Tom’s #1 reason for moving from Practice CS to Qount?

"We wanted everything in one place."

Before Qount, the firm’s team members were hopping back and forth between different apps. If they needed data to transfer from one place to another, they had to roll up their sleeves for manual export and import. Now, everything is gathered in one interface. Qount's modules talk to each other natively, so there's no more manual data transfer. By working out of one integrated platform, AC has cut down on needless complexity and menial admin tasks. Accountants can move through their task lists faster and focus on skilled work.

"Prior to Qount, we were using three different programs for all our monthly recurring billing," Gina explains. "It would take me eight hours to do first-of-the-month billing every month. Horrible!"

It's no wonder. Previously, Gina had to add up the firm's time spent in dollars, calculate incurred expenses, subtract the difference, and issue an invoice—client by client, hundreds of times! Now, Qount's Auto-Close feature does it all for her. Time-tracking and billing are done within Qount's unified platform, so it has all the data it needs to pull hours, dollars, and expenses. It even keeps track of any credits that were issued to the client or any retainers they've paid. Auto-Close automatically generates the end-of-month invoices and sends them to Gina for approval. All she needs to do is review and approve.

"And then it just all goes through," Gina says. "It just does everything automatically. It's pretty great. And it connects to QuickBooks Online!"

"The e-signature process is real slick," Gina grins.

Before Qount, Robert Morris was using SafeSend. Gina insists the firm liked working with SafeSend, but...

"But we had a lot of clients that would fail the KBAs on the 1040s, and have issues with the signature," she admits. "That was down quite a bit with Qount this year."

Qount's e-signature feature lets clients sign engagement letters, tax documents, and proposals via browser or mobile app. It includes automated reminders to nudge clients, and a dashboard where the firm can track unsigned documents. Successful signatures can trigger workflow automations, like invoice generation, payment collection, or task creation. An audit trail ensures regulatory compliance, and yes, there's multi-signer support.

"The clients have been very receptive to it. Positive about it as well."

"So the SMS capabilities in Qount were big," Gina declares.

Whether it's SMS, email, or portal messages, Qount consolidates all communications into the client profile. This makes it easy to see the complete conversation without checking multiple channels. Qount also supports mass SMS sends and automated SMS reminders for things like payments, signatures, and renewals.

"It's all in there and we can see it; everybody can see it," Gina says. "We know who has worked on what and where it stopped. All the conversation that's transpired."

We asked Gina whether Qount's encrypted portal messaging would replace email as the firm's go-to channel for client comms. After all, it's more secure.

"Yeah, we're doing our best to move away from email. Obviously, it's a hard habit to break," she says. Clients, for their part, seem to have caught onto the ease of reaching out through the portal. "Throughout tax season, they'll just message us within Qount, and we can live message them right back."

"We got rid of three programs so far because we can do it all in Qount," Gina says, referencing Onvio, SafeSend, and ShareFile. Later she adds, "We were using CPACharge for our credit card transactions. But Qount has their own. They use Nelnet, and they also integrate with Stripe now. So that's another thing we got rid of!"

Okay, so we count four! How's that looking for Robert Morris' bottom line?

"I would say we're definitely saving money, for sure, because now we have one program," Gina says. "The cost is worth it when you can remove all the stuff that you were also paying for."

And it's not just redundant app subscriptions that are getting the boot.

"We've gotten rid of so many spreadsheets!" Gina says. "We had spreadsheets all over the place to accommodate for what we were lacking, and we've been able to get rid of some of that. The efficiency in our processes have just gotten so much better."