Josh wanted to travel more and work remotely so he began to do tax returns and provide tax advice online. Chad wanted to work from home and spend more time with his family and was implementing online accounting systems for small businesses. Combining tax and technology under one roof was a winning formula and we haven't looked back.
What does LiveCA sell?
A full financial back-office team for less than a price of one full-time hire. Tax planning, tax filing, bookkeeping, payroll, accounts payable and monthly close services from a Canadian CPA firm.
Why LiveCA instead of other online CPA firms?
We tend to be the last firm a company works with before bringing everything in-house. While other online firms are typically cheaper, few have the depth, abilities or experience that we do to keep your stress levels low and get it right the first time.
It's not uncommon for someone to use a cheaper firm, outgrow them and then come back to us. There's no fun in switching CPA firms, so if you're on the fence, we'd love to chat with you so you can see exactly how we'd approach your situation.
Who's your ideal customer?
You'll likely see value in our services if either you're generating over $3M in sales or have runway of at least a year.
More importantly, you believe you're building something meaningful and care about the financial well-being of your company.
Are you licensed and insured?
Yup. We were the first virtual CPA firm licensed in Canada (without an office) and have far more than the minimum amount of insurance required.
02. Process
What's your sales process?
Two Calls:
1 - Discovery - We first schedule a call for you to share your current situation, challenges and ideal outcome. We work through a plan behind the scenes with every department to get to that ideal outcome and then present a price on a follow-up call.
2 - Pricing - On that follow-up call, we can make adjustments to any assumptions and leave with a price for you to consider.
How long does it take?
On average, 3-5 business days.
After your first call (usually within 24-48 hours), you'll have a good idea if we can help you or not along with a general idea of the scope of service we could provide and relative price range. That said, the complete process from the initial discovery call to your pricing call usually takes around 3-5 business days in order to give us a chance to put together a plan for your unique situation.
Why not give a price 15 minutes after meeting me?
Would you want an architect to give you the price of your house in the same timeframe? A lot goes into building a house, similar to constructing viable options for your finance department.
While we can still provide a general price range once we first meet to ensure the time you spend with us is worth while, we put a lot of effort into coming up with a plan that suits your needs and matching it to a price that we think will provide value which is the motivation behind our sales process.
How fast can you start?
We can start 24 hours after accepting the proposal. You'll meet with our onboarding team for a kick-off call who will give you access to all your apps as we work through the systems setup. You'll then meet with your CPA where you'll cover the work schedule in more detail, review the financial workflow, highlight important tax planning points and we'll get to work.
If you're ready to start, feel free to reach out here and our sales team will be in touch right away.
03. Pricing
How much does it cost?
It depends.
It's probably not the answer you'd like to hear because at the very least, you'd like to see a range.
As we work with many organizations of different sizes, prices vary depending on complexity, urgency, size and the services you'll need.
Rather than set pricing expectations that may not match your unique situation, we'd love you to reach out and go through our discovery process. At this point, we'll be able to provide specific prices and options to work within your situation.
Click here to fill out our contact form to start the process and we'll respond right away.
How do I pay you?
Once we agree to a price, a proposal is sent and accepted online. The amount is then withdrawn from your bank account each month on the same day. We use Rotessa to process all direct debits to your account.
04. Support
How do you support us when we never get to see you in person?
Through email and video calls.
How fast can I expect a response?
Same day acknowledgement with either an answer or a timeline of when we'll be able to answer (in case we need to talk to a 3rd party, gather info from the team, chat through an issue, etc).
Most support I receive through email is less than stellar. How is yours different?
We're motivated to fix the issue the first time.
If we give a subpar answer with no clear instructions, it comes right back to us to address again. We learn about your preferences and reply with step-by-step instructions, a video walk-through (usually through Loom) or schedule a call so there's some back and forth.
What makes your support different from other firms?
Coverage. Depth. Abilities. Procedures.
We've been doing this remotely for long enough to realize that without the items noted above, you're usually left to the experiences of a few people at most. Imagine they go on vacation, get sick or don't document their procedures well and you're at the mercy of some very serious constraints.
We have coverage protocols, specialists in almost every area of finance and a ton of talent which is all organized through rigorous procedures so that answers are consistent amongst the team.
Do I have one point of contact?
Yes.
You can contact your manager as your main point of contact.
05. Software
What Canadian accounting software do you use?
Given it has to be online, we work with Xero or QBO.
What about Wave or Freshbooks? Nope. They're still building out features that would allow larger businesses to use them, but for now, it's not something we'd recommend to our ideal customers.
How do we get our documents to you?
Through Receipt Bank. Although we do tack on HubDoc for bank statement and utility bill collection, Receipt Bank is typically the main tool we'll use together.
You'll forward an email to company@receiptbank.me or snap a photo with an app on your phone. No need to file paper afterwards, us and the CRA now have everything we need.
Do you pay for these apps or do I?
We do and we build that into the price. If you ever need to take back the accounts, we'll switch those over to you same-day (not only because we are licensed with CPA Ontario / CPA Canada and have to adhere to their code of conduct of not holding data hostage, but we want to be good people). Reputation means a lot to us.
For any apps that must be paid by you, you'll know about that before signing on with us (ie. payroll and payment apps typically).
What are some other tools you typically use?
Payments - Plooto, FirmaFX, Knightsbridge, TransferWise Reporting - Fathom or Visible.vc Payroll - Wagepoint, Rise, Payworks, ADP, Ceridian & Humi Cashflow Planning - We built our own Consolidations - Fathom & we also built our own to fill in the gaps with certain Fathom issues. Inventory - Finale, Locate or Dear e-Commerce - Shopify, Shopify Plus, WooCommerce, Magento Gateways - Stripe, Paypal, Authorize.net, Monaris, TD Merchant Services, Chase and many more.
While this is not an exhaustive list, we'll cover all the apps you use now (or could use) during the sales process.
