Overview
Henssler CPAs & Advisers, LLC is a tax-focused accounting firm in Kennesaw, Georgia, north of Atlanta. The tax department runs lean: 12 full-time employees serving more than 1,100 individual clients across two tax seasons a year.
When Thomson Reuters announced it was sunsetting FileCabinet CS, Operations Coordinator Henriette Nielsen treated it as an opportunity to rethink the firm’s whole workflow, not just replace one tool. After evaluating three platforms, Henssler chose Firm360 and went live on January 1 — the first day of tax season.
Challenge
Henssler had run on a full Thomson Reuters stack for years: UltraTax, Practice CS, FileCabinet CS, and a handful of supporting tools. The system worked. It just wasn’t efficient.
The FileCabinet CS sunset forced a hard look at the whole setup, and what the team found was a collection of disconnected systems that demanded constant context-switching, manual data entry, and admin effort that quietly ate hours every week.
Document intake ran on physical mail and in-office drop-offs, with staff scanning, sorting, and logging each item by hand. Engagement letters were built from scratch, fees typed in manually, follow-up tracked separately with no automation. And when clients hit a snag with the portal, staff had to send them to Thomson Reuters for help. For a firm built on personal service, that wasn’t workable.
“If one software was down, you couldn’t work. There were just a lot of moving parts.” — Henriette Nielsen, Operations Coordinator, Henssler CPAs & Advisers, LLC
Non-billable time was another blind spot. Admin work slipped through unrecorded, time entries were inconsistent, and nobody had a clean view of where billing stood on any given client. The firm knew something had to change, and knew it needed to get the decision right.
Solution
Henssler evaluated two other platforms before choosing Firm360: Thomson Reuters’ Onvio and Canopy. What tipped the decision was training and support.
“When we were demoing Firm360, it was clear we were going to have a team the whole way,” Henriette said. “With Firm360, you’re never on your own.”
Nearly a year in, that has held up. Henriette still meets with her dedicated Firm360 Customer Success Manager every week, and her questions get answered fast.
Going live January 1 put the platform to the test from day one. Firm360’s onboarding team supported the transition throughout, and the onboarding videos made adoption easy for new hires joining mid-season. Staff who had never touched the software were navigating it within days.
The full client lifecycle now lives in one place. Time is tracked inside each client’s project. Partners and CPAs can see outstanding progress-bill balances at a glance, no report required. Documents come in through the client portal and attach directly to the right project and client record. Engagement letters and e-file forms go out through automated workflows with built-in reminders, taking manual follow-up off the admin team’s plate.
“It just seems smooth. When I’m in one client, I can do my time, I can do the billing, I can easily move from project to project where the documents are related.” — Henriette Nielsen, Operations Coordinator, Henssler CPAs & Advisers, LLC
The firm is also moving to retire its standalone Adobe subscription by handling document signing through Firm360’s native Adobe eSign connection.
Results
Henssler’s first tax season on Firm360 was its best in years — with a platform the team had adopted on January 1.
Tax return completion climbed 22% year over year, driven by automated e-file form delivery and portal-based client reminders. The team filed more than 1,196 returns this spring, up from roughly 980 the year before. Reminders went out on a set cadence with no one initiating them. Clients who still hadn’t submitted documents by the soft cutoff were moved to an extension automatically, and clients who were ready got their returns done faster.
“We’ve never filed as many returns as we have during this tax season. The automation piece made that possible.” — Henriette Nielsen, Operations Coordinator, Henssler CPAs & Advisers, LLC
The three-person admin team is saving up to 36 hours a month. Time once spent chasing documents, managing engagement letter follow-ups by hand, and updating records across multiple systems is now either automated or properly logged. Non-billable admin hours that used to be invisible now show up in the timesheet, giving the firm an accurate picture of true operational cost.
Engagement letters tell the same story. The team processed more than 350 in under six weeks — a pace the old setup could not have supported. Automated reminders handle each stage of follow-up: five days after sending, the client gets a nudge. Five days after that, the task routes back to an admin for personal outreach. Clients sign and move on, and nothing depends on someone remembering to check.
Client adoption barely registered as a change. Henssler serves more than 1,100 individual clients, and when the firm switched portals, only one asked about it.
“We have only had positive feedback from clients with the portal. One client asked why we switched. One out of 1,100 individuals.” — Henriette Nielsen, Operations Coordinator, Henssler CPAs & Advisers, LLC
Henssler is on track to sunset three more tools by year-end, consolidating a fragmented tech stack into the single platform that now anchors firm operations.
“I truthfully don’t know how we would get through another tax season with the other software. It was one of our best tax seasons ever, and we went live on a brand new platform January 1st.” — Henriette Nielsen, Operations Coordinator, Henssler CPAs & Advisers, LLC
Results at a Glance
- 22% increase in submitted tax returns, driven by automated e-file delivery and client reminders
- Up to 36 hours saved per month across the three-person admin team
- 350+ engagement letters processed in under six weeks, with zero manual follow-up reminders
- 1 out of 1,100+ clients raised a concern about the portal transition
- 3 tools to be retired by year-end through tech stack consolidation
- Same-day support throughout tax season
If the challenges in this case study sound familiar and you’re ready to simplify operations like Henssler CPAs & Advisers, LLC, book a demo with Firm360 and make the switch.
Expert Bio: Henriette Nielsen is the Operations Coordinator at Henssler CPAs & Advisers, LLC in Kennesaw, Georgia. As the firm’s point person for administrative operations and technology, she led Henssler’s full transition from Thomson Reuters to a modern, all-in-one platform, going live on January 1 in the middle of tax season. Her firsthand role managing client intake, billing workflows, and firm-wide software adoption gives her a practical perspective on what it actually takes to run a smooth tax practice.
