RevGroup is a financial services firm providing outsourced accounting, finance, and HR solutions tailored to startups and growth-stage companies.
Founded in 2017 by seasoned financial executive Julie Andriolo and based in Massachusetts, RevGroup supports clients across industries like software, biotech, and professional services.
With a team of 10 people coordinating client projects, it’s important that the internal operations run smoothly and without unnecessary overhead.
The Challenge
Working with Julie and the RevGroup team was a fascinating project because they were complete Notion beginners, migrating from tools that weren’t meeting their needs.
When I first connected with Julie, her frustration was clear: they were using Financial Cents, a purpose-built software for accounting firms that was increasingly getting in their way.
“I’ve invested tons of time actually getting this other system up and running. It’s just not sufficient,” Julie explained during our initial call.
Their challenges were numerous and familiar to many growing service businesses:
- Inflexible client management: “There’s only certain things I can sort by,” Julie shared. Their existing tool made it impossible to filter client data the way they needed, forcing workarounds like encoding information in contact fields.
- Fragmented workflows: Month-end closes, tax filings, annual reports – every client required the same cyclical processes, but there was no elegant way to track these recurring tasks across clients.
- Limited task management: Tasks had to be attached to projects, making personal task management unnecessarily complex. “I created miscellaneous projects in each client and then assigned it to me,” Julie explained – a perfect example of having to bend to a tool’s limitations.
- Missing visualisation options: “I love Kanban views,” Julie told us, but their current system couldn’t provide the flexible views they needed to track work effectively.
- No unified information hub: Client details, software credentials, third-party provider information – all existed in disconnected places with no easy way to link them together.
What made this situation particularly challenging was that RevGroup wasn’t just looking for a better task management system. They needed a comprehensive solution that could handle their specific accounting workflows with recurring monthly processes while maintaining flexibility for different clients’ needs.
As Julie put it: “It would be great to have all this in one place that serves as our single source of truth.”
Now we needed to build a solution that would deliver exactly that – without disrupting their day-to-day operations serving 20+ clients.
How we structured the Notion Consulting Process
The way we work with clients is a bit different from what you might expect from a typical consulting project – for good reasons.
We are big believers that systems are something very personal and that every company needs their own approach to work to function perfectly (rather than a cookie-cutter one-size-fits-all solution).
What’s more, you and your team know your business best.
So it’s our job to ask you the right questions, identify what’s currently stopping or frustrating you, and then translate that into a scalable Notion setup.
For RevGroup, we implemented our 4-week sprint methodology, tailored specifically to Julie’s team of accounting professionals who were completely new to Notion.
Here’s what this looked like in practice:
- Weekly sprint planning: Each Monday, we’d connect with Julie to review progress, gather feedback, and set clear priorities for the week ahead. This kept the project moving forward while remaining responsive to what the RevGroup team was learning about Notion’s capabilities.
- Rapid prototyping: Instead of spending weeks designing a perfect system in isolation, we built functional prototypes within days. This meant Julie could immediately test whether our approach to client management and recurring task workflows actually solved her problems.
- Continuous feedback loop: We maintained an open Slack channel where the RevGroup team could share thoughts, ask questions, or request changes as they started using the system. This feedback-driven approach meant we could course-correct quickly rather than waiting for formal review points.
- A lot of 1-on-1 time: Whenever Julie needed us, we jumped on a call with her to resolve things quickly (rather than getting caught in an endless back-and-forth of emails & messages)
After completing the initial 4-week sprint, we transitioned to our “Notion On-Demand” support model.
This gave Julie the flexibility to continue evolving her system as the team gained comfort with Notion – adding new features like recurring sub-tasks or client-facing portals whenever they were ready for the next step.
This phased approach was perfect for RevGroup as Notion beginners. It allowed them to see quick wins while avoiding the overwhelm of learning an entirely new system all at once.
Instead of trying to rebuild everything immediately, they could gradually transition away from Financial Cents as they gained confidence in their new Notion workspace.
Implemented Solutions for Revgroup
Speaking of continuous progress – here are the key highlights from our work with RevGroup and how they impacted their day-to-day operations:
1. A Flexible Way to View Client Data (Finally!)
RevGroup was working with a legacy software package designed for accountancy and bookkeeping firms. Although the team was accustomed to its idiosyncrasies, they increasingly found themselves bumping up against limitations that were getting in the way of efficient work. Simple needs like filtering client data or adding custom tags were impossible, causing daily frustration.
We replaced this rigid system with a flexible database approach in Notion that gave the team complete control over how they viewed and interacted with client information.
Now when Julie or her team needs to:
- See all clients managed by a specific controller? Two clicks.
- Filter clients by industry or service type? Instantly available.
- Create custom views for different purposes? No problem.
- Track custom fields for each client? Add them anytime.
The difference was immediate. Where before the team had to adapt their processes to fit their software’s limitations, now their workspace adapted to how they actually thought about their business.
2. A Client-Centric Task Management System
Every company has one central object that everything else revolves around. For RevGroup, that’s clearly clients.
While this seems obvious, their previous tools forced a project-first approach that didn’t match how they actually worked. Tasks had to be attached to projects, even when they were standalone items.
We built a system where clients are the organizing principle, and everything – projects, tasks, documents, and contact information – connects back to them. This structure mirrors how Julie and her team naturally think about their work.
Now, when anyone clicks on a client in their system, they have instant access to:
- All active and completed tasks for that client
- Upcoming deadlines for tax filings, reports, and other deliverables
- The complete team assigned to that client
- All relevant documents and resources
- Contact information for the client and third-party providers
This eliminated the constant context-switching that had been eating up so much of the team’s time. Instead of jumping between different views and tools to get a complete picture, everything they needed was finally in one place.
3. Flexible Recurring Processes Using Notion Automations
Monthly closes, quarterly reviews, annual filings – RevGroup’s work follows predictable cycles that repeat for each client, but with important variations based on client needs.
We built a system of templated processes using Notion automations and Make.com that allows the team to:
- Deploy standardized task lists for monthly closes with a single click
- Customize recurring processes for each client’s specific requirements
- Schedule tasks with different frequencies (monthly, quarterly, annually)
- Automatically assign work to the right team members
- Track completion status across all clients in real-time
This eliminated hours of manual task creation and management each month. As Julie told us, “Before, we spent so much time just setting up the same tasks over and over. Now we can focus on actually doing the work.”
4. Daily Task Emails and Progress Tracking
Even with a central place to manage your tasks, it can be hard to stay on top of everything.
That’s particularly the case if your team is new to Notion and not yet used to checking their personal dashboard – so instead, we bring your tasks to you.
For RevGroup, that meant setting up a personalised, daily email that shows them
- The tasks due for the current week
- A summary of what they’ve completed already completed this week
This provides both accountability and satisfaction – team members can see their progress and start each day with a clear understanding of priorities.
It also eliminated the “did I forget something?” anxiety that often comes with juggling multiple client responsibilities.
5. Client Information Hubs Using Notion Sites
The final piece was creating accessible information hubs for each client using Notion’s sites functionality.
RevGroup works closely with over 20 corporate clients, and the staff are used to fielding frequent inquiries such as:
- Who is my assigned bookkeeper and what’s the best way to get in touch with them?
- What is my company’s tax ID?
- What’s our next deadline?
- How can I see my paystubs or W-2?
- How do I get reimbursed for a business expense?
We developed a drag-and-drop builder that allows the team to quickly create client-specific information pages that can be shared with the client. They include a brief profile of the team members assigned to them, a tailored FAQ section and a link to any important documents they might need to access.
The result is a system where any client employee can quickly be brought up to speed. This has been particularly valuable as RevGroup continues to grow, making onboarding new clients and team members much smoother.
These solutions represent just the foundation of what we built with RevGroup. But they showcase the core principle behind our approach: combine the right tool (Notion) with the right structure (client-centered) and the right automation to let talented professionals focus on what they do best.
No more fighting with inflexible software or hunting for information across disconnected systems – just a streamlined workspace that gets out of the way and lets everyone do their best work.
