How This 25-Year Firm Saves 3+ Hours Per Client Every Month After Switching from QuickBooks
3
Hours saved per client monthly
98%
Transactions automated
40
New clients without headcount increase
How a 25-year accounting firm serving 7,500+ startups escaped QuickBooks' manual work trap and shifted from data entry to advisory services
Susan Wozena, CPA and Director of Bookkeeping at Accountalent, looked at the January report and saw the problem crystallized in a single number: 1,200 Stripe transactions for one client in one month.
In QuickBooks, this meant a significant amount of manual work—pulling transaction lists, scrubbing data line by line, separating deferred revenue, creating manual journal entries, attaching spreadsheets to explain the totals. "To sort through and reconcile that many transactions in QuickBooks would have been a nightmare," Susan recalls.
But in Puzzle? "It just does it."
This moment highlighted what Accountalent's leadership already knew: their 25-year-old firm, serving thousands of venture-backed startups, had hit a ceiling. QuickBooks wasn't just inefficient—it was actively preventing them from scaling.
The numbers were stark. Even with rules configured in QuickBooks, 85% of transactions still require manual review for Accountalent.
"You can set up rules in QuickBooks, but you have to set up a lot of rules if you want to get to 100% automatic. That's a project in itself," Susan explains. "And the description in the rule has to match the description from the bank exactly. If it says Amazon but the bank says Amazon.com, the rule might not apply."
For subscription businesses using Stripe—a significant portion of their startup clients—the integration problems were even worse. "With QuickBooks, we don't even integrate Stripe transactions," Susan says. The process involved manual spreadsheet work, data sanitization, and journal entries. For high-volume Stripe clients, this added at least an additional hour per month on top of regular bookkeeping work.
Then there was the support problem.
"If you try to contact QuickBooks, you could be waiting days or weeks. Sometimes they don't come back to you at all," - Susan Wozena, CPA, Director of Bookkeeping @ Accountalent
The firm faced a choice: accept the growth ceiling or find a new path forward.
When Puzzle co-founder Sasha Orloff first proposed building a QuickBooks competitor, Accountalent's founders were skeptical. "This guy's crazy," recalls J.R. Faris, Accountalent's CEO.
But the results spoke for themselves. Today, Puzzle processes roughly 98% of transactions automatically.
"I can definitely say that Puzzle blows QuickBooks out of the water in terms of how many transactions we have to touch. I can't imagine QuickBooks ever getting there, even if you have all the best rules in the world." - J.R. Feris, CEO @ Accountalent
The Stripe integration that had been a nightmare? Completely solved. "If we've got people selling subscriptions on Stripe, Puzzle is the absolute only way to go. It integrates properly," Susan confirms. "With Puzzle, it just does it. We can actually integrate, so we've got all that detail in there. It's a huge time savings."
The efficiency gains were concrete and immediate:
Across 40 new clients at an average of 3 hours saved monthly, that's 120 hours per month of capacity freed up—almost the equivalent of needing to hire a new employee.
"You need everything to be as automated as possible. The less input you do, the fewer input errors there will be," Susan explains. "You need repeatable processes."
This broke the linear relationship between revenue and costs that keeps accounting firm margins thin. The automation created the capacity needed to expand their role in working with clients and offer better service.
The most significant transformation wasn't technical—it was strategic.
"The time we save from automation goes straight to advisory services where we're truly adding value.. Now our clients feel like they're paying $300 a month and getting bookkeeping and a fractional CFO." - John Jeanson, CFO @ Accountalent
Susan describes the shift: "Instead of spending time keying things in and reviewing categorizations, we spend more time looking at trends and reviewing other analytics."
The efficiency gains even enabled a service upgrade:
"We're now doing weekly bookkeeping instead of monthly. It keeps everything up to date at all times." - Susan Wozena, CPA, Director of Bookkeeping @ Accountalent
The modern platform became an immediate differentiator when meeting with tech-forward startup founders. "Puzzle is much more tech-focused, where QuickBooks is still stuck in 1989," Susan explains. "And as soon as I told the prospect that part, that was all he needed to hear."
She's direct about the impact: "You look like the hero when you meet with these people."
"When you go to an accounting firm that only offers QuickBooks, clients see you as antiquated. When you offer the latest technology that startup founders are excited about, they've already adopted you in their minds." - John Jeanson, CFO @ Accountalent
The client acceptance rate when Puzzle is recommended: 100%.
"All new clients go to Puzzle now." Susan reports.
Beyond the technology, Accountalent found something impossible with legacy software providers: a genuine partnership.
Support response times tell the story:
"We now have a direct line. We've got a Slack channel with Puzzle, which is amazing. They are replying immediately. I mean, if it takes more than an hour, I would be shocked." -Susan Wozena, CPA, Director of Bookkeeping @ Accountalent
The relationship extends to product development. "I flew to San Francisco and met the actual development team building the software. On what Earth could I ever do that with QuickBooks?" J.R. reflects. "There are real faces to the names, and they genuinely want to work with us."
When issues arise, the response includes both immediate workarounds and long-term product fixes—a level of partnership impossible with QuickBooks.
For J.R., the transformation from initial skepticism to confidence is complete: "There's no doubt in my mind that Puzzle will be successful and will be here years into the future."
His recommendation for other firms:
"Do it. It's a no-brainer. Why stick with a cassette deck when you can have an iPod? Puzzle will continue to grow and improve. There's nothing to lose." - J.R. Feris, CEO @ Accountalent
Discover Puzzle.io - the AI-native ledger built to save you time, enhance accuracy, and turn your financial data into actionable insights.
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