Scale CPA, a fully remote cloud accounting firm serving approximately 100 small businesses, was drowning in emails. With a growing team of 15 employees and contractors, the firm’s partners (Howard and Alex) became an email triaging bottleneck.

Clients would email them, and they would have to manually delegate the emails to their managers. Dozens of times a day.

Transparency also became an issue when an employee suddenly stopped responding to clients, the team had no visibility into what communications had been missed or what needed immediate attention.

The search for a solution

Scale CPA initially considered Front, but found it too feature-heavy and expensive for their needs.

After discovering Missive through online research, they found it offered the perfect balance: the collaborative features they needed at a price point that made sense for their business.

"It was kind of a no-brainer," said Chris Wattinger, Operations Anaylst at Scale CPA. "Missive had all the stuff we wanted from Front, it was more affordable, and the implementation was pretty easy."

In-email collaboration: more impactful than expected

While Scale CPA knew they wanted better email collaboration, they didn't realize just how transformative it would be for their workflow.

"Being able to draft and collaborate on emails was a functionality we were looking for, but we didn't fully realize how impactful it would be," notes Wattinger.

This collaborative approach has significantly changed how Scale CPA works, reducing their reliance on copying and pasting content between tools and eliminating the need to keep Slack open alongside email.

How Scale CPA organizes client communications

Scale CPA has implemented a thoughtful structure for managing their client communications:

• ‍Partner-level emails: High-touch clients communicate directly with partners‍
• Central inbox: Most client emails go to info@scalecpa.com‍
• Team spaces: High-volume clients and specific service categories (like payroll) have dedicated team spaces‍
• Automated routing: Rules automatically move emails from the info inbox to appropriate team spaces based on domain and subject

"For high-volume clients, emails are automatically added to their respective team inboxes," explains Wattinger. "This allows our contractors to access them without needing access to the general info inbox, which might contain sensitive information."

Advice for other accounting firms

For other accounting firms struggling with email management, Wattinger offers this advice:

"Focus on the collaboration aspects first. The ability to work together on client emails is game-changing, even if you don't implement all the advanced features right away."

For Scale CPA, Missive has transformed how they handle client communications, providing much-needed visibility and collaboration capabilities without overwhelming complexity.

"Everybody's just been like, 'Missive is great,'" Wattinger says. "We all love it. It's been a huge value add."