If you were offered "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," just how far would you go to secure the bag?
For Brian, that dream job was an offer from the Super Bowl. And accepting that at a time when he had no streamlined operational efficiency, would ultimately result in leveraging his own home to cover operating expenses.
Challenge
Brian Taylor, Owner-CTO of Phoenix IT Solutions, will tell you, an MSP is "not like a factory or a store that sells X, Y, and Z widgets, it's exceptionally dynamic" with unique business needs.
So naturally, when an MSP doesn't have the right financial systems in place, they're bound for "bloody painful" cash flow management.
In 2001, the same year as his company's conception, Brian was desktop accounting paired with an old PSA, which didn't allow for billing at the time; Brian had to "dump" data into Excel/CSV files before manually running it in his desktop accounting package, a process he recalls as having caused "lots of mistakes."
Almost fifteen years later, Brian moved to ConnectWise PSA [Manage], where he was able to run billing through his desktop accounting package, but that didn't mean it was smooth sailing just yet.
Instead, "things weren't billing correctly, customers were getting very upset," and Brian found himself returning to his "biggest" nightmare of them all: Manual invoicing, because he simply "couldn't trust the system and it took a lot of time."
Solution
When the Super Bowl approached Brian in 2014 with "a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity," a half-a-million-dollar job, he was simply "terrified." It was a job that would require up to $100K worth of equipment and at the time, leveraging his home through a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) looked like the only solution.
Determined to rewrite the future of his company, and to prevent ever falling into the same dreadful situation again, Brian was introduced to Enzo Garza, CEO-Founder of Accountingprose, and in turn, discovered the solution stack that would forever change the game.
In 2018, under the advise of our expert industry partner, Phoenix IT implemented the solution stack ConnectWise PSA, Xero, Wise-Sync, and WisePay -
What was once "a very painful process" has since become a "straightforward" and easy-to-follow series of steps, which sees Phoenix IT complete all of their invoicing and billing in less than an hour each fortnight.
Results
- Cost-savings of $47,850/year
- Increased productivity by up to 90%
- Invoicing and billing now takes less than one hour each fortnight
- Strategic decisions made "within minutes" based on real-time financial reporting
- "A game-changer."
Feature Quote
"We make many daily strategic decisions that have allowed our company to stay ahead of our competitors, and strike while the iron's hot. It's made a big difference. We don't write off squat anymore!
And I can tell you, our billing; the reminders are set, receivables, an aging report... we have a very different process now to what we had before."
The Journey
For more than 20 years now, Phoenix IT Solutions has been a leading provider of managed IT services, delivering cost-effective solutions to businesses across Arizona, USA.
In 2001, the same year as his company's conception, Brian was desktop accounting paired with an old PSA, which didn't allow for billing at the time; Brian had to "dump" data into Excel or CSV files before manually running it in his desktop accounting package, a process he recalls as having caused "lots of mistakes."
"It was a nightmare, let's just put it this way... very, very labor-intensive.
We typically work 12-16 hours a day, so the only time that I had a quiet headspace was the evening and of course, I would stay up until midnight just to get it done - very painful."
When using ConnectWise and a desktop accounting package, Brian would execute this manual process every two to three weeks: Export each employee / contractor timesheet in excel format, manually manipulate then import each sheet into the desktop accounting package, and manually generate invoices within the desktop accounting package based on the billable time.
For the second part of this recurring process, Brian would then manually add a service ticket number along with a brief description of the service, batch the invoices, and finally, send them to customers.
This heavily manual process cost Brian more time, money, and energy than he could afford. Brian was expending a minimum of 18-20 hours each month on manual billing and invoicing alone, where 2-4 hours would be spent on research; hunting for answers to customer queries.
With no ability to take credit card payments (as often requested by his clients), sync invoicing, billing or those outstanding between ConnectWise and his desktop accounting package, Brian was suffering from consistently unmatched balances between platforms, constant billing errors, and being unable to produce an accurate accounts receivable aging report. Here, Phoenix IT were typically 45-60 days behind on billing clients for their services.
"I scrambled just to get all of the equipment (nearly $100k worth) - the company's cash flow wasn't up to that much. I leveraged a HELOC (Home Equity Line of Credit) on our house to actually make sure we got the Super Bowl deal."
Brian describes himself as being "fairly astute at accounting," yet even with his accounting knowledge and a solid team, attaining financial efficiency "just seemed like an insurmountable objective," until the day it all changed: Brian met Enzo.
In late 2018, Brian was introduced to Enzo Garza, the CEO-Founder of leading bookkeeping, payroll and advisory services provider, Accountingprose, a proud advocate of Xero. As Brian recalls, it was during their induction that Enzo was beyond belief that Phoenix IT had two versions of their books. After Enzo walked Brian through how it all worked, they commenced what would soon become, a new beginning for Brian -
Brian explains, "it was a brutal project," which took Accountingprose up to three months to reconcile all of his records into a single version, at the same time as switching them over from their desktop accounting package to the online cloud accounting platform Xero. From this point, Enzo's team "were taking care of all of it" from income statements to balance sheets, to building Brian a customized dashboard in Xero with instant, remote access to his numbers.
" From the financial aspect, I have become so much more comfortable with "Yeah, let's do that!" I mean, we just did one of our largest deals to date in January, and we had to come up with $83,000 worth of operating with cash to buy some equipment and everything else, and I went, "Yeah, no problem, let's do it!"
And the scary thing about that is, we did that all with our operating (not even with our reserved earnings, which is something we never had before) - never had reserved earnings before, and now we do; and we've got a quarter of a million dollars in the reserve -
To me, it's life-changing, because it allowed me to profit-share this year, whereas I always want to reward our people, those are some of the things that we have never done before just because it's not that I didn't want to, but I was always wondering, once I got paid, I was like, I wonder how much is in there. I never knew how much was in there, and right now, it's huge.
I can't express that enough... the changes."
Further from immense time and cost-savings comes Brian's newfound capability to achieve the one task integral to the longevity of his business; Brian's now able to make strategic decisions "within minutes" based on the up-to-the-minute financial reports he can see; a far stretch from previously having to wait weeks just to gain "some sort of financial picture."
The solution stack of ConnectWise PSA, Xero, Wise-Sync, and WisePay, supported by the unwavering guidance of Accountingprose, has enabled the financial automation of Phoenix IT's finances, where Brian revels in accurate and flexible billing, greatly reduced outstanding balances, astoundingly improved cashflow management, and a drastic reduction in customer queries (now that billing's correct and up-to-date).
"We make many daily strategic decisions that allowed our company to stay ahead of our competitors and strike while the iron is hot.
I now have no issue providing financial statements to clients, vendors, banks, creditors, etc."
View the entire interview here featuring exclusive commentary from Xero Strategic Partnerships Manager, Brooks Arbogast, on the future of TSPs.
