FAQs

Interview with Linda Hunt
- Frequently Asked Questions

What made you decide to leave your corporate career and start SUMSOLUTIONS?

People often ask me why I started SUMSOLUTIONS and how I got where I am today. I actually hadn't thought about having my own business-until I came to an impasse with my boss.

For the previous 5 years of my corporate job, I had been traveling 95% of the time and I was burned out. Being on the road was suddenly not as glamorous as it had been. I decided it was time to have a conversation with my boss about staying home for a while. He was sympathetic, but also said he needed my adaptability and flexibility in the field. I was not a happy camper and started to think about ways this flexibility and adaptability could get me what I wanted.

Almost as soon as I set my mind to my new goal, I found what I needed in an interesting place. During my weekly trips to and from the airport, I had had some interesting chats with my limo driver. On the drives, I learned about the difficulties he was having with his business partner and that they were planning to split up. The next thing I knew I was doing an evaluation of the financial and operational aspects of his business—exactly where my expertise lay. I knew that I could help them.

I began the evaluation process by speaking with each partner and staff member to gain an understanding of what they did and how the business operated I realized I was feeling an excitement about work I had not felt in a long time. I cleaned up the financial records and implemented simple procedures that made the business more efficient, I found I was able to utilize the flexibility and adaptability my boss wanted in a way that made me happy. To top it off, the two partners were no longer talking about dissolving their partnership. Instead they were talking about expansion. I couldn’t have received a better outcome! I helped them to get their business relationship on track. To me this was extraordinary and something I had never really experienced in my glamorous corporate career.

Well, my “limo clients” were very happy. They told several other business owners about me. The next thing I knew I had 8 clients in addition to my corporate job! One of them had to go. Yes, this decision had its element of risk. But for me it was a no-brainer, I officially left my corporate job in Fall 1998 and never once looked back.

Who are your clients?
Our clients are generally small-to-midsize businesses with annual revenue between $1 million and $25 million that need higher-level accounting expertise than a bookkeeper can give them on a day-to-day basis. We help clients by refining their operational processes, implementing or improving financial controls and successfully executing these strategies. We have worked with attorneys, real estate development firms, insurance agencies, non-profit organizations, healthcare clients, and construction and engineering companies, to name a few.

What happens if you haven’t worked with companies in my field yet?
I have found that many of the challenges faced by business owners today transcend the industry they’re in. Using our proprietary tool, SUM Assess, we review each critical function performed in your business—from initial customer contact to payment collection and all the steps in between—to uncover any bottlenecks that cost your business time and money. Many of our clients have told me that an unbiased perspective is often what’s needed to see through to the source of the challenges that face a company in order to work toward a solution.

Why should we consider using an outside, independent firm to perform our accounting?
We are not employees, and so we have the freedom and the ethical fortitude to “tell it like it is.”

Our financial services combine the affordability of outsourcing with the convenience of having financial experts working on your business in the amount of time needed to service your account properly at a fraction of the cost of hiring full-time accounting personnel. In addition, utilizing an outside independent firm keeps financial results and payroll information confidential at all times.

In what way is hiring sumsolutions different from bringing in an independent bookkeeper or other bookkeeping firms?
What sets us apart from our competition is our approach. We implement simple systems and routines, making your business “systems-dependent” as opposed to people-dependent. In addition, each account is assigned a team of experts—an Account Specialist who is responsible for the day-to-day transactions and a deFacto CFO who oversees and supervises your account.

How will we work together?
We work with clients in a variety of ways: on a recurring basis where our clients select a service or group of services that are performed on-site, at their location or virtually, at our location at a set frequency or on a project basis—with a finite starting and end point. It all depends on the client’s needs. Our approach involves three steps:

• Discovery. However we work together, we begin by meeting and listening to you and your team. We assess where you are now and clarify what “success” will look like to you.
• Planning. The client then identifies who will work with us from their team as we move forward. We collaborate in setting goals and plans for achieving results. Together we develop the course of action.
• Implementation. We help our clients execute the plan, working in tandem with the team that is responsible for achieving the goals. We check progress regularly and suggest adjustments as needed to achieve results.

If you work for clients in similar industries, how will I know information about my company won’t be shared with my competitors?
We adhere to the highest ethical standards of confidentiality and do not divulge client-specific information. We agree to confidentiality provisions as we work together to increase comfort levels.

I can see the benefit of working with sumsolutions. How do we begin?
Give me a call toll free at 866.760.5126 and we can arrange a time to get acquainted. Feel free to e-mail me at . After we talk and agree there would be a mutual value in working together, we’ll arrange a time to meet in person. During that meeting I will listen to your needs and learn about your current situation and together we can then determine the next steps toward executing your success!