Case Study: Back Office Stars achieves rapid identification of unprofitable clients and boosts profitability with Financial Cents

How Back Office Stars used Financial Cents to make his firm more profitable

Back Office Stars, a six-person virtual bookkeeping, payroll and payables firm in Toronto serving 35 clients across Canada, was struggling to identify which monthly‑engagement clients were actually profitable. They billed fixed monthly fees based on estimated hours but, as they grew, Google Sheets became unwieldy and they lost visibility into out‑of‑scope and catch‑up hours. Back Office Stars needed a bookkeeping‑specific system to compare actual hours to estimates and quickly flag overruns — which led them to Financial Cents and its practice management dashboard.

Financial Cents provided a dashboard with built‑in visual metrics (hours turn red when a project exceeds estimates), letting Back Office Stars spot unprofitable clients in weeks rather than months and act faster to adjust fees or scope, which improved the firm’s bottom line. The change shortened the window for correcting underbilling from 3–4 months to weeks and helped match billings to actuals; more broadly, Financial Cents users report saving about 5 hours per employee per week and strong gains in deadline tracking, team communication and visibility.

Back Office Stars

Jonathan Burns