How Sagan Financial Group Slashed Prep Time in Half Using Truss

Founded with a tech-forward mindset, Sagan Financial Group replaced its “messy” intake system this past tax season with Truss, and it saw huge results. Prep time dropped by roughly half, client follow-ups were nearly eradicated, and 94.9% of clients who rated the new platform gave it a thumbs-up. Co-founder David Agan was so enthused that he built a custom MCP on Truss’ APIs to automate onboarding through Claude in the years to come.

Sagan Financial Group was co-founded in 2022 by David Agan and Tony Sanders, CPA. The firm runs roughly 400 individual and 100 entity returns per year, and 30-50% of its individual returns include a Schedule C.

Sagan was built around the belief that client relationships can begin with a tax return, but the indicators of success are found when you drill down farther. Co-founder David Agan puts a heavy emphasis on selling the planning that comes after a client fills out their first organizer.

“Sagan is a premium accounting service. Our goal is to go above and beyond what most CPAs or accounting firms do,” Agan said. “When most people do their taxes, they get their taxes done, get handed the number, and get told, ‘Have a good day, see you next year.’ We do a lot with planning and strategy. Advisory is really our forte.”

Agan’s co-owner and mentor Tony Sanders, is a CPA of 36 years who had begun winding down his own practice before deciding to combine forces.

“He and I got together and decided it was time to start a firm together,” Agan said. “We decided that together we could probably do something pretty cool. That was four years ago now.”

Sagan’s client base skews business-focused, with around 400 individual returns and 100 entity returns per year, with a ballpark estimate of 30-50% of the individuals containing a Schedule C. With that mix, intake is usually more complicated than grabbing a W-2, so incoming documents have to be efficiently sorted to keep the busy season from falling off the rails.

As the driver of the firm’s tech stack, Agan knows the efficiency of that intake process falls upon his shoulders, and he doesn’t like leaving things at arm’s length. It’s also important to him that Sagan gives off the impression of being ahead of the curve when it comes to adopting AI.

“I’m very techy and push the tech forward constantly. I think it’s what makes our firm better,” he said, describing work with APIs and custom MCPs. “You name it, I’m probably touching it at some point.”

Before adopting Truss, Sagan used custom Zoho forms tied to a shared work drive to power intake. Staffers were moving files manually into client folders, and submission notifications were sporadic enough that any return could be delayed by a week if a document came in undetected.

As the architect of the old intake method, Agan was willing to admit things weren’t perfect. Something that worked on paper wasn’t the same as a well-functioning system that could handle volume and complexity.

“If I’m being honest with myself, it was a mess,” Agan said. “Somebody would have to watch that inbox and manually move files over to a client’s specific file. Clients would bring stuff in, and there was no good organization to it.”

Though submitting files was easy enough on the clients’ side, Agan and his staff were often left in the dark when it came to notifications. That created unwanted bottlenecks that could create chaos, and give off the impression that the clients were being ignored when they weren’t.

“Sometimes there were issues with the notifications, where we wouldn’t even know something got submitted,” Agan said. “Then a week later, we’d see it and have a panic moment.”

Even if a document was dropped off in person and scanned into the system, work on the return could stall. Handoffs had to be diligently communicated, because the uploads wouldn’t always announce themselves in the system.

“That just creates panic and mayhem,” Agan said. “It’s nice to have a central point.”

While shopping for an intake solution, Sagan learned about Truss through the content of accounting influencer Jason Staats. Agan was skeptical of AI tools after underwhelming demos with competitors, but quickly bought in once he saw how the product could be applied to his workflow.

Agan was already evaluating software solutions for his firm’s workflow when he came across the content of the accounting industry’s chief influencer, Jason Staats. That was his first introduction to Truss, but the recommendation from Staats didn’t immediately solve Agan’s skepticism.

“Oh, the whole thing, just being honest,” Agan said, when asked what made him nervous about giving Truss a shot. “A year ago, AI integration was not amazing with a lot of programs. We’d tried it with a couple things and it was not impressive. Other places had great demos that real life didn’t add up to. So I was real skeptical going in.”

Even after signing the contract with Truss, Agan reported that onboarding came with an adjustment period. But he didn’t realize at first that he had a wealth of learning materials at his disposal from Truss and its customer success team. The real unlock was the ability to check in with CS reps and fellow firms on the platform on a weekly basis.

“I really like how y’all are doing the weekly meetings now. I think that helps the onboarding process so much more,” Agan said.

After using some of that standing time to pre-test the API work he was hoping to implement on top of Truss, Agan quickly made sure that all of his client engagements ran through Truss as the central source of truth.

“Every client goes through Truss, even if they bring stuff in,” Agan said. “We create an account, they get a portal, we send out the notifications, and when they bring things in physically, it’s scanned and put into Truss, and statuses and tags are updated.”

Agan is a builder at heart, and his long-standing frustration with tax software tools was that they couldn’t talk to each other. So when he saw that Truss had APIs, his immediate first thought was that he could finally build a connected system. He worked with Claude to build a custom MCP, and the impact was immense.

“It’s changed everything. We don’t even have to create the contact, entity, or project anymore,” Agan said. “We just tell Claude, ‘We met with this client, they’re onboarding, go ahead and create a portal for them,’ and it takes care of the rest.”

Under the new, custom system Truss enabled, Sagan self-reported cutting its prep time in half. Drops in client calls, reminders, and follow-ups were estimated between 50-75%. Document requests weren’t only easier for preparers to track, but 94.9% of the 98 clients who rated their experiences handed out positive scores.

After making the jump, Sagan saw the biggest, most impactful gains in the areas they were hurting the most beforehand. Chasing clients for documents and getting bogged down in the prep time became relics of the past, which can be seen in how the data behind the firm’s workflow has evolved.

“I’d say our prep time has cut probably in half,” Agan said. “Requesting documents has become a lot easier. And calls, and annoyance, and notifications, and ‘hey, don’t forget.’ That’s all cut down. I’d say 50-75%. It’s a huge number.”

The gains came with a high-volume impact.

In its first season on Truss, Sagan ran 617 projects and collected 7,745 client document uploads. Clients taking notice was the No. 1 signal to Sagan that the change was working. Platform data showed that 93 of 98 clients who rated the experience (94.9%) were satisfied with using Truss for their yearly engagements. Many of those clients told Agan that they weren’t happy with the old way of doing things, which made a change all the more welcome.

Good client-facing technology is far from a nice-to-have. For Agan, that ranks close behind the base-level fundamentals of the practice in terms of importance.

“Knowledge and skill are number one. Customer service is number two. Third is the way you communicate with your clients,” he said. “Going from a system that didn’t communicate well and keep clients in the loop, to this, has definitely been a game changer for my firm.”

Sagan used AI-assisted preparation on close to 50 returns this season, handling the rest via in-house contractors. But Agan is taking things a step further for the upcoming season, with a plan to handle all 1040 returns with a custom-built prep engine that can keep the engagement flowing through Truss from intake through delivery.

“I’ve built my own version internally where it can do a 1040 start to finish, do a full review, CPA analysis, and tax planning all in one shot,” Agan said. “That’s part of why I’m leaning on Truss to create more APIs I can use, because that’ll speed up that process for me.”

Time saved is time to sell advisory services, and Agan sees meaningful gains coming from using Truss that he can put towards driving the firm in the direction it’s meant to be headed.

“Truss, with the other tools I’ve made to work with it, takes our firm from mindless data entry, sourcing documents, and bugging customers to true client relations,” Agan said. “We can have conversations and do the advisory work our clients really care about.”

Agan says he has recommended Truss to at least a half-dozen firms already. He gives a direct pitch with a simple cost-benefit analysis: good technology is worth paying for, and the time savings a firm sees using Truss will more than pay back the cost of the software.

If a fellow firm owner is weighing their decision, Agan’s answer is consistent:

That advice, in Agan’s mind, is directed first and foremost at firms that share his ambitious nature. Firms looking for platforms that can not only solve their headaches, but provide opportunities to grow the practice. For Sagan in particular, the APIs were the kind of game-changer that transformed Truss from just another tool in the tech stack into a foundation for the entire tax workflow.

Sagan Financial Group came into its Truss demo skeptical, feeling burned by AI tools that didn’t live up to the hype, all while running an intake process its own owner and co-founder described as a mess. Less than a year later, it has slashed prep time in half, eliminated a serious notification bottleneck, and sees 95% positive feedback from its clients on a new platform.

Even in comparison to other Truss firms, Sagan has a unique story. Because Truss builds through APIs, this technically ambitious firm is building on top of the product rather than simply adopting it at face value. With client onboarding automated through a custom MCP, the staff is freed up to maximize the advisory work that Agan wants to define his practice.

Truss is proud to partner with firms like Sagan because work that doesn’t require critical thinking, like intake and follow-up, shouldn’t siphon all of an accounting team’s hours during busy season. Not only that, but the builders among our customers deserve a platform that can keep up with their ambitious visions for the future of their firms.