CAS Clarity in 5: Questian Telka on Building a Mission-Driven CAS Firm
Questian, Welcome to the cast Clarity in five. Thanks for joining us. This series is designed to spotlight people doing kick ass stuff in the accounting industry. So before we jump into the questions, could you give us a quick overview of your firm, kind of team size, and the services you offer?
Questian Tlka:Yeah. Thanks so much for having me. This is exciting. I love that you're doing this. So my firm is myself and three others, so pretty small.
Questian Tlka:And we service primarily nonprofits. We have a lot of disability advocacy nonprofits. And the services that we offer are CAS services. So bookkeeping, accounting, you know, preparing for audits. We don't actually do audits because we're not a CPA firm, but we get our clients ready to go for audits.
Questian Tlka:We do a lot of budgeting and forecasting for them and some nonprofit advisory services as well.
Luke Templin:Awesome. Since this series is powered by FinDaily, a tool built to automate financial digest of your numbers, how often do you check your firm's numbers?
Questian Tlka:Monthly. I mean, I pretty much know what they what they always are, just in the back of my mind. But, yeah, I I take a look at them pretty often.
Luke Templin:Cool. Let's get into five questions. What's the overarching goal or mission that's driving your firm?
Questian Tlka:Supporting the missions of nonprofits. It's a, you know, a huge passion of mine. I have history with a child that has, some disabilities, and so really heavy into helping support nonprofits that are doing good and, you know, just creating a better world and community. And so helping them be able to understand their numbers is you know, that's the way that I give back is that's the thing that I'm good at. So that's that's how I've kind of built my my practice around my passions.
Luke Templin:Yeah. I love how you incorporated your firm and kinda your personal life into that. That's awesome. Yeah. Okay.
Luke Templin:What's the tech tool that saves you the most time
Questian Tlka:currently? Carbon. Mhmm. Hands down. Love I love carbon.
Questian Tlka:Carbon obsessed.
Luke Templin:Yeah. Awesome. Yeah. What is your favorite KPI either internally or externally and why?
Questian Tlka:I think my favorite internally is probably I like to look at my client churn, and I think it's probably because I like the number, but it's also because it's something that's really important to me. I think that relationships are a big part of my business and, you know, building solid relationships and making sure that that we're hanging on to our clients as well as onboarding new clients is expensive. So, you know, increasing services with a current client is always, in my opinion, better than, you know, trying to onboard more.
Luke Templin:Yeah. Churn's a big one you hear in the SaaS industry, but not as as much in our industry. Is there a target or is it really just focusing on retaining clients?
Questian Tlka:I I think I'm really just focusing on retaining clients. And, you know, I wanna keep it as low as possible, but certainly under 10%, I would say.
Luke Templin:Mhmm. Okay. When you're stuck on the client decision, growth challenge, or just having a rough day, how do you get unstuck?
Questian Tlka:So I always have coffee in the morning and wine at night. Like, those are my two things that I do for myself every day. And if I'm really stuck, this is kind of an odd one, but, like, I think through things in the shower. Yes. On a walk or in the shower.
Questian Tlka:And so it's like, I'll just go and think through a difficult problem that way. And that seems to those two things seem to work best for me. And the other tip that I would have or share is like, it works well if I do the hard thing first. So if I have a list of of things to do, I have to always makes myself do the thing that I want to do least first.
Luke Templin:That that's a challenge for me. Eating the frog is tough. I've gotta ask. I love wine too. What's your favorite type?
Luke Templin:Like
Questian Tlka:So I like European whites. And so, like, muscadet. And what are some of the other ones? I like dry, minerally whites across the board. So if it fits that profile, that's generally that's what I'm going for.
Questian Tlka:Gruner, that's, I think, like, Austrian
Luke Templin:Mhmm.
Questian Tlka:Whites. So some of those.
Luke Templin:What's the one thing you wish you did sooner in your firm?
Questian Tlka:Documenting processes.
Luke Templin:Mhmm.
Questian Tlka:That was a big mistake that I made, and I'm still paying for it. Start that from the beginning.
Luke Templin:Yeah. I think a lot of people think, oh, hire someone and they will document the processes, and I have found that not to be the case.
Questian Tlka:Yeah. Right? Well, then you miss things too. And it's so it's really about having a brain dump, getting everything that's in my brain out so that so that it's documented for employees as you hire or for myself so I can go back to it if I need to.
Luke Templin:And are you putting those processes in carbon or they live somewhere else?
Questian Tlka:Yeah. They live in Carbon. And I use tools like Loom or Scribe. Mostly Loom, to be honest, record videos and put them in there and then document the processes in in Carbon. So when a team member needs to go and learn how to do something, they have the entire workflow for whatever it is that they're doing.
Questian Tlka:And in the task itself, if they expand the task in Carbon, then it has all of the the processes underneath and what they need to do exactly in order to to complete that task.
Luke Templin:Awesome. Alright. This is your turn. Is there something you wanna share either a story, something you're working on that you think would be valuable to the accounting community?
Questian Tlka:Yeah. I have to share my big passion project, which you and I were just kind of talking about, which is the she counts podcast. So that's a podcast for women in accounting and our advocates. So we want men to listen too, and it's kind of a, hey. You can get you can get inside of our brains if you're listening to it, and it's real talk.
Questian Tlka:It's not, you know, we just kind of say it like it is. Nancy and I are both really vulnerable. It's not about, you know, hating men in any way, shape, or form. It's just about talking about issues that women are facing on a daily basis in our industry and in business in general. So that's that's what I've been working on that's been consuming a lot of my time and is also a a huge passion of mine.
Luke Templin:Awesome. We'll put that in the show notes. Question, thanks for joining me. Is there any other place for people to follow your journey?
Questian Tlka:Yeah. I think my LinkedIn page would be best if you wanna put it in the show notes. I can't even remember what the link is. So
Luke Templin:Perfect. We'll find it.
Questian Tlka:Alright. Thanks for having me on. This is great.
Luke Templin:Appreciate it.
