Every Hour Spent on Admin Tasks Is an Hour Lost With Clients
Time spent creating engagements reduced by ~75%
Invoice generation automated for Tax & Family Office engagements
Real-time visibility into staff utilization and budgets
Client intake automated through CI form submission at the Lead level
Karuna Advisors is a professional services firm specializing in tax compliance, consulting, and family office management. They help clients and entities maintain compliance, operate efficiently, and plan for long-term financial stability.
As Karuna’s services and client base expanded, growing complexity made it clear their existing systems could not keep pace. Engagements, client data, and billing were split between Salesforce and a third-party tool, CCH. Staff were stuck toggling between the two, and processes that should have been seamless turned into bottlenecks.
Client intake at the lead stage was manual and repetitive, requiring multiple steps before engagements could even begin. Projects had to be set up separately for individuals, entities, tax, and family office services—often duplicating effort. Forecasted budgets lived in Salesforce, while utilization data lived in CCH, leaving leadership with an incomplete picture of performance.
Meanwhile, invoicing was particularly painful. Rates and expenses were entered manually for every log entry. If an error was spotted, the invoice had to be regenerated entirely. Historical invoices and WIP data were siloed in CCH, so staff couldn’t see the full client history in one place. The result was wasted staff hours, delayed billing cycles, and real risk of inaccurate invoicing.
At stake were three things: staff time, client trust, and leadership’s ability to see the true state of the business.
We began by analyzing the problem: Karuna needed Salesforce to act as the single environment where intake, engagements, timesheets, and billing all lived together.
Streamlining client intake: We configured a Client Intake (CI) form directly at the Lead level. Once submitted, Salesforce automatically created the client record and its associated engagements. What had once been a long, manual process now happened in moments, reducing lead-to-client conversion time dramatically.
Building the foundation for accurate time tracking: We designed a dedicated Timesheet UI inside Salesforce. Staff could log time daily, weekly, or monthly, covering external activities, expenses, and service codes, all tied directly to invoices. Approval workflows ensured entries were reviewed against the right Tax, Family Office, or Admin codes, so billing was both accurate and auditable.
Automating engagements and invoicing: Engagement rollovers, once rebuilt manually each year, became automated. Invoicing, previously split between CCH and Salesforce, was reimagined:
Bringing visibility into focus: We designed dashboards that consolidated staff utilization, WIP, budgets, invoices, and activity tracking—all in Salesforce. Historical CCH data was migrated, so staff had continuity of records. Reports for billable hours, forecasted budgets, AR, and projected revenue could now be generated in real time.
We also automated email triggers for compliance tasks like Tax, Property, SOS, FTB, and Delaware filings, removing reliance on manual Outlook sends.
Intake and engagement creation time dropped by 75%, allowing consultants to start work faster. Invoice generation was not only 90% faster but also more reliable, freeing finance teams from manual errors and regenerations. Staff utilization and budget visibility, once fragmented across Salesforce and CCH, came together in a single system. Consultants could log hours and expenses in one place, while leadership could track progress, budgets, and forecasts in real time. Historical data that had been trapped in CCH was now integrated, providing a complete picture of each client and engagement.
For the team, the biggest change was focus. Instead of losing hours to administrative tasks, consultants were free to serve clients. For leadership, decision-making became proactive, driven by accurate, timely insights. For clients, the impact showed up in smoother onboarding, faster invoicing, and a more professional, responsive experience.
