Dan Murch is the Co-Owner of Blue Collar Back Office, a firm that provides on-demand administrative and financial services to construction companies and other traditionally “blue-collar” businesses.
Dan’s ideal client wears many hats, and so does he. He’s a family man who has run his own construction business since 2008.
“Our ideal client is an owner who wears every hat: the owner, the bookkeeper, the office manager, the salesperson, etc.
So, we come in and fill a need by allowing the owner to focus more on their business instead of being in their business”
Dan’s Problem: Tedious Consolidated Reporting
Before Dan found LiveFlow, he dealt with problems that many financial professionals working in QuickBooks Online deal with, creating robust reporting that’s helpful to clients without spending dozens of hours per month in spreadsheets.
While QuickBooks Online is a flexible platform for small businesses, it can be pretty cumbersome for anyone who wants to analyze that data and get a concrete picture of their or their client’s business health—no pun intended.
In particular, Dan was working with one construction firm that was elbow-deep in large projects and needed to keep track of their budgets and cash flow.
Before LiveFlow, that was a serious chore.
“I was downloading 17 different reports from QuickBooks Online, moving them into an Excel spreadsheet with different tabs and my own formulas and calculations to create a recap for them.
It took me at least 45 minutes to an hour every week to build these packets for them that I could present in our meetings. I couldn't do it too far in advance because if I did it on a Wednesday for a Friday meeting, well, whatever happens on Thursday was not represented in that packet.”
Enter LiveFlow
At QuickBooks Connect 2022, Dan met some of the LiveFlow team and was immediately impressed by the product and its potential for his business.
After a speedy and painless onboarding, Dan quickly took advantage of the platform’s ability to pull live QuickBooks Online data into spreadsheet dashboards built from LiveFlow’s library of financial reporting templates.
He got to work customizing our project profitability template for his construction clients before exploring cash flow tracking and projection templates.
Dan even worked with the LiveFlow team to create a custom financial model for consolidating a multiple-location restaurant client.
“I worked with the LiveFlow team, specifically Alisha, who is amazing. I gave her the vision of what I was looking for, and she built it. It's awesome and a valuable tool for our client and us.”
From project profitability to consolidated reporting and Cash Flow, Dan found that LiveFlow could help him do it all.
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Results
Beyond saving Dan and his team hours per week on their reporting work, he was amazed to find that LiveFlow was a big value add regarding customer perception of his firm’s work.
Remember that construction company Dan customized our project profitability template for? They loved it.
“The comment we received was, ‘I've been running a business for 20 years, and I have never had this level of access to information. I know where my business is today, I know what it is going to look like over the next few weeks, and it allows me to make informed decisions.”
That client has since recommended Dan to at least 4 other construction companies.
What about the restaurant client for whom Dan built a custom consolidated report with the help of LiveFlow’s team? They love being able to understand their business financials at a glance and have been sending business Dan’s way, too.
As an enterprising business owner, Dan understands the power that word of mouth can have.
“[Referrals] are the best thing that I could possibly ask for as a business owner.”
Now a LiveFlow Superfan
When asked if he would recommend LiveFlow to other financial professionals, Dan was quick with an emphatic yes.
“Absolutely! I would recommend LiveFlow to almost anybody doing bookkeeping, fractional CFO work, or anything along those lines.
It's just such an added value to your clients and you're saving time in your work week.”
How Can You Be Like Dan?
If you’re bogged down with your manual reporting flow and want to wow your clients like Dan did, we would love to show you around the LiveFlow platform.
In just 30 minutes, you can find out exactly what value the LiveFlow platform can bring to your business and how much time you can free up in your week.
Let’s talk!
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