Lisa Prunty is a self confessed financial data nerd with a passion for quality accounting services to support solopreneurs and small businesses. Unfortunately, running her accounting firm in Bozeman, Montana had become a nightmare.

Her staff couldn’t seem to complete month end close for clients. They’d get partway and a new month would come and they’d still not be done. Work kept rolling forward and things weren’t improving with training, either.

But the biggest problem was the calculation errors. When Lisa would check numbers the night before a client meeting, she’d find mistakes and would have to redo the work through the night.

“I couldn't trust that any of the work was correct and that put a lot more work on my shoulders. I had egg on my face if I didn't catch an error before the client did.”

There was also a lack of feedback and innovation from her team. Her staff didn’t want to adapt to changing business processes, but wouldn’t provide ideas on how to improve processes either.

As a business owner, Lisa wanted to stay out of the day-to-day work to focus on high level tasks and needed feedback from her team that she wasn’t getting.

Burned out and frustrated

Lisa found herself working 12 to 18 hours a day and pulling all-nighters to fix mistakes. “There were many, many times where I just wanted to say, ‘that's it. I'm out. I quit. How quickly can I offboard everyone?’ I was ready to just say enough,” she says.

Her physical and mental health was suffering and she wasn’t able to take a break or do what she most loved - get out into nature to rest and restore herself.

“I was at the point where I was like - if I don't do something different, I'm literally going to die at my desk. Just from the stress and not having time to take care of my health, not having time to eat or exercise.”

Turning to TeamUp

Lisa had heard about hiring Filipino accountants before, but saw offshore staff service providers as ”these giant, faceless companies,” which didn't feel right to her.

She wanted a more personal approach to hiring offshore, and was scared she was going to be charged a monthly fee but the staff wouldn’t be up to scratch.

Eventually, she came across TeamUp, which she chose for our personalized approach. Through us, she brought on two new book keepers, Anne and Ray.

“I wanted that personal approach to hiring offshore.”

The turnaround for her accounting firm

Lisa says bringing Anne and Ray on board has changed everything.

“My role as a business owner has transitioned from doing to reviewing. The critical piece my business was missing was the right people, and it’s just made all the difference.”

Her clients receive their financial statements on time every month, the work is correct and she doesn’t need to scrutinise or redo any of it.

“I know that I don't have to go back and look at every single transaction in order to have confidence in the quality of the work, which saves me a tremendous amount of time,” she says.

Anne and Ray work autonomously, and take the initiative to do research to fix any problems they encounter.

“On some of the things they've come to me in the last probably month to six weeks. I didn't ask them to go research it, but they said, ‘Hey, I did this research and here's a possible solution.’ It just makes my heart happy.”

Lisa says they speak directly to her clients, which is contrary to the belief that offshore staff shouldn’t liaise directly with clients. Her clients just love how responsive her team is, and Lisa has totally turned around her business and her state of mind.

Ultimately, it’ allowed her to go from a 7-day week to working 5 days a week, and says she’ll probably get down to a 4-day week soon.

“Before it was just me and I was a big bottleneck, and now clients can go directly to my team to get their answers. I feel like we're finally moving towards the vision of how my team would function and how the business would function.”