The Baco Tech Story
CPAs and their client have been hamstrung for years. Many people would likely not describe it as such, citing that it is just the “way things are” or “part of the job.” The truth is the things that hamstring this relationship are simply not sustainable; clients consistently end up frustrated and confused – wondering how they could be so unaware of such necessary info like their tax projections. For CPAs, their job consists of gathering previous-years data, cleaning up issues, and filling out forms – all in a compressed timeline.
Roughly 55% of people who take the CPA exam, fail the CPA exam. Less than half who take it pass. What’s disappointing is that most of those who pass, won’t finish their career in public accounting. Why? Because the job they do is too demanding, and it’s not the job they thought they signed up for. The entire profession spends more time being a form filler and data gatherer, than helping clients make better financial decisions for their businesses.
This is our story. Baco Tech was created out of a CPA firm that was hamstrung by these same things. Frustrated and confused clients, exhausted and overworked CPAs. Our Founder, Ford Baker, felt the physical effects of his profession as well. In 2012 he weighed over 400 pounds and spent little time working on his own health because he was working with clients constantly. He set out to change. He lost weight, exercised, ate better, and he realized his company, and the whole CPA industry, was unhealthy – overweight – consuming unhealthy habits and not doing the things that would exercise their expertise.
He wanted to help his company and the industry get healthy. Around this same time, in 2014, Ford’s firm was working with a client with a large amount of entities' and QuickBooks files that needed to be consolidated. Ford began developing a tool, in Excel, that gathered all the entities data and help him create consolidated financials and income reports to deliver in a matter of hours rather than days.
He began to figure out how to use this tool for Tax Returns and leverage the functionality to provide a better service for his clients. In 2019, he hired a developer, and Baco Tech was officially born. Now a full-fledged Tech Startup, Baco Tech has spent the last year working with our alpha firm to prove what the tool can provide the industry and its clients.
Our Alpha Firm, BaCo Group, has seen a significant reduction in hours in busy season. They are actually able to work on client’s books in real time, as the transactions and expenses occur. They are working on the 2020 tax returns in 2020. When COVID struck, the firm was able to pause the work on returns and switch their focus into helping clients fill out SBA applications and deliver the necessary information to them in a matter of minutes.
For the clients of Baco Group, they now have a better and more trusted relationship with their CPA because they are able to help them understand the implications of their financial decision in real time, and course correct where needed. All in all, the CPAs can help their clients run a better business.
How does this work? Baco Tech speaks accounting. It’s able to gather the raw data out of a client’s books in real time and deliver it in a format that the CPA wants to see it. In turn, the CPA can deliver tools back to the client that help them run a better, smarter business.
It takes the tedious time out of the relationship - the data gathering, the file clean up, the multiple logins and passwords – it takes those things and automates them in one place, and lets the CPAs and their clients focus on what’s important: running a better business and living a more balanced life.