Little Fish Accounting, a boutique CPA firm providing creatives, coaches, consultants, and professional service providers with accounting and tax support, faced significant challenges with its client engagement process, primarily due to the disjointed and manual systems in place. 

“From the beginning, we had a CRM [client relationship management system] of sorts … we were creating a proposal, creating the engagement letter, and sending an invoice. But I wanted that to be more seamless,” says Keila Hill-Trawick, Little Fish’s Founder and CEO.

 “I didn't want this back and forth, where the client would sign the proposal and then get another email saying, ‘Okay, now that you’ve signed your proposal, click this link and go into your contract,’ and then another email for the engagement letter, and another email for the invoice! I wanted it to be a more seamless integration.” 

This fragmented approach not only delayed Little Fish’s delivery of services, but also consumed valuable administrative time. 

Another significant hurdle for Little Fish was the lack of a streamlined system to define and customize the services the firm was offering in client proposals. The process of tailoring services to each client's needs was manual and repetitive. Each client interaction required a custom proposal, which the team would assemble by piecing together relevant services – a method that was both labor-intensive and prone to errors and inconsistencies. 

“We had gotten to a point where we just had all of the services listed, and my admin would go in and delete the ones that didn't apply to you,” says Keila. “It was annoying.” 

Changes to services or pricing were particularly challenging, as they required updates across various documents and systems, further complicating the admin process. “If we changed something, it didn't change everywhere … so that was really frustrating,” says Keila.  

This inefficiency led to inconsistencies in client communications and increased the administrative burden on the staff, detracting from the firm’s productivity and quality of service.

Keila learned about Ignition at Xerocon in 2022. Initially, she was reluctant to spend money on a new technology. “I felt like what we had wasn’t great, but it wasn’t terrible,” she says. “I don’t need to pay more. But I went back and told my admin about it, and she said: ‘Get it!’”

“She said to me, ‘We need this to be faster. It's taking me a lot of time, which also means that clients are getting their information later.’” 

As an example, say Keila would take a client call at 2pm. It would take her admin so long to set up the proposal and the automations that the client wouldn't get it until the next day. “She told me: ‘If we had something that was faster, I could send it to them as soon as you get off the phone,’” says Keila. Ignition was the answer – that faster something. 

Another area Ignition helped was that it made it easier for Little Fish to customize the client experience. “I love video,” says Keila. “Not everybody does, but I do. And we love deliverables. 

Because, Keila says, Little Fish is big on branding. “We really like things to look nice. It's a spa-like experience. We want all of our clients to feel like VIPs. From the beginning, I want you to feel like you're walking into something that feels comfortable for you, and Ignition did something that other platforms didn't – it allowed us to really play with personalization, to give you a deliverable or a guide to how our services work.”

Ignition also answered Little Fish’s challenge of having multiple places within its tech stack that would need updating if the team changed anything, such as a price. With its integrations, templates, service library, and three-tiered pricing packages, Ignition made it simple for the firm to say, “These are the services we're providing, and this is how much they cost." 

With the proposals, Ignition has also helped Little Fish have its conversations differently. “Because I know how the proposal is going to go out, I can be much more direct about exactly what you're getting and what that looks like in the call, because that's repeated by the time you get there,” says Keila. “So I think it's also made our discovery calls a bit shorter. They used to be 30 minutes to an hour, and they're 15 to 20 minutes now.” 

Ignition also helped Little Fish get its buffet of just-pick-anything-from-here services in better order by enabling the firm to group its services into distinct packages. 

“For example, it's much easier to say that this package includes bookkeeping and financial statements but not tax, and this one includes bookkeeping, financial statements, and tax, than it is to say, ‘Tell me what you want, and I’ll just add them one at a time. Now we just ask, ‘Which package do you want?’” 

Plus, Ignition still gives Little Fish the ability to include add-ons should the client require additional services. 

Since switching to Ignition at the start of 2023, Little Fish Accounting has seen some real financial gains as well. The platform has contributed to the firm generating about $1 million in revenue and 30% bump in its year-on-year earnings. Moving to smarter tech hasn’t just streamlined Little Fish and saved time – it’s boosted the firm’s bottom line, too.