How Venti Accounting Went From a $100K Revolving AR down to $0

For years, Venti Accounting never knew with any certainty when it would be paid. The firm billed at the beginning of each month for the previous month's work, which meant it was always invoicing for services already delivered and then waiting. A client could lose the paper invoice in the mail, miss the email, or simply skip a month, and end up carrying a balance for two or three months at a time. Higher-paying clients often paid in quarterly or semi-annual batches on their own schedule. Money came in sporadically, on the client's terms, not the firm's.

The result was a revolving accounts receivable balance of roughly $100,000 that built up and kept re-forming. During tax season it climbed higher, as hundreds of one-time tax preparation invoices stacked on top of the recurring monthly backlog, with the firm preparing approximately 800 returns a year. Venti tracked all of it by hand, first in a Word document, later in an Excel spreadsheet, running the same AR aging reports for its own receivables that accountants normally run for clients.

Chasing that money fell to the partners, and the conversations were uncomfortable by design. A client would say the invoice never arrived, or that a check was on the way, and the check often did not come. In the worst cases the firm kept working for six months before finally pausing service and demanding payment on the balance. For a partner preparing a client's tax return while looking at that same client's financials, the standoff was an awkward dance that strained relationships the firm had spent years building.

Underneath the cash flow problem sat a fully manual billing engine that made speed impossible. Every month, a partner or admin team member logged into an outdated Microsoft billing platform, manually entered service codes for each client, printed the invoice, folded it, addressed the envelope, and mailed it. Incoming paper checks were posted by hand to the correct period, then physically deposited at the bank once or twice a week. The front-end billing cycle alone consumed roughly 30 hours a month, and none of that work moved money any faster.

“We were that stereotypical accountant where we were okay with whenever the client sent us the check. It was very passive and it felt like we were always chasing money.”
Josh Streimer, Partner, Venti Accounting

02 · The SolutionWhy Anchor

Josh first came across Anchor through a social media advertisement, and one thing stood out immediately: it was built specifically for accounting firms, not adapted from a generic billing tool. That focus mattered, because Venti had already learned what a partial fix looked like.

About a year earlier, the firm had signed up with a link-based payment platform, hoping it would solve the collections problem. It did not. As Josh put it, that tool "simply provided clients with a digital payment method." Venti was still manually issuing every invoice and still chasing the clients who carried balances. Each client got an individual link and had to type in the invoice amount themselves, which was clunky and error-prone. It gave clients a new way to pay but left the firm's actual workload, and its cash flow problem, untouched.

Anchor was structurally different. Rather than bolting a payment button onto a manual process, it starts at the agreement: each client gets their own profile, the correct amount is set from the signed terms, and payment is captured up front so charges run automatically on schedule. That is the mechanism that makes autopay stick, and it is precisely what the link-based tool could not do. For Josh, Anchor became "the one and only need for everything billing related," for both clients and internal operations, replacing the entire cycle instead of patching one step of it.

Being analytical by trade, Josh pressed hard during the sales process, walking through every edge case and workflow scenario he could construct. The Anchor team answered each one. A chance in-person meeting with the company's founders added the final measure of confidence.

“You could tell there was a lot of intentionality throughout the company. When you are on enough sales calls on the tech side, you will sometimes get someone who really does not know the product they are selling. That was not the case here.”
Josh Streimer, Partner, Venti Accounting

Implementation

Moving a long-standing client base off paper checks carried real risk, and Venti had already felt it once. The earlier link-based tool had proven too cumbersome to drive adoption, so the firm knew that the client experience, not the technology alone, would decide whether the switch worked.

With Anchor it worked. Each client got a portal where everything was organized and the billing amount was already set correctly from the agreement, so there was nothing to calculate or type in. The overwhelming majority completed payment setup without friction. Josh estimates roughly 98 to 99 percent of the client base onboarded successfully. About 10 percent were initially wary of any change to how they paid, but most came around once they saw how much simpler the new process was.

The transition did not create a support burden. Venti's admin team fielded client questions as they came in and walked people through setup when needed, and the volume stayed low. What could have been a disruptive cutover for a firm serving a wide range of client tech comfort turned into a routine migration, which is what allowed the cash flow benefits to land almost immediately rather than after months of chasing adoption.

The clearest change was in how, and how reliably, Venti gets paid. Autopay adoption went from 1% to 99%, a 98-point jump. With nearly the entire recurring client base charged automatically on schedule, the roughly $100,000 revolving AR balance stopped re-forming. Payment no longer trickles in across two and three month lags, and the firm no longer runs AR aging reports on its own receivables or tracks balances by hand in a spreadsheet.

That predictability reset how the firm plans. Instead of guessing at cash flow, Venti now pulls accurate revenue and cash-flow reporting directly from Anchor and uses it to forecast decisions 6 to 12 months out, from staffing to technology investments. Revenue that once arrived whenever a client chose now arrives on a schedule the firm can count on to year-end.

The collections friction that used to strain client relationships is gone. At the partner level, Josh no longer makes uncomfortable calls asking a client to bring an account up to date, regardless of that client's cash position, because the charge is simply handled. On the admin side, no one has to ask whether an invoice arrived or a check is coming. Clients never feel chased, which removed one of the most delicate dynamics in the firm's client work.

Underneath it all, the manual billing engine that never moved money any faster is gone too. Billing time fell from about 30 hours a month to under 10, at least 20 hours a month recovered, which is roughly 240 hours, or 6 full work weeks, a year. At the staff member's estimated cost of about $30 an hour, that is on the order of $7,000 a year in recovered labor (based on Josh's rate estimate). The time went back into client relationships: the team member who once spent her days entering service codes, printing invoices, and driving checks to the bank now has time to talk to clients directly and walk them through questions by phone or email.

"Accessing the reports through Anchor provides us with accurate information as it relates to not only revenue, but cash flow. Having access to such useful information allows us to forecast decisions that may be 6 to 12 months away."
Josh Streimer, Partner, Venti Accounting