’re OOO. Plus, real customers from each vendor will share how they assembled a tech stack that lets them truly unplug. Seats are capped at 500, and there are attendee-only savings and prize drawings worth over $5,000 up for grabs!
📍 Summer Workflow Camp: Out of Office Ready — Tuesday, July 21 (Virtual, 2:00–3:00 PM ET)
Alisa McCabe of First Steps Financial reveals the checklist you need before you can truly disconnect, running through the delegation structure, second-in-command setup, and client communication approach that will keep things humming along while you’re away. Complete the OOO checklist live and walk away with the full Out of Office template bundle.
Noteworthy
Get the no-hype scoop on AI in Accounting with our new video series
Our brand-new video series digs into real, practical ways accounting firm owners and staff are using AI right now—offering easy-to-digest overviews of agentic AI, email prompts that save real time, automatic transaction categorization, and where machine learning fits into your existing tech stack. If you’ve been AI-curious but are feeling a bit overwhelmed by all the noise, this is a good, low-commitment place to start.
That’s all for now. See you in two weeks. 💚