How a Top 200 Firm Improved the Employee Experience with Suralink

Over the past few decades, YHB have used various methods for sending lists of requests to clients and collecting client documents. In the past, some clients provided paper copies, and some sent documents by email before data security became a primary concern. Occasionally, the firm would set up an FTP site for a specific client to transfer files securely.

For the past decade, however, YHB have been using a third-party document-sharing tool to send and receive documents securely. While clients and employees have found the tool easy to use, client folders tended to become disorganised if staff and clients didn’t follow uniform naming conventions and folder organisational structures.

Drew Throckmorton, CPA and Audit Principal at YHB, calls the COVID-19 pandemic the “not-so-gentle push” the firm and its clients needed to find a better way. In the Fall of 2021, YHB implemented Suralink.

 “The pandemic forced people who liked paper and didn’t see the need to change to do things a different way,” Throckmorton said. “They found out it wasn’t so bad.”

Now in their second busy season with Suralink, around 90% of their audit and review engagements rely on Suralink for automating the request list and document workflow process. Their tax, consulting, and advisory teams are also starting to use Suralink.

“Other groups are intrigued by it, so we expect to grow our usage in other service lines,” Throckmorton said.

Client adoption has been strong as well.

While YHB doesn’t have exact numbers on how much time the firm has saved using Suralink, Throckmorton said it’s significant.

That time savings has allowed YHB’s team members to enjoy a better quality of life. “It’s allowed our team to be more efficient and grow with fewer hours per FTE,” Throckmorton said.

‘Matthew Smith, Principal and Audit Service Line Leader at YHB, credits Suralink—at least in part—for improving the team’s work-life balance and for YHB’s low staff turnover rate, which is below the industry average.

That commitment to leveraging technology to improve employee lives even helped YHB bring back a former manager who had left the firm to work in industry.

Around five years ago, this manager left the firm because he was considering starting a family and couldn’t see how he would balance the public accounting workload, travelling for audit engagements, and family life.

YHB was able to re-recruit a manager who’d left public accounting—something that is almost unheard of—because technology allowed them to offer greater flexibility and more reasonable hours. Throckmorton said, “Without Suralink, I’m not sure I could have told him enough had changed.”

Following YHB’s successful implementation of Suralink, their employee experience has improved, and productivity has risen dramatically. Creating a better work-life balance for employees doesn’t have to involve firing profitable clients or automating work to the point of becoming disconnected from those clients.

By empowering employees with the right tools and resources, firms can put their people first, keep clients happy, and grow. 

Suralink is the leader in request list and document management, helping businesses simplify the document exchange process while improving the client experience.

The company’s cloud-based application integrates a dynamic request list and assignment workflow solution with a secure file hosting platform to serve as a single location for client interaction. Suralink’s technology, combined with its industry expertise, helps more than 1000 clients in North America and the UK ensure security, simplicity, transparency, and accountability throughout the document exchange process.