Certus Accounting & Tax Services

About Certus Accounting & Tax Services

Certus Accounting & Tax Services is a growing firm of 30 staff, based in Orem, Utah, serving clients in almost every state across the US.

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When Lee Bowen took over the firm four years ago, he inherited a mix of old and new hardware, plus a team that wanted more flexibility around how and where they worked.

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His vision was to build a modern firm with the right tools to support flexible and remote working, without losing the personal touch clients expect.

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Problem

As Certus grew and embraced flexible working, their existing phone setup couldn't keep up.

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Key challenges included:

• Outdated phone equipment: A mix of old and new phones meant inconsistent call quality for staff and clients.
• Clients couldn't reliably reach the team: When staff worked from home or on the road, calls to the firm's main number didn't always make it to the right person, leading to a poor experience for clients.
• Slow, manual note-taking: The team relied on pen and paper to capture client calls, then typed notes into their practice management system (Karbon), which slowed things down and risked missing details when conversations moved quickly.

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Solution

When Certus discovered VXT, they found a phone system that solved their hardware problems, kept the team reachable from anywhere and integrated directly with Karbon.

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With VXT, the team saw:

• Remote flexibility without compromise: As a cloud-based system with mobile and desktop apps, VXT lets staff make and receive calls from the office number anywhere, ensuring a consistent and professional presence whether they're at home, in the office, or on the road.
• Faster documentation and automatic saving to Karbon: Calls, notes, transcripts, and text messages can be saved directly to the correct work item or contact in Karbon, eliminating double-handling and keeping all client information in one place.
• Stronger client relationships: With every conversation captured in Karbon, the team can provide a consistent experience to clients and build the kind of relationships that go beyond email.

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By modernizing their phone system, supporting flexible ways of working, and ditching the pen-and-paper notetaking workflow, VXT has become a core part of how Certus operates.

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The result is a more flexible and organized firm that can deliver expert guidance to clients wherever the team happens to be working.

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"VXT makes my job so much easier," says Alyssa Gunnell, Accounting Business Partner at Certus.

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“With VXT, it's really nice to be able to have an option to put the client notes directly to a work item in Karbon.

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“It’s more reliable and more organized than pen and paper, which is an immense benefit.”

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Lee adds: "Since adopting VXT, we're better than where we were before having implemented it.”