David Alvarez
fractional CFO · Chicago, Illinois
Press play — energetic intro, then the conversation
J This is Jennifer from the UpTax Podcast Room, and today I've got David Alvarez with me. David Alvarez, so great to have you on. D Thanks for having me on the show, Jennifer. D I'm excited to talk about this because it genuinely changed how we operate. J I love hearing that already. So before we get into the good stuff, tell everyone what your firm actually does. D Sure, so I run an outsourced CFO and accounting firm based in Chicago. We work as fractional CFOs for growing businesses, and on top of that we manage tax and compliance for about 60 business clients. J Sixty clients. That's not small. That's a real operation. D It's a lot of moving parts, yeah. We're doing bookkeeping oversight, advisory work, and then every year, tax season hits and everything else basically gets put on hold. J That busy season crunch is so real. Walk me through what that actually looked like for you before. D Honestly, it was brutal. My senior staff were working nights and weekends just doing return preparation. We weren't doing advisory work, we weren't doing CFO work, we were just drowning in returns from January to April. J So you're a fractional CFO firm basically turning into a tax factory for three months. D Exactly, and that's not what our clients are paying us for. They want strategy, they want planning conversations, not us buried under W-2s and depreciation schedules. J So what did you do about it? I know you looked at building an offshore team at one point. D We did. We seriously considered it. I actually got quotes, looked at recruiting overseas preparers, thought about setting up a whole offshore team just to handle prep during busy season. J And how'd the math work out on that? D It didn't, honestly. Between recruiting, training, management overhead, time zone issues, quality control, it added up fast. And I'd still need someone senior here reviewing everything anyway. J Right, because tax preparation outsourcing sounds simple on paper but managing a remote team is basically a whole second job. D That's exactly it. I didn't want to become a manager of an offshore team, I wanted to run my firm. J So that's when UpTax came into the picture. D Yeah, a colleague mentioned UpTax to me and honestly I was skeptical at first. AI tax preparation sounded like a buzzword to me. J I hear that a lot actually. So what changed your mind? D We just tried it on a batch of returns. The AI engine drafted the returns, pulled in the source documents, categorized everything, flagged the tricky spots, and honestly the draft quality was better than I expected. J And you still review everything, right? UpTax isn't filing anything on its own. D Right, that's the key part. UpTax drafts it, and then we review and we're the ones who make the final call and file. There's also an offshore review layer built in, so by the time it hits my desk, it's already been through a check. J So you get the benefit of that offshore review capacity without having to build and manage the team yourself. D Exactly, that's the part that sold me. I get the leverage of an offshore team without the recruiting headache, the training, the management, none of it. J That's such a smart way to put it. So what happened to your busy season after that? D Night and day difference. We estimate it freed up over 200 billable hours a year across the team. My senior accountants went back to reviewing and advising instead of drafting from scratch. J Two hundred hours is huge. That's basically another part time hire's worth of capacity. D It really is, and that's the thing, I didn't have to hire an accountant or hire a bookkeeper to get that capacity. UpTax basically gave me the extra hands without adding headcount. J That's the dream for a lot of firm owners, honestly. You want to grow capacity without growing payroll. D Right, and it's not just about saving money, it's about what my team gets to focus on now. We're doing advisory, we're doing planning calls, the stuff that actually keeps our fractional CFO clients happy. J So if you had to compare it directly, building an offshore team versus using UpTax's AI tax engine, which wins on cost? D It's not close. The offshore route has ongoing salary costs, management time, quality risk. With UpTax it's a predictable cost and the tool just gets sharper the more we use it. J That's exactly why we built it this way, honestly, to help firms automate their tax practice without adding the operational weight of an offshore hire. D And that's really how UpTax supports CPA firms like mine, it's not replacing us, it's removing the grunt work so we can actually use our expertise. J I love that framing. It's AI tax, but the firm is still fully in control. D Completely. We're still the ones signing off, still the ones with the relationship, we just get there faster now. J David, would you say this changed the trajectory of your firm, not just busy season? D Honestly, yes. We're now looking at taking on more clients this year because we actually have the capacity, which is something I wasn't even considering before. J That's incredible. From dreading busy season to actively growing because of it. D It's a total shift. I tell other firm owners all the time, if you're thinking about building an offshore team, try automating your tax practice with UpTax first. J David, this has been such a great conversation, thank you so much for sharing all of this with us. D Thanks again for having me, Jennifer, this was fun. J And to everyone listening, if you're a CPA or accounting firm feeling that same busy season crunch David described, go check out UpTax and book a demo at uptax.ai. We'll see you next time on the UpTax Podcast Room.
