CASE STUDY
MBE CPAs Uses PracticeERP + NetSuite to Support Its Growing Practice
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Growing CPA firm ditches its legacy systems and spreadsheets
In favor of a cloud enterprise resource planning system that’s tailor-made for the accounting industry. “The legacy software companies have not innovated their ERP systems, and none have developed good dashboarding. I can’t think of any software program that I use that boils it down to a dashboard. I’d get a bunch of Excel reports weekly that I had to manage from.”
Addressing Key Industry Challenges
Finding the Answer in PracticeERP + NetSuite
Fixing Key Pain Points
“The pain point on every CPA firm’s mind right now is rapid law change,” said Tim Moy, CPA, Managing Partner of MBE CPAs, a professional accounting firm with multiple offices in Wisconsin.
Today’s CPA firms need innovative dashboards, reporting capabilities, and customer relationship management (CRM) tools in order to boost sales performance, improve productivity, generate accurate reports, and reduce IT costs. As their client bases expand and as the complexities of financial accounting grow, these inefficiencies can take a major toll on a firm’s bottom line.
“With PracticeERP in place, the platform’s dashboards are knocking the socks on the practice management side of our business.” Tim Moy
Some of the laws that are currently going through the regulatory approval process, for example, include rules that will be retroactive to January 2020. “That changes the rules backward by over 15 months,” said Moy.
Managing those changes won’t be easy for CPA firms whose technology and workflows are stuck in the dark ages.
How PracticeERP helped MBE CPA
Addressing Key Industry Challenges
“That manager then went through it and marked up the PDF, and we’d retain a summary on a spreadsheet.”
Because they have no collateral on their accounts receivables, firms like MBE CPAs also grapple with aging A/R that extends past typical thresholds. In fact, Moy said it’s fairly common for 20%-35% of open invoices to extend out over 90 days.
Finding the Answer in PracticeERP + NetSuite
PracticeERP was developed by NetSuite Partner goVirtualOce for CPA firms that are grappling with too many spreadsheets, manual processes, and disparate systems. It extends NetSuite functionality to help companies boost sales, enhance productivity, access better information, and reduce their IT costs.
By delivering a complete software suite for accounting firms, PracticeERP helps companies connect the dots across CRM, client services, workflow/task management, time/expense tracking, work in progress, billing automation, accounting, financial and business intelligence. The solution also includes a dashboard that CPA firms’ clients can use to view accounts receivable
and print customer statements, pay invoices online, and submit customer support questions.
Moy was also looking forward to leveraging PracticeERP’s real-time reporting capabilities
and the ability to filter and drill down into data that’s historically been stored on Excel spreadsheets. “Every Monday, we run a bunch of reports, distribute them and then use them to report on individual performance,” said Moy. “It’s nice to be able to share that data in real-time so that our associates are ‘living’ it every day versus waiting for a report.”
Moy sees MBE CPAs’ new ERP system breaking down some of the operational silos across his company’s multiple locations. Time, billing, forecasting, and practice management are four areas he’s particularly interested in improving.
Fixing Key Pain Points
“PracticeERP has fixed this pain point,” said Moy, “while also helping us create more accurate forecasts and projections based on real-time data.”
