GreenOak Accounting grows its client base by 317%, saves 10+ hours a month
Serving nearly 500 mental health, wellness, and physical therapy practices, GreenOak Accounting uses Ignition to automate proposals, recurring billing, and payments, giving the team more time to focus on growth instead of admin.
"Ignition saves us a tremendous amount of time on the back end with operational processes, which allows us to focus on seeing more clients or doing more sales calls."
Sarah Riley, Business Development Manager, GreenOak Accounting
The challenge: Building the process before you need it
GreenOak Accounting has built its reputation by serving a highly specialized market: mental health and physical therapy private practices. As the firm expanded, so did the complexity of managing hundreds of ongoing client relationships.
Long before GreenOak reached its current size, the firm made a deliberate choice: standardize the path from discovery call to signed agreement to first payment, and automate as much of it as possible.
That decision is what made a dedicated business development hire possible.
When Sarah Riley joined as Business Development Manager in 2020, she stepped into a proposal-to-payment workflow that already worked - rather than building one from scratch, or absorbing the administrative load that usually comes with the role. Since then, GreenOak has grown from roughly 120 monthly clients to nearly 500 and expanded to 35 employees.
With Sarah leading business development, every hour not spent creating proposals, chasing payment details, or updating client agreements is an hour available for building relationships with prospective clients.
As the firm continued to scale, that foundation had to hold - supporting more clients, more engagement types, and a growing team without adding administrative overhead.
The solution: Automating proposals, billing, and payments to sustain growth
Ignition has become the operational backbone of GreenOak Accounting's client onboarding and recurring revenue process.
After every discovery call, Sarah builds a customized proposal based on the client's needs. Using proposal templates, she can create and send a professional proposal in less than 90 seconds.
"It literally takes me minutes. I can generate a whole proposal in less than a minute and a half."
Because most clients sign 12-month ongoing agreements, Ignition automates the entire recurring billing process for GreenOak Accounting. Clients enter their preferred payment method when they accept the proposal, and monthly payments are collected automatically from their agreed start date.
"I love that we get to set up payments in Ignition and know that billing will be running in the background without additional effort. Our clients appreciate the reliability and simplicity of Ignition."
That hands-off experience extends to the exceptions. Ignition gives the team clear visibility into declined payments and expiring cards, and clients can update their own payment details through a link - with minimal involvement from the team.
Because most clients pay by ACH, GreenOak also keeps processing costs down - automatically, without adding a single manual step.
A signed proposal that kicks off the entire onboarding
For GreenOak, accepting a proposal isn't the end of the sales process - it's the trigger for everything that comes next. A signed Ignition proposal fires roughly a dozen Zapier automations across the firm's systems.
The client is created in GreenOak's project management system. An onboarding email with next steps goes out. The leadership team is notified that a new agreement has been signed. And tasks are generated automatically so everyone can see who is onboarding and where they are in the process.
By the time anyone opens their laptop, the scope of work, the service start date, and the client's contact information are already in front of the team.
"Our Director of Operations can get straight to work on a team assignment, because she has everything she needs at her fingertips."
The result is a client experience that feels immediate and organized from the moment the agreement is signed - with no handoff gaps for the team to fill in manually.
Ignition also carries the tax team through the busiest stretch of the year. Seasonal tax work runs on different terms than GreenOak's ongoing engagements, and Ignition handles that without a workaround. The firm collects a 50% deposit upfront and bills the remainder before the return is filed, under its own set of terms and conditions - all within the same proposal flow. A separate set of Zapier automations populates GreenOak's tax season project board the moment a proposal is signed, so no return falls through the cracks.
Room to keep growing
Beyond individual features, Sarah believes Ignition has helped the business continue scaling without adding operational complexity.
"Ignition saves us a tremendous amount of time on the back end with operational processes, which allows us to focus on seeing more clients or doing more sales calls."
Sarah estimates the platform saves her more than 10 hours each month across proposal creation, billing admin, and seasonal workflows, allowing her to spend more time growing the business.
"We've been able to really grow the business. We've gone from about 120 monthly clients in 2020 to almost 500 today."
The simplicity of Ignition has also made adoption easy across the team.
GreenOak has worked with Ignition since before Sarah joined the firm, and she's watched the platform evolve alongside GreenOak's own growth. Proposal templates have reduced proposal creation to less than 90 seconds, and Sarah values how simple it is to update existing agreements as client needs change.
"Ignition has kept up with our growth. The team has been very receptive to our feedback... Ignition is nothing like what it was six years ago."
Today, GreenOak continues to rely on Ignition to deliver a professional client experience while giving its team more time to focus on what matters most: helping more mental health and physical therapy private practices succeed.