01 · The Challenge
Before Anchor, Candy had been using Ignition for proposals and billing. It was a step up from having no system at all, and it instilled the discipline of sending engagement letters with payment built in. But over time, the friction of the platform wore on her. The monthly subscription felt hard to justify, and several billing tasks still required manual intervention each month.
"It just felt very costly and very clunky. I would get frustrated at the thought of sending out a proposal because I didn't want to deal with it.”
Candy Bellau, CEO, Kramerica Business Solutions
Three billing problems had been compounding quietly for years.
The first was cost. Ignition charged a flat monthly subscription whether Candy sent one contract or twenty. For a firm that does not take on high volumes of new clients, that recurring fee was essentially the cost of having the platform available, not of using it.
The second was credit card handling. Ignition only offered ACH by default. When a client wanted to pay by credit card, Candy had to manually rebuild the invoice with a credit card fee line item added, either in QuickBooks or back in Ignition. It required extra steps, created confusion, and the estimate never came out exact. It was a process that reflected poorly on a firm built on getting the details right.
The third, and the one that had the most cumulative cost, was annual price increases. Candy had always included an annual increase clause in her engagement letters. But with no automation behind it, execution depended on memory. Some clients went four years without an increase. Others were increased twice in a year. The mental overhead of tracking who was due, at what rate, on what schedule added to a monthly billing workload Candy estimates at roughly three hours.
Forgotten invoices added to the load. Her team would regularly flag that a client had not been billed for a month or more, and Candy would have to trace back through the records to figure out what had been missed.
"I'd be like, crud, I haven't increased them in four years. Or I'm doing increases and, wait, I already did it six months ago. Just that whole mental brain load that is now gone.”
Candy Bellau, CEO, Kramerica Business Solutions
02 · The SolutionWhy Anchor
Candy had been aware of Anchor but kept deferring the switch. The prospect of migrating an established client base felt like it would take significant time and energy. That changed at Intuit Connect, where a peer sat her down and walked her through the cost savings and how straightforward the migration had been. Later at the same conference, Candy met the Anchor team in person.
What moved her was not the feature list. It was the way the team engaged with her before she was even a customer. She felt a values alignment that matched how she ran her own firm, and that was enough to commit.
"Have you ever said, ' Oh, I don't want to do this, it's going to take so long? You do it, and you're like, dang it, that was so quick. And I've been putting it off for so long. My recommendation: don't put it off. Just do it.”
Candy Bellau, CEO, Kramerica Business Solutions
The migration took far less time than she had anticipated. The setup she had been putting off for months was done quickly, and the experience left her wishing she had not waited.
Implementation
Moving existing clients to Anchor meant asking each of them to sign a new engagement and upload their payment details. For a firm whose clients expect everything to be handled for them, Candy was careful about how the transition was framed. Some clients called to verify the request was legitimate before completing the setup. For those who wanted extra reassurance, Candy walked them through the process on a Zoom call.
No clients pushed back on the switch. Several asked about the new platform. The introduction of credit cards as a genuine payment option, alongside ACH, removed a friction point that had previously required a manual workaround. Now clients choose their preferred method at signing and Anchor handles the fee routing automatically.
Candy has since set up a second new company on Anchor from day one.
"Anchor makes me look good.”
Candy Bellau, CEO, Kramerica Business Solutions
03 · The Results
Direct Saving
Three outcomes stand out, all based on Candy's own estimates:
* $3,000 per year saved by eliminating the Ignition monthly subscription. Anchor's model charges only when a payment is processed, which aligns with how the firm actually operates.
* Approximately 3 hours per month reclaimed from billing admin, including manual invoice creation, credit card fee adjustments, and tracking which clients were due for increases.
* A 5% automatic annual price increase now runs on every eligible engagement. Candy no longer has to remember, use a calendar, or manually initiate the conversation. For a firm where some clients had gone years without an increase, the compounding effect is material.
The impact Candy describes most readily is not the cost savings or the hours. It is the absence of a mental category she used to carry every month: who had been billed, who was overdue for an increase, who needed a new invoice because they wanted to pay by credit card. That load is gone.
"When you're just bogged down 24/7, you're just in survival mode. Having more downtime gives me a lot of clarity to think about a situation or think about a client. I feel like I have more ideas now that I'm not so bogged down with all the minutiae.”
Candy Bellau, CEO, Kramerica Business Solutions
The time and attention freed up is going toward what she wants to be doing: thinking about clients, developing ideas, writing, building better reports. She describes feeling more creative and less reactive since removing the billing burden.
"I think from start to finish, the process to get on Anchor is easy. The cost transparency and savings is great. And I think it's important if you're looking at the core values of your company and the people you want to work with, that Anchor would answer those areas for you.”
Candy Bellau, CEO, Kramerica Business Solutions
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