Known for their impeccable customer service, Utah-based Christensen Essig manages small business accounts payables, receivables, payroll and tax prep as well as serving as some clients' entire accounting department. Senior housing company Maple Springs is one of many end-to-end Christensen Essig customers using isolved to help manage its four facilities and over 500 employees.
“Since working with Christensen Essig and using isolved People Cloud, Maple Springs has doubled its number of locations and employee size,” said Dave Essig, managing partner of Christensen Essig. “Before isolved, we were using QuickBooks and then Sage and both were clunky, not easy to use and didn't have very many options. This level of growth would be difficult before isolved.
“When we moved to isolved, it was eye opening for our clients because they were used to having multiple, unconsolidated software systems. They didn't know all that functionality that even existed. With isolved, we help Maple Springs and others easily manage HR, payroll and, soon, benefits. Our implementation team has been fantastic. They clearly know the system and are some of the best people I've ever worked with.”
While Christensen Essig's primary customers are small businesses with 30 or fewer employees – who can't yet justify the salary of in-house HR and payroll – it also scales with growing businesses, all on isolved People Cloud.
“One of the things that impresses me about isolved is how well it serves the small business as effectively as it does the enterprise,” said Essig. “isolved's many different services and solutions that companies can grow into is beneficial, so we don't need to find different software as our customers grow. isolved is also super customizable. Any challenge we've taken to isolved, someone has been able to figure out what we need.”
While growth, to some degree, can be predicted, the COVID-19 global health crisis exposed many company's digital readiness for the demands of a changing workplace and new legislation designed to help companies retain staff despite revenue changes. One such legislation was the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) – with its intense reporting requirements which were nearly impossible to manage without a digital archive of data that could be easily called upon for reporting.
“When PPP came out, accounting firms saw a tremendous spike in activity because everyone went to their accountants to help,” said Essig. “Our firm filed 40 PPP applications in a year and for clients on isolved, it was a walk in the park for both applying for the loan itself and for applying for forgiveness, due to the available reports within isolved.”
Legislation will continue to change, as will client needs and Christensen Essig is confident they have a partner in isolved to navigate the changes.
“For us, our smaller clients just need payroll and don't need an HCM but as they grow in size and complexity, we are there with isolved to manage those changes,” said Essig. “We've had nothing but a positive experience with isolved and are positive our business and our customers' businesses can grow together. We love the company. No complaints.”