How SafeSend helped GSA, LLP cut hours without cutting quality or client trust

Introduction

Gray, Salt & Associates, LLP (GSA) & Strategic Business Advisors is a full-service accounting firm licensed in California. They offer a broad range of services for business owners, executives, and independent professionals. The firm’s professional staff are members of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and the California Society of Certified Public Accountants (CalCPA).

Challenge: Clunky wasn’t cutting it

“We had been using our tax software’s deliverable for eSigning and it was clunky at best. The process for our clients wasn’t smooth,” said GSA Managing Partner Dalton Sweaney. “We had to click through a number of things to try to figure out where each individual client was in the signing process. There was no filtering we could do. We felt like we were spending a lot of time to get simple data.”

One of GSA’s promises to clients is to provide services and products that are always of exceptional quality and meet the highest of professional standards. To elevate the client experience and save time on the firm side, Sweaney said the firm began searching for a solution. “SafeSend has been on our radar,” he said, mentioning seeing SafeSend at a conference prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. “We weren’t able to make it work and we weren’t willing to change our tax software at that time.

“We attended the AICPA Engage Conference post-COVID-19 when it was in person again and SafeSend worked with our tax software.” After seeing some of the improvements and a quick demo, “It was a pretty easy sell for us at that point,” he said.

Solution: Fast, straightforward implementation

The firm found a solution in SafeSend that improved its processes. Sweaney said, “Our goal was reducing our hours so that our quality increased. We didn’t want to throw Band-Aids on things to get jobs over the line, but to have capacity to think critically and have a higher-quality product that we’re delivering to our clients. We were able to do that with SafeSend Organizers, SafeSend Secure File Transfer, and SafeSend Tax Returns. The three of those were fantastic.”

Implementing new software can be a time-consuming affair. SafeSend is a cloud-based automation solution that doesn’t require a lengthy implementation timetable or rollout schedule. There is nothing to install on workstations. There’s no large upfront software investment normally associated with traditional tax software implementation or costs involved in obtaining multiple licenses.

Outcomes: Firm-wide workload reduction

The efficiency of SafeSend and SafeSend Tax Returns helped GSA reduce work hours for the entire staff. “We got to the point where nobody worked over 55 hours in our office,” Sweaney said. “Our partners worked about 55 hours and the rest of our staff was under 50 hours, which is incredible.”

Implementing the automation solutions also increased the firm’s quality. “The quality of our products went up because now we have a higher-level person — me as a partner — being able to do some of that work instead of trying to fill gaps with a manager or senior,” he explained.

Providing a smooth and pleasant experience for their clients to review, fill, sign and pay is easy with SafeSend. “Our clients — I’d say 95% of them — have been really, really happy with SafeSend,” said Sweaney. Both the firm side and the client side have benefited from the ability of clients being able to go back into SafeSend and get whatever they need, such as vouchers.