Future Firm Accounting Podcast · 2026-07-08 · 9 min
Key moments - from our scoring
Substance score
44 / 100
Five dimensions, 20 points each
Ryan Lazanis explores a counterintuitive principle in firm management: that cutting visible costs by eliminating automation often creates larger invisible costs in human labor and opportunity. When he considered switching his 20-client coaching program from credit card processing to manual ACH invoicing to save $18-24K annually in processing fees, his COO immediately rejected the idea, framing it as a regression away from efficiency. Lazanis unpacks why she was right by examining what costs actually buy - in this case, automation that requires only minutes to process versus manual invoicing, collections follow-up, and reconciliation that could consume five or more hours monthly. He presents a practical framework: calculate the true cost of manual labor (hourly rate multiplied by actual hours spent) and compare it to the automation cost, accounting for the opportunity cost of what that team member could accomplish instead. This principle extends beyond billing - Lazanis shows how accounting firms commonly make similar errors by not renewing software tools, handling collections in-house, or choosing cheaper vendors without honestly accounting for the administrative burden created. For firm owners, the lesson is that financial discipline requires distinguishing between costs worth paying (those that preserve efficiency and client experience) and genuine waste, rather than reflexively cutting every visible line item.
Identify who will perform the work, estimate the actual hours per month required (accounting for invoicing, follow-ups, and reconciliation), then multiply by that person's hourly rate (either their salary divided by annual work hours, or market rate for a firm owner's time). This labor cost should be compared directly against the automation cost to see the real savings.
Accountants are trained to find, name, and eliminate visible numbers, so software fees and processing charges feel tangible and easy to target for cuts. Meanwhile, the hidden labor cost of manual work doesn't appear as a line item on the P&L until the firm runs out of capacity, making it psychologically easier to overlook.
True financial discipline requires evaluating what each cost actually buys and whether the alternative genuinely costs less when all factors are included. Penny-wise, pound-foolish cutting targets visible costs without accounting for invisible labor and opportunity costs that often exceed the savings.
Going manual makes sense primarily for low-volume, non-recurring tasks where the labor burden is genuinely minimal. For recurring, client-facing processes like billing that require ongoing attention and create cascading administrative work, the efficiency and experience benefits of automation typically justify the cost.
Our reviewer’s read on each dimension, with quotes from the episode.
The episode delivers a clearly articulated thesis about opportunity costs and the hidden burden of manual processes, with concrete reasoning about why automation has value. However, the core insight - that visible costs can mask larger invisible costs - is not particularly novel in operational management discourse, and the episode relies heavily on one extended example rather than layering multiple distinct lessons.
When someone decides to go manual on something that's currently automated. You see the software cost, the processing fee, the subscription line item. Those numbers are visible and they sting. What you don't see is the opportunity cost of the human time you're about to consume, because time doesn't have a line item on the P and L until you realize you've run out of it.
If going manual on something that's currently automated costs a team member five hours a week instead of five minutes, you haven't saved money. You've traded a small visible cost for a large invisible one.
The episode presents the opportunity cost concept competently but without fresh or contrarian framing. The idea that cutting visible costs can create larger hidden costs through labor inefficiency is well-established in operations and management theory. The presentation is clear but derivative, lacking counterintuitive angles, first-principles reasoning, or arguments that would surprise a thoughtful operator.
Every time you remove an automation to save a few thousand dollars, you're moving in the opposite direction. You're trading a system that runs without anyone thinking about it for a recurring task that requires someone's time and attention every month. That's not efficiency, that's regression.
The instinct is see a visible cost, eliminate it. Feel like you've done something smart. It's satisfying in a way that's almost Pavlovian.
This is a solo host episode with no guest. The host (Ryan Lazanis) presents himself as a coach running a group program for accounting firms, but there is no external practitioner or operator interviewed to validate claims or contribute alternative perspectives.
I run a small group coaching program for around 20 firms, all averaging about a million dollars in revenue.
The episode includes one detailed worked example (credit card processing fees at 18-24k annually, manual invoicing estimate of 5 hours/month at $100/hour = $6k/year) which is concrete and helpful. However, the other examples mentioned (software subscriptions, collections work, cheaper client options) are generic and lack numbers or named cases. The evidence is tied heavily to a single scenario rather than multiple concrete data points or external examples.
In my case, the credit card fees were 18 to $24,000 a year. But if my team spent even five hours a month on manual invoicing, collections and reconciliation, and I valued that time at $100 an hour, that's $6,000 a year in hidden costs.
It might be deciding not to renew a piece of software because it costs a few hundred dollars a month, only to find that three team members are now doing manually what the software was doing automatically. Or deciding to handle collections yourself to avoid a service fee, or only to find you're now spending two hours a week chasing invoices
This is a solo monologue with no interviewer and therefore no host-guest dynamic, follow-up questions, or conversational push-back. While the speaker does walk through reasoning clearly and pose rhetorical questions to the listener, there is no genuine dialogue, no one challenging claims, and no evidence of the host testing or probing assumptions in real time. The format severely limits conversational quality.
So before you make any decision to cut a cost by going manual on something, I'd encourage you to ask a few questions. First, who is actually going to do this work?
Here's a framework I'd suggest for evaluating any cost you're tempted to cut by going manual.
Computed from the transcript - who did the talking, and the words that came up most.
Sometimes the most expensive decision you can make is the one that looks like a saving - and here's how to tell the difference before you act.
Transcribed and scored by The B2B Podcast Index.
Speaker A: Hey there, firm owners. I'm Ryan Lazanis, and you're listening to the Future Firm Accounting Podcast, the place where you'll get one practical lesson each episode to help you unlock freedom and growth in your firm. Thanks for tuning in today. I want to share a story about a decision I tried to make recently that, in hindsight, I was pretty dumb. And I'm sharing it because I suspect a lot of you have made the same kind of calculation at some point, or are tempted to right now. Here's what happened. I run a small group coaching program for around 20 firms, all averaging about a million dollars in revenue. It's a higher ticket program and it generates around $600,000 for us. And at some point I started looking at our costs and noticed we were paying 3 to 4% in credit card processing fees on that revenue. Do the math, and that's somewhere between 18 and $24,000 a year just walking out the door in fees. So I had what I thought was a pretty smart idea. 20 clients is a manageable number. We could invoice them manually, process payments via ACH or bank wire, and skip the credit card fees entirely. Easy save, right? We can spend a bit of manual time and keep that money instead of handing it to a payment processor. My COO vetoed it immediately. Her exact words were, no, we're trying to create efficiencies. We shouldn't be bypassing efficiency and customer experience to save 4%. Don't be cheap. And honestly, she was completely right, and I knew it the moment she said it. But I want to unpack why she was right, because I think the instinct that led me to that bad idea in the first place is one that shows up constantly in how firm owners make decisions, and it costs them a lot more than credit card fees. The instinct is see a visible cost, eliminate it. Feel like you've done something smart. It's satisfying in a way that's almost Pavlovian. You found the leak, you plugged it. The number went down. But what that mental model misses is that every cost in a business is buying something. Sometimes what it's buying isn't worth the price, but sometimes it absolutely is. And cutting it doesn't save you money. It just shifts where the cost shows up. The problem with my thinking was that I was looking at one number, the 18 to $24,000 cost, and treating it as a straightforward savings opportunity. But I wasn't accounting for what that manual process would actually require. A team member would need to send invoices manually each billing cycle, follow up with the clients who were slow to pay, and reconcile incoming bank transfers against the right accounts. That's not a huge amount of work per client, but multiply it across 20 clients every single month, and you've created a real ongoing administrative burden. And whoever is doing that work is not doing something else with that time. This is the thing that almost never shows up in the spreadsheet. When someone decides to go manual on something that's currently automated. You see the software cost, the processing fee, the subscription line item. Those numbers are visible and they sting. What you don't see is the opportunity cost of the human time you're about to consume, because time doesn't have a line item on the P and L until you realize you've run out of it. And this is a bias that's actually pretty deeply baked into how most accountants think about costs, myself included. We're trained to find the number, name it, and eliminate it if possible. That's good practice for client work, but when you apply that same mindset to your own operations, or without accounting for what the alternative actually costs in time and capacity, you end up making decisions that look smart on paper and create real problems in practice. Think about it this way. If going manual on something that's currently automated costs a team member five hours a week instead of five minutes, you haven't saved money. You've traded a small visible cost for a large invisible one. And the invisible cost is often much more damaging because it shows up as capacity you don't have or growth you can't pursue. And a team member who's spending their week on admin work instead of on something that actually moves the needle. I see this pattern play out in accounting firms all the time, and it takes different forms. It might be deciding not to renew a piece of software because it costs a few hundred dollars a month, only to find that three team members are now doing manually what the software was doing automatically. Or deciding to handle collections yourself to avoid a service fee, or only to find you're now spending two hours a week chasing invoices, or choosing the cheaper option for a client, facing process and discovering that the friction it creates is quietly eroding the experience that keeps clients coming back. In each case, the math looked good. On the surface, the cost was real and visible, the savings seemed straightforward, and what wasn't visible was everything on the other side of the ledger. So before you make any decision to cut a cost by going manual on something, I'd encourage you to ask a few questions. First, who is actually going to do this work? And how many hours a week are we actually talking about? Think about what those hours are worth, not just in dollar terms, but in terms of what else that person could be doing with that time. If a team member is spending meaningful time on it, think about what they're giving up to do it. If you're doing it yourself, that's almost certainly not the best use of a firm owner's time. There are genuine cases where the math works out and and going manual is the right call. 20 clients sounds manageable until you're the one chasing the three who are always late. But in a lot of cases, especially when the process is client facing or touches your billing and collections, the efficiency and experience you're giving up to save that money is worth more than the money itself. So here's a framework I'd suggest for evaluating any cost you're tempted to cut by going manual. Start by figuring out who actually, actually does the work. If you remove the automation, name the person, then estimate honestly how many hours a month that task takes. Multiply it by what that person's time is worth. Either their salary divided by working hours, or, if it's your time, what you'd need to be earning per hour to justify your role as firm owner. That number is your real cost of going manual. Compare it to what the automation costs you, and now you have an honest picture. In my case, the credit card fees were 18 to $24,000 a year. But if my team spent even five hours a month on manual invoicing, collections and reconciliation, and I valued that time at $100 an hour, that's $6,000 a year in hidden costs. Before you factor in the client experience degradation of switching from seamless automatic billing to manual invoices. The actual saving was much smaller than the headline number suggested and and potentially negative when you included the full picture. This is the calculation most firm owners skip because the software fee is right there on the invoice and the human cost is invisible. But the invisible cost is just as real. It shows up in capacity, in burnout, in client friction, and in the slow erosion of the efficiency standards you've been working to build. Protecting those standards is worth paying for. My COO's framing stuck with me. We're trying to create efficiencies. That's the direction we should be moving. Every time you remove an automation to save a few thousand dollars, you're moving in the opposite direction. You're trading a system that runs without anyone thinking about it for a recurring task that requires someone's time and attention every month. That's not efficiency, that's regression. When you're making decisions about cost, the question isn't just whether something is expensive. The question is whether the thing it's buying, the time, the automation, the client experience is worth the cost. And often, especially for processes that run in the background and keep your firm running smoothly, the answer is yes. For some things, there's just a cost of doing business. The trick is knowing which costs are worth paying and which ones to push back on. Credit card processing fees that save save your team hours of manual work every month are worth every penny. A subscription to a tool nobody uses is not. The distinction matters, and making it well is part of running a healthy firm. Real financial discipline isn't just about cutting costs. It's about understanding what each cost is actually buying and being honest about whether the alternative is genuinely cheaper or just cheaper on the invoice. Sometimes the most expensive decision you can make is the one that looks like a saving I'll end where I started. My COO was right and I was being cheap. Not in a financially disciplined way, but in a pennywise pound foolish way. The kind of cheap that saves you $18,000 on paper and costs you something harder to measure in practice. Knowing the difference between those two things is one of the more underrated skills a firm owner can develop. Hopefully that helps. And if you want more help, be sure to check out my future firm Accelerate program will help you unlock freedom and growth in your through proven systems, expert coaching and a like minded community of hundreds of others just like you. For more info, just head on over to www.futurefirmacccelerate.com so that's all for today. Hope you found today's episode helpful and I'll catch you in the next one. Take care.
Other episodes covering the same guests and topics, from across The B2B Podcast Index.
From Weekly Resignations to Zero Turnover: A Case Study in Team TransformationRevenue Rehab · on Team capacity planning68 / 100
21 in 21: Joe Carlo on How Bitcoin Changed Pink Owl Coffee Forever21 in 21 · on Credit card processing fees65 / 100
SMME #489 Stop Being the Most Expensive Employee in Your BusinessSpa Marketing Made Easy · on Team capacity planning49 / 100Fast and Broken Is Still Broken55 / 100The Pricing Tactics I Actually Use in My Old Firm55 / 100Go Senior Early. Here's Why.62 / 100My Review of a Real Firm's PackagesWho Not How: The Mindset Shift That Changes Everything