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've been looking forward to this one. J So tell everyone a little about your practice before we get into the good stuff. M Sure, I'm an Enrolled Agent based out of Denver. My firm handles right around 300 returns a season, a good mix of individual, small business, some real estate investors. It's a small team, just me and two staff. J Three hundred returns with a team of three? That sounds brutal come February and March. M Oh, it was brutal. I mean, brutal is actually generous. We'd be pulling twelve, thirteen hour days for two straight months, and honestly the quality suffered because everyone was exhausted. J That's the classic busy season pain, right? You either burn out your team or you turn away clients. M Exactly. And turning away clients means turning away revenue, which nobody wants to do. So for years I kept asking myself, do I hire an accountant, do I hire a bookkeeper, do I build out an offshore team? What's actually going to fix this? J So walk me through that decision. Because I know a lot of firm owners are sitting exactly where you were. M So I actually looked seriously into building an offshore team. Priced it out, talked to a few firms doing tax preparation outsourcing that way. And the math wasn't as pretty as people think. J Really? Everyone assumes offshore is the cheap option. M It looks cheap on paper, but then you add training time, management overhead, quality control, time zone headaches, turnover. By the time I ran the real numbers, it wasn't nearly the savings I expected. J So that's when you found UpTax. M That's when I found UpTax, yeah. And honestly, I was skeptical at first. I've seen a lot of software promise the moon. J I get that a lot. So what actually changed your mind? M Watching it draft an actual messy return. I mean a real client, multiple K-1s, rental property, some stock sales that needed matching. The AI tax preparation engine pulled the documents, organized everything, and handed me a drafted return in minutes. J Not filed, just drafted, right? I always want to be clear on that. M Right, totally clear. UpTax drafts it, my team reviews it, and we're the ones who make the final call and get it out the door. Nothing goes anywhere without our eyes on it. J So what does that review process actually look like on your end now? M It's fast. Genuinely fast. What used to take me forty-five minutes to build from scratch now takes me maybe ten to review because it's already organized, the numbers are already reconciled, and there's an offshore review layer built in before it even hits my desk. J So you've basically got a first pass done before you even open the file. M Exactly. It's like having a really sharp senior preparer who never gets tired, never calls in sick, and works at three in the morning if I need it to. J I love that description. So let's talk numbers, because I know listeners want the real math. What did this actually do for your capacity? M We went from struggling to keep up with 300 returns to comfortably handling close to 900 this past season. Same three people. J Three times the volume, with the same team? No new hires? M Zero new hires. I didn't have to hire an accountant, I didn't have to hire a bookkeeper, I didn't have to build out any offshore operation myself. UpTax basically became the extra capacity I was going to have to hire for anyway. J That's exactly how we like to think about it, honestly. It's not replacing you or your team, it's giving you superpowers so you can automate your tax practice without adding headcount. M That's a perfect way to put it. It's not magic, it's not replacing my judgment. But it's taking the repetitive, document-heavy grunt work off my plate so I can spend my time on the actual advisory conversations with clients. J Which, let's be honest, is the part of the job you probably actually enjoy. M One hundred percent. I didn't become an Enrolled Agent to spend my life matching 1099s. I became one to actually advise people. J So back to that original question you had, offshore team or UpTax. Now that you've lived it both ways, what's your honest answer? M UpTax, hands down. Cost-wise it's not close, and I didn't have to manage anybody, train anybody, or worry about turnover. It's how UpTax supports CPA firms that I think people underestimate until they actually try it. J I hear that from firm owners constantly. They think it's going to be this huge lift to switch, and then they realize it's actually less operational headache than what they're doing now. M That was my experience exactly. The onboarding was smoother than I expected, and honestly, my staff loved it once they saw how much time it gave back to them. J Any hesitation you'd want to flag for someone considering it, just to keep this real? M Honestly, my only regret is not trying it sooner. I spent two years going back and forth on whether to hire more staff, when the real answer was sitting right there the whole time. J That's such a genuine endorsement, Mark, thank you for being real about it instead of just giving me a sales pitch. M It's not a pitch, it's just what actually happened at my firm. I'm not exaggerating when I say it's the biggest operational change I've made in fifteen years of practice. J That's incredible to hear. Mark Reynolds, thank you so much for coming on and sharing your workflow with us, this was such a great conversation. M Thanks again for having me on the show, Jennifer. Happy to come back anytime. J To everyone listening, if you're wondering whether AI tax preparation can actually work for a real practice, Mark just gave you the proof. Go check out UpTax and book a demo at uptax.ai.
