Conscious Accounting helps businesses increase their financial consciousness by removing the complexity from the numbers and helping their leaders feel financially confident, supported, and informed.

Before adopting Ignition, founder Rebecca Driscoll says it was awkward chasing down clients for late payments.

“As a woman, I feel very insecure when it comes to saying, ‘Okay, this is how much you have to pay me’ and ‘Hey, you haven't paid me yet,’” says Rebecca.

Before Ignition, Conscious Accounting charged clients on completion. Sometimes for a tax return, they’d chase the clients for months to sign the tax return, then send an invoice with net 30 payment terms, and have to wait for payment which was still often late. 

It was chaos.

Rebecca says, “It could be a year leading up to sending the invoice if they file an extension. And then net 30. And then I’m just hoping they’ll pay without having to send lots of reminders. And then I'd start the reminder process. So my accounts receivable was crazy.”

Conscious Accounting’s previous proposal creation process was daunting, time-consuming, and prone to errors. It took between one and two hours to create one proposal since there was no standardized process.

“I used to go open up Adobe and take a PDF that I would edit and then try to find all of the info that pertained to the client before and delete it and then enter the new client's business name and then go,” says Rebecca. 

“I even used other proposal software like PandaDoc at one point, and it was so manual, you could create templates, but then everything would kind of be different for the next one. It was really just editing a PDF.”

The tedious and time-consuming task of creating a proposal was a genuine barrier to taking on new clients, knowing that the proposal creation process and the back-and-forth with the client would take her away from servicing her existing clients.

Ignition helped Rebecca and her team improve profitability, unlock efficiency gains, and take better control of billing and cash flow. 

What Rebecca loves the most about Ignition since adopting it back in 2021, is that she doesn’t have to have awkward conversations with clients anymore. She also doesn’t spend time chasing down signatures and payments.

She says, “The big thing for me has been it's more of an emotional, psychological benefit of Ignition. It is the confidence in collecting payment... It's been a game changer for me.” 

With automated payment collection, Conscious Accounting’s accounts receivable is down to zero.

Rebecca and her team are no longer billing 100% on completion. Ignition helps them to collect a deposit upfront and invoice the balance upon completion of the work.

On top of that, Ignition has helped her enforce her boundaries and gain more confidence in her value and pricing.

“Ignition helped me hold the boundary. I am worth this value. You should respect me. I’m going to do a really good job but you have to pay me for my time and it has to be fair.”

Before rolling it out, she thought she’d receive a lot of pushback from her clients if she asked for a deposit before doing the work. But her experience has been different, in fact she didn’t have a single objection.

And her clients also enjoy the benefits of Ignition. “It’s a breeze for clients. On both ends, it saves a lot of time,” Rebecca says. 

She also says this about providing clients various payment options, “I love being able to give clients the option to pay with credit card while surcharging.”

She goes on to add, “I couldn’t imagine having accounts receivable that I need to keep track of at this point in my life. We need to get paid for the work we do. We need to get paid upfront. End of story.” 

Conscious Accounting now sends proposals to its clients just minutes after the introductory call. They have managed to bring the proposal time down from 1-2 hours to 10 minutes, so proposal creation and the admin associated is no longer a bottleneck for growing the client base.

Sending proposals with clear scope also helps Conscious Accounting set the expectation that all work is going to be billed. Changes to scope are managed with a new proposal or Instant Bill before work is started, mitigating unpaid work and creating a positive client experience. 

Conscious Accounting’s communication is now streamlined since they can send a customer a video giving more context on the proposal or pricing. If the customer has more questions, they don’t have to jump onto another call to answer their questions or explain the next steps.

“If I do a video tour of the proposal and embed that into the proposal, then there's no need for a discussion or a call about the proposal, even if they're surprised by the price or something. I can explain and predict what their questions are going to be and put it in a video so that they have what they need without more back and forth.”