Dillion Business Advisors (DBA) is a firm that helps overworked business owners take better control of their financials by empowering them to be proactive rather than reactive with their books. 

Before adopting Ignition, Marcus Dillon, CPA and President, and his team had an engagement letter process fraught with inconsistencies and disconnected systems. Everything from getting signatures to collecting payment information took a lot of work. 

"We had people signing engagement letters in Adobe with different signature items. Then we would also require an ACH [automated clearing house] or a credit card authorization as part of that engagement letter," Marcus says. 

According to Marcus, the workflow was fragmented and highly inefficient. So, rather than immediately hitting the ground running to provide value to clients, the firm spent considerable time and resources managing the administrative overhead.

The firm also struggled with maintaining consistency and accuracy across all documents. This made renewals tricky and anxiety-inducing because it meant that a team member would need to manually update a client's engagement letter and go through the entire process of resending it. 

"It was such a disconnected system,” he says. “We had language in some engagement letters that was outdated, and it was super-stressful as an owner because you just build up the worst-case scenarios in your mind and delay renewal for as long as you can. We couldn't have verification that we were using the same engagement letter from client to client given their package offering."

During this time, DBA was also transitioning from a traditional accounting practice to a more comprehensive client advisory service (CAS) model to open new revenue streams and unlock year-round revenue. The firm recognized the challenges of converting existing clients to the new model and addressing evolving team dynamics. To facilitate this shift, Marcus and his team needed to look to new technologies and processes. 

Switching to Ignition in 2022 revolutionized operations for DBA. Because Ignition's platform enables Marcus and the team to create, sign, and manage all engagement letters from one place, the entire process has become more cohesive and less time-consuming. 

Plus, clients can submit their payment details with the engagement letter, so there's no need to send separate ACH or credit card forms. This provides clients with a more seamless payment experience and eliminates AR headaches.

"Having it all in one really helped streamline the whole process,” says Marcus. 

“We also had less than $1,000 in AR at the end of 2023 after making the switch to Ignition.”

Ignition also enabled DBA to implement evergreen engagement letters, so updates and renewals are implemented seamlessly. 

"We've moved to evergreen engagement letters, where we're not sending a renewal once a year. We have language in that engagement letter, where if the price needs to increase given scope or anything else, we can push through a price increase," Marcus says.

"If they need to change their banking or credit card payment information, we can push that to them. But we're not getting a new signed engagement letter every time."

Additionally, having everything in Ignition gave the team more visibility into the status of each engagement letter, so tracking and management became more transparent.

“We could also see when people had viewed it and where they signed it from to make sure that it was actually them. All of that information helped move us into the 21st century."

DBA also now benefits from a much more streamlined workflow thanks to Ignition's integration with QuickBooks Online (QBO). This allowed Marcus and his team to seamlessly send accounting info to QBO, reducing manual data entry and reconciliation. 

All in all, Ignition saves DBA an average of 25 minutes per client engagement letter.

"Before Ignition, the process would be up to 30 minutes per client, and we probably had 150 different engagement letters going out,” Marcus says. “Now we do about five minutes per item, so you're saving 25 minutes per client."

Ignition also played a pivotal role in helping DBA with its expansion into CAS.

The firm was able to leverage the platform to more easily transition from once-a-year tax season revenue to generating consistent, year-round income through its advisory services.

What’s more, Ignition enabled DBA to implement its own innovative three-tiered pricing system, offering Essential, Premier, and Elite core packages for CAS. "We accept clients only in one of those offerings now,” says Marcus. This strategic approach has streamlined the firm’s service offerings and significantly boosted its revenue generation capabilities.