In this case study we feature Michael Alliman who is the founder of Alliman Business Group, a real estate agent bookkeeping and financial management firm.
He has a really interesting background to share, and since using LiveFlow he’s managed to save two working days a month!
Welcome Michael! Tell us a little bit about your background
I graduated in accounting and went to the University of Tennessee to complete a masters degree in tax with the dream of being an academic professor. I was always good with numbers but after a few years at PwC I realized I didn’t want to work in public accounting, so I joined a distribution company and worked in logistics.
Things were going great and I was offered a role in sales which was a completely new experience that taught me a lot about the importance of communication and problem solving. I was promoted and became the national sales director with clients as big as Disney.
That’s quite the journey! How did you start the Alliman Business Group?
I moved around after leaving that company and eventually ended up buying 50% of a HR firm which really levelled up my management skills. I ended up selling my shares to start a niche, real estate bookkeeping firm in 2018.
Alliman Business Group is a bookkeeping and financial management firm which specializes in supporting real estate agents with bookkeeping, financial management and HR consulting.
How do you start your day?
I wake up at 4:45am and I make sure I exercise for around an hour finishing at 6am. I take 45 minutes to myself and jump into meetings with my partners at 6:45 to 7:45.
I meditate for 15 minutes and start my working day at 8am going through emails and setting up priorities for the day.
How did you hear about LiveFlow?
I first heard about LiveFlow on the Cloud Accounting Podcast. I reached out to the founders and I was sceptical at first. I didn’t want to change the way I work because of an automation tool, I was looking for something that I could customize, save me time and enhance my current way of working with clients.
I jumped on a call with Lasse (the co-founder of LiveFlow) and the first thing he asked was “what problems can we solve for you?”, which took me back to my days in sales where I learnt the value of being customer focused. I outlined my problems and sure enough the team got back to me with solutions.
We love speaking and solving problems with our users. How did you start using LiveFlow?
When I had heard of LiveFlow it was during tax season, so as you can imagine I was extremely busy and thought I’d give it a try after things quieted down. I remember creating a new set of P&L reports for the month and just thought to myself, I’ve done this so many times maybe I’ll give LiveFlow a go and see whether I can start using it now.
The setup was very simple and only took minutes to connect a company and get a set of reports out. I also realized that with Live reports and having real time data I could set up these yearly evergreen reports that are automatically updated, which fill out every month, so I won't have to spend hours creating monthly reports again!
Here is an example of a live Accounts Receivable dashboard that helps you to stay on track at any point without going to QuickBooks Online:
How has LiveFlow helped you grow your business?
I have around 65 clients now that I usually produce around 5 reports for every month. So that’s around 4,000 reports manually created a year. With LiveFlow, because I have access to data that’s always up to date I can set up these ‘evergreen’ reports once and have them updated month to month.
It takes me 6 minutes to create a set of these per client. The time saved is INSANE! I’m currently saving two full working days a month just having used the Live report feature.
There’s also the fact that there’s no need for going back and forth with clients chasing them on whether they’ve updated their financials or them asking me if I’ve updated their reports as I can share the Google sheets with them.
I’m having some fun now creating dashboards and templates using the real-time data with clients that I offer financial consulting services to, and I’m excited to drive up value and see how far we can take it.
Wow, we’re super happy to hear that! What's next for you?
With the time saved with LiveFlow I’m really excited about two things:
We have around 65 clients at our current capacity and a waiting list of clients who are ready to join.
Having increased our capacity, we’re looking forward to taking on more clients and offering financial coaching to those clients who sought it but we were unable to offer because of time constraints. This is going to be a huge driver in growing our business.
As I’ve mentioned before, my lifelong dream was to be a professor and I’m really excited to tap into my creative side. I’ve spoken to thousands of people over the years and I love public speaking. I’m hoping to start an educational series exploring the fundamentals of finance for young people who are less privileged and don’t have a basic understanding of how finance works.
Want to grow your business and automate routine work? Try LiveFlow.
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