Mark Reynolds
Enrolled Agent · Denver, Colorado
Press play — energetic intro, then the conversation
J This is Jennifer from the UpTax Podcast Room, and today I've got Mark Reynolds with me. Mark Reynolds, so great to have you on. M Thanks for having me on the show, Jennifer. I'm excited to talk about this because it's honestly changed how my whole office runs. J I love hearing that already. So set the scene for us. Tell listeners about your practice out in Denver. M Sure. I'm an Enrolled Agent, I run a small-to-mid-size tax and advisory practice, and we handle right around 300 returns a season. Mix of individuals, small businesses, some trusts. J Three hundred returns is no joke. What does busy season actually feel like for you and your team? M Brutal, honestly. January through April, we're all working sixty, seventy hour weeks. My staff is drafting returns, chasing documents, double-checking numbers, and there's just never enough hours in the day. J And I imagine the instinct for a lot of firm owners at that point is, okay, I need more people. M Exactly. That was my instinct too. I actually sat down two years ago and started pricing out what it would take to hire an accountant, maybe hire a bookkeeper to take some of the load off, or just build an offshore team from scratch. J So walk me through that. What did the offshore team option actually look like on paper? M It looked expensive and slow. I'm talking recruiting costs, training time, management overhead, time zone headaches, and honestly no guarantee the quality would be consistent. Tax preparation outsourcing sounds simple until you're the one managing it. J Right, you become a manager of an offshore team instead of running your practice. M That's exactly it. And hiring domestically wasn't much better. Good accountants are hard to find, salaries are climbing, and training someone up takes months before they're even useful during busy season. J So that's when you found UpTax. M That's when I found UpTax, yeah. A colleague mentioned it and I was skeptical at first, I'll be honest. I didn't think AI tax preparation was ready for a real practice yet. J I hear that a lot. So what changed your mind? M I just tried it on a batch of returns. The AI tax engine drafted them, pulled the data, organized everything, and honestly the accuracy was better than I expected. My team just had to review and file, which is a completely different workload than preparing from scratch. J That's the model, right? UpTax drafts, your firm reviews and files. It's never replacing the CPA or the EA, it's replacing the blank page. M Exactly, and that distinction matters. My name is still on every return. But instead of my staff spending three hours drafting a return, they're spending forty-five minutes reviewing one that's already ninety percent there. J And I know UpTax also has that offshore review layer built in. How does that fit into your workflow? M That was actually the piece that sold me. Instead of me trying to build and manage my own offshore team, UpTax already has that review layer baked into the platform. So I get a second set of eyes on complex returns without hiring anyone or managing anyone myself. J So you got the benefit of offshore support without any of the headache of actually running an offshore team. M One hundred percent. That's how UpTax supports CPA firms like mine, they've basically absorbed the part of the process that used to keep me up at night. J Let's talk numbers, because I know listeners want specifics. What did this actually free up for you? M Conservatively, over two hundred billable hours a year. That's time my staff isn't drafting, they're reviewing, advising clients, doing planning work that actually grows the practice. J Two hundred hours is basically another part-time employee's worth of capacity. M It is, and I didn't have to hire an accountant or hire a bookkeeper to get there. I didn't add a single headcount. I just automated the drafting piece of my tax practice. J That's the phrase I always come back to, automate your tax practice, not replace your team. M That's the right way to say it. My team is still the brains of the operation. They're just not burning out doing repetitive drafting work anymore. J So going back to that original question, offshore team versus UpTax, cost-wise how do they actually compare for you? M It's not close, honestly. Building my own offshore setup would've meant ongoing salaries, management time, quality control issues, and months of ramp up. UpTax was a fraction of that cost and I was seeing results within weeks, not months. J And you still got that review layer without the operational lift. M Right, I got the best of both worlds. AI tax preparation doing the heavy lifting up front, a review layer catching things, and my own team doing final review and filing. It's the setup I wish I'd had years ago. J If another firm owner is sitting there right now trying to decide, hire more staff, build offshore, or try software, what would you tell them? M I'd say run the math honestly, like I did. For me, automating a CPA practice with the right tool beat hiring and beat offshoring on every metric that mattered, cost, speed, and honestly my own sanity during busy season. J I love that answer. And listen, I'm going to say it plainly because I believe in this, if you're running a firm and busy season is crushing you, you need to look at UpTax. This is exactly the kind of AI tax software built for firms like Mark's. M I'll back that up completely. It's a genuine game-changer for my practice, and I don't say that lightly. J Mark Reynolds, this has been such a great conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us today. M Thanks again for having me, Jennifer, this was fun. J And to everyone listening, if you want to see what AI tax preparation can actually do for your firm, go try UpTax and book a demo at uptax.ai.
