Top Tools for Starting a Tax Advisory Practice | Episode 2

0:00 Hey, if today is your first day or you just started your own accounting business or you're thinking about going out on your own and starting one, I'm going to give you some tools today that are going to help you get started on day one. You're going to spend no money. And then I'm also going to share the top five tools that you are going to have to pay for that I would definitely recommend if you want to start an advisory practice in 2026.

0:35 >> >> So, the first one out of the gate I'm going to recommend is Stripe. Now, I know nobody wants to set up Stripe. Nobody wants to pay those three and a half% credit card processing fees, whatever, right? But if you show up to your first conversation, like let's say you have a client that wants to have a meeting with you today or tomorrow. I mean, what are you going to offer them? Do you have an offer? Do you have a link for them to pay you? What I definitely recommend is getting paid up front. I mean, that's a whole another episode of talking about it. But yeah, you want to get paid up front and you want to have some kind of payment link ready to go.

1:13 So, if you're not set up with, you know, I'm going to tell you all about my favorite proposal software later in this same episode, but if you don't have anything set up, go ahead and set up a Stripe account because you're going to want to be able to create a payment link and get paid. Whether you got to eat the 3 and 12% on the first client while you get other things set up, go ahead and set up a Stripe account. And it's going to also be something that you have that you just could use in the future.

1:39 There's no monthly fee if you sign up for Stripe. And of course, you do pay the 3 and 12% credit card fees. They don't really have a way of letting you pass that on to clients. But if this was day one and maybe you have, you know, if it's the morning and you've got a client call later and you want to be able to say, "Hey, look, this is what I want to offer you. It's the assessment to get started. It's the assessment so I could start the process. It's a one-time fee."

2:05 Or if you want to jump straight into here's what I charge on a monthly basis, you're going to want to have that payment link ready. So, go ahead and set up a Stripe account. Get that set up right away just so you have it in your back pocket in case you need it. And just like I said, stay tuned because you're going to get the best proposal software out there that does let you get all those features. That's number one.

2:25 Number two, you got to set up a QuickBooks Pro Advisor account. Now, do you want to stick with QuickBooks? Do you want to start exploring out the new AI ledgers like Digits or, you know, any of those others? Or are you a zero firm? you know, whatever your thinking is, Sage, Fresh Books, you're going to meet a client along the way that has QuickBooks, or you're going to meet a client that says, "Hey, I need QuickBooks." And what better way to say than, "Hey, let's start with just adding me to your QuickBooks." I mean, you're going to need to have a QuickBooks accountant profile. So, whether you end up staying there, whether that's your I mean, I'm a QuickBooks Pro Advisor. been using QuickBooks for so long, desktop, online, you know, it's it's I'm in the QuickBooks ecosystem. So, if you're going to sign up, today's your first day. Sign up for a Pro Advisor account.

3:15 It's free and it's something that you can now there's two things that this is going to help you in your conversation with your client. One, if you meet that first client and they never set up QuickBooks, you could say, "Hey, don't worry. I'm a pro advisor. I'll get you a discount." So, that's one thing that you could say that sounds good to that business owner or whoever you're meeting. And the other thing is if they have QuickBooks, say, "Great, I'm going to send you the link so you can just watch how you're going to add me. This is my email address. This is how you're going to invite me. Go ahead and add me to your QuickBook as your accountant so I could take a look." Either way, whether that's, you know, that's the conversation you're having on day one, it's something that you're going to want to have. And like I said, if you are going to end up going down one of those other routes of zero digits or one of the others, you're going to need to get into QuickBooks and pull that information. And this is something that, like I said, it's free. So, it cost you nothing, but it also shows that you at least have a QuickBooks account. Which leads to number three recommendation for something that's going to be free for you is setting up a Gusto Payroll Partner Program accountant profile. Now, Gusto is, you know, that's my go-to.

4:25 Whenever a client, I meet a client, they need to run payroll, they need to do 1099s, I'm sending them to Gusto. I'm sending them the link or I'm helping them get signed up right there on the call because Gusto though, not only will they do your firm's payroll, you know, optional if you, you know, need to do 941s and W2s, but they will also let you refer clients to their portal, you know, to Gusto payroll and they'll give you a bonus for signing up. So, you can create a link that you send to your client that says, "Hey, you need payroll." And instead of just sending you off into this wilderness to go figure it out, I'm going to send you a link where not only is it going to help you walk through the process, but you're going to be able to add me to your account so I could kind of help you through the process of getting signed up and set up. And they're going to get $100 when they sign up. So, they get some kind of bonus, but you could get even bigger bonuses. I mean, the other day I got $1,000 for a client that signed up for Gusto a few months ago. So, I mean, you can go with ADP, you could go with paychecks.

5:28 There's other options out there. It may not be where your client stays forever, but it does help to have something ready to go, which I recommend gusto payroll because, you know, think about where we are so far. You met a client and let's say that they're that business owner that never did their books. They just started their business and just started going straight into business. Now, they know that they need to get on setup with you. You've got your payment link all ready to go to charge them with Stripe.

5:56 You've got QuickBooks Online Pro Advisor account. So, you could get them a discount. You could pass the billing over to them. You could get into their books. That's the number one thing is you're in there. You know, you have access. You could create the reports, the financials, etc. You could do the books. Gusto payroll because if they're going to need, you know, if they're an escorp and they need to have payroll, if they have 1099 clients, I don't do 1099s for any of my clients. I tell them they need to get on a platform. If they're over here zelling people non-stop, I don't do that. So, I don't do 1099s for clients. They have to have their own 1099 processing company and they have to have their own W2 processing company.

6:35 Now, I doesn't mean that I just send them off into the wilderness. Here's where I recommend. Go ahead and sign up with Gusto. The single plan, I think, is like $55 a month for one escorp W2. And it's something you want to let people know that this is not something that I am charging you. This is something that Gusto is charging you. So for me, I don't eat the fees and then pass them along because with platforms like Gusto and QuickBooks, if the prices ever increase, I don't want to have to have that conversation with the client that like, hey, your fee is going up $6 a month because, you know, Gusto raised the price or QuickBooks raised the price. What I like to do is let QuickBooks have that conversation with the client. let Gusto have that conversation with the client. And it's like Netflix, like when your Netflix goes up in price, like they send you a notice and you either cancel it or you keep it going. Now, clients aren't going to cancel when they see that QuickBooks raised their price a few bucks or Gusto is going up five bucks a month. They're going to maybe they'll talk to you about it, but you know, I just don't want that to be a part of our conversations. But in day one, when you're meeting a new client, you're getting them set up, you want to make sure that they have some kind of solution for a ledger where they're doing their payroll and where they're connecting all those things together. One thing I also really like about Gusto and QuickBooks Online, and of course, you could do it with Zero and with the other payroll companies, but you can, and I've done it so many times that I'm good at it, right? So, I know how to set it up so that once you run the first payroll, this is another tip for Gusto and QuickBooks and just getting that first new client. When you set somebody up with Gusto, yes, you're sending them the invite. You're sending them the here's the $100 gift for signing up, but the key to that is you're telling them, "Hey, we're going to run a template. We're going to run a test payroll for $10. We're going to make sure that the taxes are going where they need to go. We're going to make sure that the direct deposit that goes from your business account to your personal checking account. We're going to set up that whole thing, that whole automation and make sure things are going in the right direction. And I'm going to go through that first one with you before we set up the autopilot. How does that sound? Clients are going to love that. I mean, clients are going to say, "Hey, great. You know, let's I got the alert. I got the email from Gusto."

8:53 They feel like you are, you know, handholding them through that first process. And then you're going to, like I said, set them up on some kind of either weekly paycheck, monthly paycheck, quarterly, whatever you're doing with Gusto. So they have all those cool features where you could do like autopilot. Really love that. And the biggest takeaway from this is that, you know, these are not the tools you're going to use forever. You're not signing up to be in the ecosystem forever, but these are free. So you know, if you start your practice today, even if you're on something else, I would still have a Stripe account. I mean, I still have a Stripe account, but I use other things. I still have QuickBooks, a ProAdvisor, and I'm exploring some of the other, you know, AI Ledger software platforms for certain clients. I put my books on some of those and seeing how great they are. I use Gusto. I mean, you don't have to use Gusto. You could go ADP, you could go paychecks, you could go with the local payroll processing company, like whatever. But you're going to want to have these things ready for that client that it fits them better because there's certain situations where yeah, it's better for you to go with this company because they do workers comp, they do better 401ks, they do different type of features. So, but if you're meeting that client that just needs to get set up, they're not interested in all those extra things, they just want to get compliant, these are the ones you're going to want to take. Now, number four free tool that is going to be free if you want to set it up is Canva. Now, you may have heard of Canva. If not, it's, you know, for any other accountants that are used to using PowerPoint, Canva is just a more, you know, it works really nice on a on a screen. It It's great for presentations.

10:29 It's great for creating slides. If you're doing your sales conversations and you're not, you know, and you're basically doing a presentation to a client, you want to be able to have the same one that you could just go in and make a quick edit to. And I really like Canva. You could do it on the phone. You could do it on your iPad, on your computer. And when I'm in front of clients, and I can't tell you how many times I've used Canva to close deals, to do proposals, to to tell clients that, hey, I took your unique situation.

11:01 I've analyzed what we're going to do, and here's how I see the next, you know, here's the short-term recommendation. Here's the here's the ongoing continuity offer. Tell me your thoughts. I mean, I do my three tier sometimes in Canva before we get to the actual proposal software. I mean, there's so many things you could do in Canva. And there's a free version. So, the last tool that I'm going to recommend that's a free tool is Loom. Now, you can set up Loom. Of course, there's paid versions of all of these things, but you could set up Loom for free and you could get less than five minute Loom videos and you can do 25 of those a month. So my idea if you're starting out and you're doing some of that, you know, you're looking to get some free things ready, get a Loom account, start doing some procedures that are happen within your business. You know, like when somebody signs up, there's nothing better than sending them a welcome email with a little 3minut Loom video. Hey, I'm glad you signed up. Glad you took that first step so we could get started. Here's what's to come next. People love that. I love that when software vendors do it for me. They say, "Hey, we're glad you signed up. Here's the ne here's the next steps and here's a loom video of the owner maybe saying,"Hey, thanks for signing up." That personal touch goes a long way and it's something that's going to help you build that relationship with your client. Clients like to see that you have as an accountant some systems in place. Don't forget that. So, so we just talked about the five free tools.

12:30 I'm going to give you a bonus number six. So, but first, Stripe. Get that Stripe payment link ready for your first call. Set up the free account. Get Stripe ready. Get QuickBooks Pro Advisor because you're going to need it for a client that already has QuickBooks to add you in. Even if you want to pull that data off of QuickBooks, you're going to need to get in there. Or if you're going to meet that client that says, "Hey, I'm ready to sign up for QuickBooks." And you're you're going to just get them a discount. Gusto payroll so you have somewhere to send people. I don't recommend doing any payroll. I used to do this myself when I used to start when I started my practice. I was doing 941s. I was doing W2s. I was doing 1099s. I was doing a little bit of everything. And I realized this is not fun and it's not adding any value. And I'm actually not doing it as good as Gusto is going to do it for the client.

13:19 So Gusto, set up an accountant profile. You'll get all kind of benefits and features. Canva is the next one. Number four, that's free. Canva has a free account. start throwing in some proposals, start getting familiar with the the interface so that when you're in front of a client, you could just do the full screen and walk them through it. I mean, it's very impressive when you show people stuff on an iPad and it looks good. And number five free tool is Loom.

13:45 So, if you pair Canva and Loom together, you it's a Loom video, you walking through a Canva presentation, that goes a long way. I've closed some really good clients sending them a Loom video. Gusto and QuickBooks, those connect together, too. So, if you could set up that connection, get your client on autopilot with that, that goes a long way. And of course, Stripe was our number one. Now, number six, which is my bonus, is 10 key. I built 10 key because I wanted something that I just couldn't find anywhere else. As accountants, we carry years of knowledge in our minds, but sometimes what's crystal clear to us isn't so clear to our clients. And that's why I built Tanki. It's the advisory platform built by an accountant for accountants. It's designed for instant advisory. It helps you perform live calculations, create easy to understand visuals, and it brings clarity to complex situations because the best advisors don't just overexlain the numbers. They show them and they use that to help people make more confident decisions. So, if you're ready to level up from compliance to advisory, check out Tenkey, you know, named after the 10 key calculator. So, Tenkey is the advisory platform for accountants that are looking to go from compliance to advisory. And if it's your first day and you haven't signed up for anything yet, you know, you're going to have some work to do. Of course, you're going to have to set up your email. You're going to have to set up your website, your domain, and all those other things you're going to think about. But what I want you to start thinking about is the type of engagements you want to have with your clients. Do you want to have clients that are just coming to you for compliance or do you want to have clients that enjoy spending time with you and you enjoy spending time with them because that's where the value gets created. You can't create too much value just doing compliance and just doing running one of those businesses where it's very season, you know, tax season heavy. But that does build trust and that trust is something you can leverage when you're selling advisory services.

15:48 So 10 key there's a couple of free tools. We of course have a paid plan where it includes more features, access to the community, access to our weekly meetups to ask me questions. But if you're an accountant and you're looking to level up from being a compliance to doing advisory as well and shift to doing more advisory than compliance, then I want you to sign up for 10 because it's the one app that I built myself for accountants like myself. I built it because I said, "Hey, I want something that whether it goes big or not, it's something I'll still use myself." So, when I have these conversations with clients and they come up, hey, I'm thinking about doing this real estate transaction. Should I rent my house or should I sell it? What's the exclusion? The home sale exclusion. Or I have this property. It's got a big built-in gain, but I'm thinking of getting rid of it. Somebody wants to buy it. I want to get into something else.

16:40 Can you map out a 1031 exchange for me? What about short-term rental loophole? I mean, that's like so many times people will bring that up. How does that work? And you could spin your wheels trying to come up with the best presentation or you could live model it right in front of your clients. And also when clients are talking about setting up trust and estate planning and you know passing down their biggest asset sometimes is their primary house to their kids and you want to show them the the value of taking care of that wealth transfer the right way. Those are just four of the tools. We have many more, but those are just four of the real estate specific tax strategy tools that we have built into 10 key. So, if you are an accountant trying to go from compliance to advisory, I'm going to give you the next I'm going to give you in the next episode. I'm going to give you my fi favorite. Well, you know what? I'm going to give it to you right now and then we'll go into depth about them in the next. But I told you to sign up for Stripe, right? If you're going to really get set up into a proposal software that is the best of the best, then you're going to go to Ankor. So, set up Ankor.

17:43 Ankor is going to be great for proposals, and we'll talk more about that in the next episode. You're going to also want to sign up for Tax Dome. So, I use Tax Dome. There's other ones out there. It's it's what you call practice management client portal. My clients love using Tax Dome. The app works really well. It's very userfriendly, very client friendly. And there's other ones out there. There's Financial Sense, you know, and I have friends that work at these other companies, too. So, it's not that I'm just, you know, I'm not sponsored by Tax Dome in any way. I'm definitely an ambassador. I tell people to go to Tax Dome because I have a lot of other templates I could share with other accountants if you're in Tax Dome. So, if any of you are in Tax Dome, you know, you could go to the marketplace and download some of my stuff there for free, workflows, templates, etc. But practice management is important. So, you're going to need So, what do we say there? we need. So, Ankor Proposals, Tax Dome client portal, IRS solutions is another one that I signed up for this year and it's been great. They have this cool feature called advanced notice monitoring. And if you're an accountant and you're an EA or CPA and you have that, you know, whole set and you're doing tax services, IRS solutions is amazing. I mean, it's the way that it works with your marketing is great and the way that it actually delivers is amazing. the reports it create it generates. Reason I really love it is I met the guy. It was built by an accountant for accountants and that's just one of the you know I'm just going to I'll expand on IRS solutions a lot more. So that's number three. Blue J is going to be number four. If you haven't heard that I love Blue J. I mean I don't know where I love using Blue J. There's other tools out there. There's Tax GPT.

19:22 There's Code Counsel and I haven't tried those other ones. So, I don't want you to think that because I'm doing this podcast that I'm all of a sudden going to demo every single app that's out there. But, I will tell you that if it's not working and doing what I need it to do, I'm going to start looking for others. And when I signed up for Blue J, it did what I needed it to do the same day. And it's been doing it every day since. So, like Blue J is just a great AI tax research tool. And if you're doing tax prep, if you're doing tax strategy, if you're doing tax resolution, if you're doing tax research, it's a great platform for that. I've actually created a lot of the tools that I've built for 10 key using Blue J. It would start with a research memo of a tax topic or a tax subject because we all know that there's the rule, there's the exception to the rule, and then there's the exception to the exception. So, if you sign up for 10 key and you see some of the logic behind some of those tools, you're going to see that that all all that was factored in.

20:20 And a lot of those started with a Blue Jay conversation. So, Blue Jay's number four. If I had to start my accounting practice from scratch, I'm going to need Ankor number one. I'm going to need Tax Dome. Number two, I'm going to need IRS solutions. Number three, I'm going to need Blue J number four. And number five I'm going to recommend is ping assistant. Now is that important? Is that like not going to get you paid? I mean the thing is when you're having these advisory conversations with clients, they're going to want a detailed recap. They're going to want it to be customized and you're going to want to be presenting your solutions in a way that is very tailored to your client and not what they call AI slop.

21:03 Now when I get a meeting recap from let's say I won't say which one but you know the others there's granola fathom and fireflies right those are not accountant specific so when I say certain things it doesn't know the context it's not filtering it down I kind of have to take that data put a prompt in chat GBT and then paste it's too much work already ping assistant will send you hey here's the recap here's a detailed version here's an executive version here's a summary here's a one click button and you could download the whole video, download the whole trans transcript. So, you could still take that data, go into your other AI and, you know, play around with it and get stuff out of it. But I really like that every they're always adding new features and they're very accountant specific. It's not a meeting assistant that's for just any and everybody. So, when you tell clients that, hey, I'm going to be recording the meeting. I hope that's okay with you. If not, let me know. I'll exit it out. I never have clients that say, "No, don't record it."

22:03 Because what we're talking about, it's only going to be enhanced if we can go back and remember. I mean, we talk about so much with clients in a 30 minute conversation. Somebody could unload their whole year to you and their whole life. You know, where what happened with that tax return that we got to file, what's happening right now in my life, and where I plan on going. I mean, I could have that conversation with somebody in 30 minutes or an hour, right? And how am I going to remember every single thing without having to sit down and take notes? I don't sit there and take bunch of notes. Maybe I'll jot down a word or something like that, but I know that when my ping assistant is in the meeting that great notes are being taken and I could go somewhere and get access to the recording. If I need to find a certain part where I mentioned the next steps or hey, this is what I recommend for you. I could just go in the transcript, search for the word recommend, and it takes me right to that part of the meeting. So having a dedicated AI meeting transcript meeting recorder that's for accountants specifically. There's ping, there's vinyl, and there's abacor. So I haven't tried those other ones. I've been using ping. I like ping. Ping is working just fine. So I'm not going to try the other ones. Just like blue j. Blue j's working great. So I'm not trying the other ones.

23:16 I I do have a busy life. So I'm not doing this all day, you know, testing out different platforms and stuff like that. Just like tax. I've heard great things about carbon. I've heard great things about Financial Sense. Like I said, I got a friend that works at Financial Sense. he's going to show it to me. I'm going to check it out. But I'm not going to I'm not leaving Tax Dome. All my clients are in Tax Dome.

23:36 When I made that decision to move people over to Tax Dome and I walked everybody over that year here, download the app. Here's the link. Isn't it cool? Go in there. You see all your files. They're all organized and neat. Clients are like, "Oh yeah, this is great." Now I'm sending clients chat messages. I'm sending them file requests. It all happens in tax dome. So like I said, the way I think about things, my philosophy is client experience over software features. I do want the latest and greatest software features, but if it's not something that is going to make an actual change or level up the way that my client views this experience, it's just not worth me investing the time in learning or trying to, you know, navigate or making a shift over. So, hey, thanks for hanging out with me. If you like this episode, you're probably going to like everything else we've got going on. Check out the links below.

24:28 Give Tenkey a try, hit subscribe, and come back next week. We've got plenty more to talk about.