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. I've been looking forward to this one because it's a topic I talk about with other firm owners constantly. J I love that. So set the scene for us. Tell everyone what your practice looks like day to day. D Sure, so I run an outsourced CFO and accounting firm based in Chicago. We act as the fractional CFO for about 60 business clients, everything from restaurant groups to small manufacturers. J Sixty clients is no small number. Are you doing bookkeeping, tax, advisory, all of it? D All of it. That's actually the challenge. We're their CFO, their bookkeeper, and come tax season, we're also doing the tax preparation work for most of them. J So walk me through what busy season actually feels like for a firm your size. D Honestly, it's brutal. You've got sixty entities, some with multiple owners, K-1s flying around, and everyone wants their return done yesterday. My staff is stretched thin from January through April. J And I imagine the instinct for a lot of firm owners is just, hire an accountant, hire a bookkeeper, throw bodies at the problem. D That was exactly my instinct two years ago. I thought, okay, we need more hands. But hiring in Chicago for tax season staff is expensive, and honestly, good people are hard to find on a seasonal basis. J So what did you try first? D We tried building an offshore team. Hired a few accountants overseas to help with the prep work, thinking it'd be cheaper than local hires. J And how did that go? D It looked cheaper on paper. But the hidden costs ate us alive. Timezone delays meant I'd send a question at 4pm and not get an answer until the next morning. That's a whole day lost during the busiest weeks of the year. J That's rough. What else went wrong? D Compliance gaps. Some of the offshore preparers weren't as sharp on US tax law nuances, so we'd get returns back with errors, and then my senior staff had to redo half the work anyway. So we're paying offshore wages plus paying our own team to fix it. J So the real cost wasn't the hourly rate, it was the rework. D Exactly. The rework killed us. And the management overhead, training them, checking their work constantly, it was basically like having another full time job just supervising. J So that's when you found UpTax? D Right, a colleague mentioned UpTax at a conference last year, and I was skeptical honestly. I thought, another software promising to save my tax season. J I hear that skepticism a lot. What changed your mind? D I just tried it on a batch of returns. The AI tax preparation engine drafted the returns from the source documents, way faster than I expected, and honestly cleaner than what our offshore team was producing. J And then your team still reviews everything before anything goes out, right? UpTax never touches the actual filing. D Correct, that's the part I love. The AI drafts it, and then we have that review layer, our staff and the offshore review support UpTax provides, checking every line before we ever sign off. We're still in full control. J So let's get to the real question everyone's asking. What's more cost-effective, building your own offshore team or using UpTax.AI? D No comparison, honestly. Building our own offshore team cost us in salaries, management time, rework, and lost days from timezone gaps. UpTax is a flat, predictable cost, and the turnaround is same day, not next day. J That timezone piece alone sounds huge for a firm running on a tight tax season clock. D It's massive. When you're trying to automate your tax practice and move fast, you can't afford to wait twelve hours for a simple fix. With UpTax, the draft is ready, and my reviewers pick it up the same day. J So has this actually given you more capacity without adding headcount? D One hundred percent. We took on twelve new clients this year and I did not hire a single additional preparer. Normally that growth would've meant hiring an accountant or two just to keep up. J That's exactly the kind of story we love hearing, because that's really how UpTax supports CPA firms, it's giving you leverage instead of just more bodies. D That's the perfect way to put it. It's leverage. My senior staff spend their time reviewing and advising clients, not buried in data entry or chasing offshore teams for status updates. J David, would you say this is genuinely a game changer for your practice, or am I putting words in your mouth? D No, genuinely a game changer. I was hesitant to say that on a podcast, but it's true. Our margins improved, our turnaround improved, and my team's stress level during busy season is night and day compared to two years ago. J For any firm listening who's stuck deciding between hiring locally, building offshore, or trying tax preparation outsourcing through a platform like this, what would you tell them? D I'd say run the real numbers, not just the hourly rate. Factor in rework, management time, timezone lag, and compliance risk. When you do that math, AI tax preparation with a solid review layer wins every time. J I love that, run the real math. David, this has been such a genuine, practical conversation. Thank you so much for sharing your story. D Thanks for having me, Jennifer. Happy to come back and share more once we're through another busy season. J We'll definitely have you back. To everyone listening, if you're trying to figure out how to automate a CPA practice without the headaches David just described, go try UpTax and book a demo at uptax.ai.
