Oskar Escobedo has built two businesses in El Paso, Texas — Elevate Tax & Accounting for tax compliance and bookkeeping, and Elev8 CFO for financial forecasting and fractional CFO work. For years, he managed it all the traditional way: QuickBooks Desktop, manual exports, formatting reports, sending PDFs. Each month took roughly 108 hours. The close cycle stretched to 18 days. Two-thirds of every month was spent producing financial statements instead of helping clients understand them.
"Before, I was a bookkeeping factory," Escobedo said. "Now I don't do bookkeeping anymore."
The turning point came when he discovered Digits, an AI-native accounting platform. He wasn't buying software — he was buying infrastructure he could build on. The migration of 27 clients took about 40 hours, roughly half what he expected. The first full month-end close told the real story: close time dropped from 18 days to just five. Monthly bookkeeping work declined from roughly 108 hours to about 20 hours. Nearly 90 hours came back to the practice every month.
Escobedo didn't stop there. Leveraging the platform's API, he built a customized reporting workflow that automatically generates and distributes branded monthly financial statements. All 27 migrated clients receive automated monthly reporting, while 10 have transitioned to self-service dashboard access.
Today, he supports 37 client engagements across construction, real estate, childcare, lending, and professional services — without employing a single staff accountant. The reclaimed time has gone into growing the business: a new website, SEO, LinkedIn presence, additional advisory services, and a stronger client acquisition strategy.
"For the first time, I had time to work on growing the firm instead of just keeping up with client work," he said.
His message to other firm owners is practical: start small. "I would say start with five clients. Run one parallel close. Make sure the reconciliation is good and the numbers tie. That's your proof. The migration wasn't the risk. Waiting was."