How Eagle Financial saves 4 minutes per document—and clients from late lodgement penalties—with Dropbox Sign
Eagle Financial is an Australian accounting firm that takes the financial load off passionate startups and small businesses in Australia, so they can focus on getting things done.
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Full disclosure, email attachments weren’t working out
Nothing’s more frustrating for accountants than when clients don’t sign tax disclosure and sign-off documents. Not only does it mean accountants can’t act on behalf of clients, it often means payments drag on beyond tax lodgement deadlines which cost clients in late penalties. But slow signing doesn’t just hurt clients, it also results in hours of wasted time for accountants who have to chase down missing documents—time that could be spent on billable work.
It was these kinks in the signing process that gave Sydney accounting firm, Eagle Financial a difficult time during the four tax deadlines every year. Having already digitized the majority of its documents in Dropbox, the idea of emailing clients PDF attachments, and then asking clients to print, physically sign, scan, and return disclosure documents seemed like a slow, time-intensive, and outdated way to work.
Eagle financial knew that by removing manual pains from the signing process for its clients, it could offer a better experience and service, and decrease the time its team spent preparing, sending, and following up on unsigned tax documents. To help weed out its signing pains, Eagle began the search for an eSignatures solution that could deliver an easier, more efficient signing process. Then Eagle found Dropbox Sign. “From about 2019, that’s when we started the journey to the digital signature side of things, instead of having clients email, print, sign and return documents,” says Adam Johns, Partner at Eagle Financial.
“Dropbox Sign saves us around four minutes per document overall. We send about 10,000 documents every year…That translates to real dollars, giving us $80,000 in billable time back.”
Dropbox Sign makes tax deadline day a breeze
Immediately replacing its cumbersome email-attachment process for signing customer sign-offs and tax disclosure documents with the Dropbox Sign web app means Eagle Financial now sends out agreements and gets them signed by clients in a fraction of the time. “The rate of return on documents has increased significantly. With Dropbox Sign, nine times out of ten the client signs the documents right when we ask them, which is a huge thing, especially coming up to deadlines,” says Adam.
According to Adam, even when documents do go unsigned, Eagle Financial is making the most of the Dropbox Sign tracking and automatic reminder functionality to ensure disclosures and sign-offs arrive before any deadline: “So rather than us spending two or three weeks chasing documents down, Dropbox Sign sends automatic reminders to clients, within 48 hours, and then reminds them on day three and day seven, so it's really helped clean up our follow-up process,” says Adam.
Dropbox Sign has reduced the amount of paperwork Eagle Financial’s teams manage internally, too. Instead of a roundabout of forwarding and back-and-forths with its admin team, “Now when forms are signed, they automatically go to our admin team’s email address, and they can go ahead and lodge immediately. That's an efficient saving because the client doesn't send it back to us and then we have forward it on.”
While each of these eSignature feats alone are impressive, when taken together Dropbox Sign has had a transformative impact on Eagle Financial’s business. “Dropbox Sign saves us around four minutes per document overall. We send about 10,000 documents every year. That's a huge amount of time we've gained back on the accounting side insofar as it saves us a significant in chase-ups. That translates to real dollars, with us recouping $80,000 in billable time.”
One Dropbox Sign feature that has a big impact on saving Eagle Financial time, Adam says, is the way Dropbox Sign automatically converts documents to the right format, which has cut down the manual tinkering and converting document formats. “The simple drag and drop of a word doc into Dropbox Sign, which converts it into a PDF, saves us up to about a minute per document.”
Not all of Eagle’s signing success is about process efficiencies though, Dropbox Sign has also helped boost the accounting firm’s Google reviews. A big way Eagle Financial has grown and evolved in recent years is in the way they collect reviews from customers. While the team has been working hard and changing the way they’re working every day—they wanted to thank customers, and reward team members who are doing incredible work.
To do this, they set up a landing page that’s presented to clients after they sign documents. The page includes a note from the founders thanking customers for coming along on their journey and highlights the hard work of the accountants. The goal was to ensure that customers felt attended to, that they knew the team was looking out for them, and to add a personal touch to the interaction with Eagle Financial. This process and the added personal touch have pushed customers to leave more reviews, going from around 20 reviews on Google at the start of 2020 to 200+ reviews at the time of writing. “We've had so many customers that have come to us saying: ‘I came to you guys because you’ve got so many good reviews,’” says Adam. Prospective clients do tend to look at that and it’s because we have that landing page there after they sign through Dropbox Sign.”
4 minutes saved per document
By rebuilding the way it creates and sends documents in a digital way—using Dropbox Sign—Eagle Financial has reduced around 4 minutes from its form-sending process, which, when applied to the 10,000+ documents Eagle Financial sends every year, recoups $80k in billable time.
Higher client completion rates
Using the Dropbox Sign web app for all of its customer sign-offs and tax disclosure documents, Eagle Financial is now sending out and getting agreements signed in a fraction of the time. “The rate of return on documents has increased significantly. With Dropbox Sign, nine times out of ten the client signs the documents right when we ask them, which is a huge thing, especially coming up to deadlines,” says Adam.
200+ Google reviews and counting
By automatically sending clients to a bespoke landing page after signing, Eagle Financial has pushed customers to leave more reviews, going from around 20 reviews on Google at the start of 2020 to 200+ reviews at the time of writing.
What’s next for Eagle Financial?
Adam and the team are looking long and hard at how technology can work for them, and how tools like Dropbox and Dropbox Sign can work for the business, and their customers to keep producing bigger and better results.
To learn more about Eagle Financial, click here.
Interested in seeing results like Eagle Financial?
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