Emily Thompson
firm founder · Miami, Florida
Press play — energetic intro, then the conversation
J This is Jennifer from the UpTax Podcast Room, and today I've got Emily Thompson with me. Emily Thompson, so great to have you on. E Thanks for having me on the show, Jennifer. J So tell everyone what you do down in Miami, because I know you're juggling a lot. E I run a bookkeeping and tax firm, and we manage about 200 small-business clients right now. Retail, restaurants, a few real estate folks. It's a good mix, but it's also a lot. J Two hundred clients is no joke. What does busy season actually look like for you? E Honestly, it used to look like chaos. Late nights, weekends gone, my staff burnt out by February. We'd be drowning in returns and still trying to keep bookkeeping current for everyone. J And I imagine the instinct is always, okay, we just need more hands. Did you ever seriously consider building an offshore team? E Oh, completely seriously. I actually got quotes, looked at recruiters, the whole thing. On paper it sounds great, cheaper labor, more capacity. J So what changed your mind? E The real numbers. Once you factor in training time, management overhead, compliance risk with data security, and honestly just the turnaround time waiting on someone in a different time zone, it wasn't the win I thought it'd be. J That's such a good point. People think tax preparation outsourcing is just cheaper labor, but it's actually a whole management job on top of your existing job. E Exactly. I'd still need someone senior reviewing everything, still need to train them on US tax law, still carry the liability if something slipped through. It's not free capacity, it's a second business. J So where does UpTax come in for you? E Honestly, UpTax has been a genuine game-changer for us. It's AI tax preparation software, so the AI actually drafts the return based on the client's documents and prior year data, and then our team just reviews it before anything goes out. J So you're still the one making the final call. E A hundred percent. We review everything, we're the ones responsible, but the heavy lifting of building the return from scratch is already done for us. J And there's the offshore review layer too, right? Walk me through that. E Right, so after the AI drafts it, there's an offshore review step built into the UpTax workflow before it even lands on our desk. So by the time I'm looking at it, it's already been through two passes. My team's final review is so much faster. J That's basically the best of both worlds. You get the offshore support without having to build and manage the offshore team yourself. E That's exactly it. That's how UpTax supports CPA firms like mine, they built the infrastructure I was trying to build myself, and honestly they built it better. J Let's talk numbers, because I know that's what our listeners actually want. What did the cost comparison look like? E Building an offshore team myself, realistically I was looking at recruiting costs, salaries, management time, plus the risk if someone made an error on a filing-adjacent document. With UpTax, it's a predictable software cost and I'm not carrying payroll for people I have to train from zero. J So it's cheaper and lower risk. E Cheaper, lower risk, and faster. That combination is rare. Usually you get one or two of those, not all three. J Did it actually give you back capacity? Like, could you take on more clients without adding headcount? E Yes, and that's the part that surprised me most. I didn't have to hire an accountant or hire a bookkeeper to handle our growth this year. We just absorbed more clients because the prep time per return dropped so much. J That's huge. So many firm owners think growth automatically means adding staff. E It doesn't have to, not anymore. This is genuinely how you automate a CPA practice without losing the human judgment part, which is the part that actually matters for clients. J I love that distinction, because AI tax isn't about replacing the accountant, it's about removing the grunt work. E Exactly. My reviewers get to actually think about the return instead of typing it in from scratch. It's a completely different mental load. J What would you tell another firm owner who's on the fence between building offshore or trying something like UpTax? E Do the real math, not the surface level math. Offshore sounds cheap until you add up training, management, and risk. I'd tell them to automate your tax practice with the tools built for it before you go build a whole team from scratch. J That's such solid advice. And honestly, hearing this from someone managing 200 clients in real time, not theoretically, that carries a lot of weight. E It's real for us. Busy season this year didn't feel like survival mode. It felt manageable, and that's the first time I can say that in years. J That's exactly what we want firm owners to hear. Emily Thompson, thank you so much for being so open about the real numbers and the real experience. E Thanks for having me on, Jennifer. Happy to share it. J If you're a CPA or EA firm listening and wondering whether to build offshore or automate with AI tax preparation, go check out UpTax yourself. Head to uptax.ai and book a demo, see exactly how it can work for your practice.
