Powerful Accounting

Customer Story

How a CPA’s efficiency allows her to spend time with her passion as a collegiate softball coach

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More Productivity. More Freedom. Powered by ScanSnap.

ScanSnap Customer Story: Dawn Brolin, President and CEO, Powerful Accounting, Inc.

Video Description: This customer story features Dawn Brolin, President and CEO of Powerful Accounting, Inc., discussing how efficiency, technology, and digital document management have helped her build a flexible accounting practice. The video includes interview footage of Dawn speaking, scenes of office work and document processing, and demonstrations of ScanSnap being used in daily workflows. Background music plays throughout.

[00:00 - 00:08]

Visual: Dawn Brolin appears on screen in an office setting. Opening customer story footage introduces her business.

Dawn Brolin: "Efficiency will give you freedom to be able to live your life the way you never imagined you could live it."

Audio: Background music plays.

[00:08 - 00:24]

Visual: Dawn speaks while footage of her office and business operations is shown.

Dawn Brolin: "My name is Dawn Brolin. I'm the President and CEO of Powerful Accounting, Inc. out of Windham, Connecticut. And we've been in business for 28 years. Been around for a while. Have grown the firm large and brought it back small and very focused on efficiencies, productivity, and being out of the office as much as possible."

[00:24 - 00:44]

Visual: Office and work-related footage accompanies the interview.

Dawn Brolin: "In 2011, I had left a partnership that I was in, which was a partnership that you had to be at your desk, be in an office. That's the ball and chain. And I decided I was going to do things different. I was going to be a person who could be anywhere at any time and work if I wanted to."

[00:44 - 01:02]

Visual: General footage of document management and office technology.

Dawn Brolin: "Technology really wasn't a thing back when I started. I mean, in a partnership situation, we had a lot of file cabinets. The technology that has progressed over time has allowed us to be so much more efficient. Being able to implement tools, being able to scan documents, get them away from a file cabinet."

[01:02 - 01:18]

Visual: Documents are scanned and digital workflows are shown.

Dawn Brolin: "ScanSnap allows me to get the documents where I need them, when I need them, for quick quality, productivity, and efficiency. The ScanSnap's the first stop. So, with the ScanSnap iX2500, what's great about it is it allows you to set up profiles within the ScanSnap."

[01:18 - 01:34]

Visual: Footage demonstrates document scanning and digital organization.

Dawn Brolin: "As you put the papers, receipts, whatever it may be into the scanner, you get to choose where you want it to go. If you want to scan receipts into QuickBooks Online, there's a profile for that."

[01:34 - 01:44]

Visual: Documents move through a scanning workflow.

Dawn Brolin: "The quality is perfect. We're able to easily pop that piece of paper into the scanner, push the button, it scans, we name it, put it right into SmartVault, and we're done in seconds so that there's less bookkeeping to do."

[01:44 - 01:58]

Visual: Dawn works in her office while examples of organized digital files are shown.

Dawn Brolin: "Really, at the end of the day, my life after implementing ScanSnap so that we have a full permanent document storage system that everyone in my firm knows where everything is. Those efficiencies make us rock stars in this firm."

[01:58 - 02:12]

Visual: Dawn continues speaking as office footage is shown.

Dawn Brolin: "So freedom to me looks like my ability to make choices. And because we've implemented so many systems, I'm not busy at Powerful Accounting. I'm productive."

[02:12 - 02:20]

Visual: Dawn smiles as she reflects on the impact of efficiency in her business.

Dawn Brolin: "Without ScanSnap and without that time, without the efficiencies, I would not be able to golf. I would not be able to enjoy myself. I pride myself on a five-hour workday. And without ScanSnap, that would not be possible."

[02:20 - 02:24]

Visual: Closing interview footage.

Dawn Brolin: "I'm blessed. I'm so thankful."

[02:24 - End]

Visual: ScanSnap logo appears on screen, followed by "ScanSnap Customer Stories" branding.

Audio: Background music continues and fades out.

A six-hour CPA work day? How one CPA firm pulls it off

Can a CPA maintain a thriving business with a six-hour work day, even during tax season?

With the right tech automation, this accounting firm is eager to point the way.

CPA Dawn Brolin is the “Designated Motivator.” As CPA and owner of full-service accounting business Powerful Accounting in Windham, Connecticut, Brolin is an energetic business owner and business coach.

She leads a small, highly effective team. “I don’t work more than six hours a day,” Brolin states.

The right high-speed scanner, she says, is indispensable to optimizing an accounting firm’s time and workflows.

“I used to wear the 80-hour badge of honor,” admits Brolin. “But was I really being productive those 14-hour days? I teach people how to be efficient and productive, not busy,” she says.

Instead, three overarching components enable Powerful Accounting’s efficiency and shorter work days:

This structure has enabled Brolin to maintain a prosperous full-service accounting firm while also coaching college softball full-time.

The benefits of ScanSnap® for accounting

Improving processes created satisfying workdays

The seasoned CPA has been in the field for 25 years, and she is passionate about her practical approach to creating a rich, balanced life as a CPA.

Her life outside of work is both meaningful and accessible now that her work days are more manageable. Brolin said that she doesn’t miss practice and doesn’t bring work with her.

She says when she knows she needs to leave to coach, she doesn’t want to have to come back, and she doesn’t, thanks to optimizing her processes. Likewise, she can visit family across the country and stay on top of her work thanks to improved processes.

“Now, if you've ever worked with somebody under audit— lots of paper. It’s all about how you set boundaries in your workflow. And the scanner has to be part of that workflow,” the CPA says.

Brolin has used a scanner of some kind for most of her career. To Brolin, the workflow and way forward to shorter work days is something every CPA and accounting business can achieve, but that in her experience, many firms don’t.

Her approach is lean. She said that paper documents are still important, but that a predominantly paperless workflow is achievable and is fundamental to her productivity.

“It’s so much bigger than just another tool or a piece of equipment in your office. Without that tool, I’m dead in the water."

Dawn Brolin Owner and CPA of Powerful Accounting, on ScanSnap®
Green softball on mound.

Staying organized with lean processes

Flatbed scanners were one of the only options when Brolin first started, and scanning page-by-page for financial documents was tedious.

But when she left a partnership and went back on her own over a decade ago, the first step she took was to go paperless. “All right, we’re going to get a ScanSnap and get SmartVault,” she told her team.

As an early adopter to digitization, Brolin began using SmartVault, the cloud-based document management software to collaborate with her team. SmartVault recommended ScanSnap scanners to her. ScanSnap® easily integrates with SmartVault software to digitize the firm’s large tax documents and to create shareable secure files.

The ScanSnap® iX2500 Receipt Edition automates data extraction, creating editable files everyone on Brolin’s team can review. Because of it, Brolin said, she can scan a tax or financial document to her remote team member and they don’t need to talk about it.

“It’s so much bigger than just another tool or a piece of equipment in your office. Without that tool, I’m dead in the water,” Brolin asserts.

"This is my assistant. This is an extension of my work. This (scanner) is an employee. That’s the way that I look at it.”

Dawn Brolin Owner and CPA of Powerful Accounting, on ScanSnap®
Magnifying glass with bulls eye in the middle of the lens surrounded by business icons.

Freedom to securely collaborate from anywhere

ScanSnap® features Wi-Fi connection and direct scanning to the cloud, enabling her team to receive client tax and finance information instantly and securely.

Employing secure document management allows her team to work remotely and instantly. From depreciation schedules to 1099s, a single document to large insurance docs, they get scanned and sent directly to the software. “[As] soon as you’re done, work papers go right into the scanner, right into SmartVault,” Brolin says of how her team collaborates.

ScanSnap® saved time processing tax documents

Brolin says that she continues to see many professionals overwhelmed with paper clutter in their work life. “When you’re in a room and everyone is talking, it’s such an overstimulation. Papers do the same thing to me,” Brolin notes.

Still, IRS representation creates “lots of papers,” Brolin acknowledged. Organizing the lengthy checklist of personal and business documents requires secure storage and scanning speed.

The ScanSnap® iX2500 Receipt Edition is an office scanner with a document feeder that is faster than other models she has used, too.

Powerful Accounting can scan reports, returns and piles of paperwork in, as Brolin notes, “not even a minute.” She included with a laugh that the ScanSnap® is so fast that it’s “coming through like fire.”

“This is my assistant. This is an extension of my work. This (scanner) is an employee. That’s the way that I look at it,” Brolin says.

She also advises clients that audits can and do happen, and may be happening more post-pandemic. She encourages both clients and accountants to be efficient in how they prepare.

Clients need her and her team to be at their best, especially during audits. Because she optimized her processes with dependable equipment and software, Brolin confidently says that now, “we look like heroes, because we have everything together.”

Dawn Brolin is a seasoned CPA and productivity coach for accounting professionals and firms. She delivers webinars and hundreds of keynote speeches. Brolin has appeared on popular news programs and received numerous awards in the accounting industry.

Power through tax season with the
ScanSnap iX2500 Receipt Edition

Optimized for Quickbooks®

Product Features:

  • Direct-scanning to Quickbooks® accounts
  • Exclusive Invoice and Receipt OCR processing features
  • 33% faster for more productivity
  • Easy touch-screen navigation
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ScanSnap iX2500 Receipt Edition scanner with touchscreen and open feeder showing an invoice and receipts.