‘Our Mission is to Help 10,000 Companies Double their Profit Margins’: Vinnie Fisher, CEO of Fully Accountable

“Our software allows us to produce forward-thinking and advice-driven budgets, projections, and reporting-utilizing resources that a company would never get on its own accord.”

The financial health of a business can put significant stress on a business owner or even the leadership of large-sized companies. Ideally, the focus of the business owners and entrepreneurs should center on ideas and growth. But the leaking cash flow, figuring out profit margins and growth can be tricky. Based out of Fairlawn, Ohio, Fully Accountable is helping businesses stress less and succeed more by providing its expertise in accounting and in-depth knowledge of eCommerce and digital businesses.

After growing two eight-figure businesses with fast growth, many customers, and low margin, Vinnie Fisher, CEO of Fully Accountable, and his team were scaling an eight-figure health company with low margins once again. He discovered an issue in his back-office accounting department for his high transactions health company. He found that it was outdated and not equipped to operate in real-time, which did not allow the company to make crucial decisions to stop its leaky cash flow bucket and double the profit margin. When Vinnie looked outside his company in the industry, he discovered that no real solution to this problem existed.

Accounting and finance services, especially those offered by large firms and mom-and-pops, had not addressed this particular need of businesses (which experienced fast growth and dealt with many daily transactions). He first solved this problem for his health company and quickly realized that the need was far greater than just for his company. To address this issue, Vinnie established Fully Accountable, an outsourced full-service cutting edge accounting firm that helps eCommerce companies, consumed package good businesses, tech agencies, SaaS companies, and digital media firms through outsourcing its back-office accounting department and with fractional CFO Services.

In an interview with us, Vinnie Fisher talked to us about how Fully Accountable addresses the pain points of the accounting industry and helps business owners grow their business through its premium services and innovations. He further elaborated on the company’s ambition of helping 10,000 companies double their profit margins and much more. Read on for the excerpts from the interview.

Interview Excerpt: Vinnie Fisher

Q. What’s the greatest challenge that your company has faced? How did you overcome it?

The greatest challenge for Fully Accountable was adding innovation into the way an outsourced service was providing a fully-managed accounting and finance department to small- and medium-sized businesses with high transactions. There were a couple issues to overcome; first, there was a gap in small- and medium-sized businesses whereby they could not afford to hire all four of the primary positions to operate the department. Because their budget would simply not allow for an executive bookkeeper, data analyst, controller (accountant) and a CFO.

The second issue was the accounting and finance industry itself. The large big 4 firms on one end and mom-and-pop CPA firms on the other end dominate providing this service to the industry. Sadly, both are offering a service that is old, outdated and not equipped to operate a fully managed back office for fast growing, high transactions companies. So, we stepped in and created an affordable and highly effective solution that offered a fully managed back office, staffing a full department (4 positions) for the cost of less than having an accountant on your internal team. Better yet, we also developed our own enterprise solution to overcome the tech gap between the company and the department to allow for real-time reporting and maximum ways to double the profit margin of the company.

Our mission is to help 10,000 companies double their profit margins. The largest waste item in good growing companies is the loss of cash flow as it grows. 82% of companies go out of business due to waste of their hard earned money. We knew this had to stop if we wanted to see real innovation in this industry.

Today, we are happy to announce that we are serving hundreds of client companies in North America by offering an innovative solution to operating a fully managed back office solution for your accounting and finance department.

Q. Apart from increased options and convenience, how do you think you can provide good customer experience?   

Probably the greatest (secret) weapon and the item that far-and-away allows us to excel at an amazing customer experience is that we serve a certain niche industry. This allows us to train our entire team of experts to serve that industry. We say ‘we speak digital’ and that’s true from the CEO all the way to the accounting clerk.

All of our training and resource development is dedicated to each team member being an expert in this industry providing a service that they too are an expert at providing to eCommerce, tech agencies, consumer packaged goods, SaaS and digital media companies.

We also have a strong culture of hospitality in our executive team. As such, we noticed that the industry standard of bringing on a new accounting client was not so good. We decided to create a dedicated onboarding team to cultivate and foster an amazing first impression for the new client. We actually call this (internally) the “first impressions team.”

With us having a dedicated onboarding team and accounting experts that are industry experts in our community, we offer a customer experience that is the gold standard of our industry. Don’t just take our word for it: look at our amazing reviews and customer success stories evidencing our innovation and impact to this industry.

Q. You tailor your services to fit your clients’ needs and help them make smart, profitable decisions through your proactive and forward-thinking advice. How do you interpret this further?

Fully Accountable has an excellent reputation of expertise and professionalism in our industry. Our core framework and resources are designed to excel at offering services to eCommerce, tech enabled agencies, consumer package goods and digital media companies. That strategic move allows us to train excellence and consistency in how we deliver our service across all of our clients. In addition, we are tailoring for clients’ specific needs from a framework that primarily meets all of their needs and allows us to truly look forward and spend our time on reviewing and offering data driven advice that is actionable because we are all things digital.

Our motto is ‘Your Back Office Solution.’ In order for that to truly come to life, we created ‘YBO’. It is our enterprise software solution that allows us to offer a highly efficient and effective service for our client. Our software allows us to produce forward-thinking and advice-driven budgets, projections, and reporting-utilizing resources that a company would never get on its own accord.

Q. Apart from consulting and done-for-you outsourced accounting services, what are the other services your company offers?

As we have grown, it was clear to us that fractional CFO services that are effective and industry relevant are badly missing from our community. In addition to a fully managed back office, a company desperately needs a CFO to be an executive in helping guide the growth of operations and not a doer in the accounting department.

The issue is that small- and medium-sized businesses that are growing and maturing can barely afford a CFO – let alone have her be a doer of all four positions on the team. So, we created a fractional CFO service that allows the company to rent the executive it desperately needs to offer advice at the highest level of company operations.

We also offer through our CFO department, M&A support services, and capital raising guidance. We are also expanding our services as our industry is developing. Two years ago, we had a large legal development in the requirement for digital companies collecting and remitting sales tax on its sales and we responded by creating an entire department dedicated to providing this necessary service.

Q. Could you describe your typical management style and the type of employee that works well with you?

Fully Accountable is all about individual empowerment and team-first focus. We believe our greatest asset is the team we have here at the company. We put our team first which in turn puts the client needs at the highest level. We believe that our employees should be able to grow their skills and have a sense of independence while also being supported by the company. You will find team leaders for each department, but we run a macro-management style so you can trust your team members as well as managers here at Fully Accountable.

Q. Where do you stand as a company in the current market landscape? And what are you doing to stay ahead of the curve?

Fully Accountable is the industry leader. We are offering our fully managed service to eCommerce our community. We are the largest firm offering this service directly and exclusively to our industry. We continue to win awards for our growth, service and culture. We plan to grow this company deeper by expanding our message and reach in marketing and media channels, highlighting our current success.

As we set our sights on the future, we are already adding depth to our FinTech and tech-enabled services. We also are considering international expansion into English-speaking countries like Canada, UK and Australia.

Q. What are the factors that contribute to your success?

Our team is our greatest asset, hands down! It is common to be told that people work with us because of the culture. Here at FA, we don’t take this lightly, and it is what drives us every day. Our core values are caring, competent and committed - a winning combination for any organization looking to succeed. The leadership team is committed to constant improvement of our culture so we can attract team members who will thrive in their positions as well as expanding our team by hiring world-class talent who want to deliver an amazing experience for each client we serve. We are on a mission as a team and that means everyone has access to resources, training opportunities, competitive benefits packages – the list goes on. Our greatest assets are the people who have dedicated themselves daily to delivering an extraordinary service experience for clients across the country and around the globe.

Q. About your plans, where do you think your company will be in five years?

Our company will continue to be a leader in accounting and finance for our industry. We will work with hundreds of more companies, helping them double their profit margin so they can make an even larger impact on the world by delivering what their customers want. We also will consider expanding our industry reach and our global reach through international offices and operations.

The Leader Upfront

Vinnie Fisher, CEO: He is an entrepreneur and best-selling author with over 20 years of experience growing and scaling multiple 8-figure high transaction companies. His most recent mission is helping eCommerce, tech, and digital business owners improve their financial fluency and operate their accounting back office as a profit center.

“The greatest challenge for Fully Accountable was adding innovation into the way an outsourced service was providing a fully-managed accounting and finance department to small- and medium-sized businesses with high transactions.”