I was so inspired after reading Building a Sustainable Accounting Firm by Blake Oliver (you can find our book review here) that I kicked off Hash Basis 3.0 at the end of August. I often go through seasons of improvement, especially when I’m feeling lackluster or unmotivated by the business. It’s no secret that accounting work can get dull (especially when you’re closing the books month after month), so I get creative within the business to feel that over-achiever kick that I crave.

Before diving into HB 3.0, I want to quickly recap our last innovation cycle, which I dubbed (uniquely) Hash Basis 2.0. This was in summer 2025, after I “fell off” and got burned out from wedding planning stress and busy season lows. I wanted to find happiness again inside the company I built, so we made a few changes:

• We deprecated our individual service line, choosing instead to work only with companies
• Our website got a makeover :)
• We started a podcast, Mr. Martino’s Ledger!
• We committed to bringing back the newsletter and our blog posts

The changes were successful and it’s been easier to commit myself to marketing activities since I enjoy them and have more time for them now. We’ve transitioned exclusively to working with companies (with the exception of 1-2 personal friends of mine that we do crypto tax for), and we’ve dropped the complicated, international tax C-corp returns as well. Our workload feels more balanced, as does our client count. My hours are down to 35-40 hours a week (sometimes more during close week but it’s manageable). So overall, Hash Basis 2.0 was about reintroducing fun and equilibrium back into my life - which is a hard, but necessary lesson for any entrepreneur to learn.

Since I’ve got my personal time back now, Hash Basis 3.0 is instead aimed at our internal processes and future. The four main areas of improvement are:

• Team
• Security & Compliance
• Quality Management
• Documentation & Knowledge

I realize these are four important areas of any company, but they’re especially critical for a remote crypto accounting practice. My long-term goal is to build the valuation of Hash Basis so one day, I can exit the firm at a handsome price - but it takes time to build a profitable, smoothly-operating company that someone will want to buy. You need all of the above components to make it an attractive asset.

When I started Hash Basis, I had no clue what I was doing. I had a dream, one client, and a small loan from my family. While I’m still not a business expert (especially when it comes to hiring and delegating), there is one tool at my disposal now that my 25-year-old self would kill to have: AI.

So to create Hash Basis 3.0, I began the way we all do now - I braindumped my vision, learnings from Building a Sustainable Accounting Firm, ideas, experiences, documents and notes into Perplexity Computer (via Granola) and told it to organize this menagerie of thoughts swirling around my brain. See below for a few snippets of this conversation:

"I've been so deeply involved since I started — I'm the main accountant, client contact, salesperson, basically everything. What I'm trying to do is make it so the business can run without me. My ideal goal is to work five to ten hours per week on the business starting 2027."

"I think it's actually really cool what I've managed to build over the past four years. It's a cash-generating business that I built, and I want to keep it going... I don't actually hate accounting. It is boring — but doing this high-level strategy stuff is interesting. And I like making little assets, I like creating and putting stuff out there in the world. And if I can express myself that way, through a business... I think I've done a pretty good job of that so far."

"I want the people actually doing the work to document everything and have that be part of their job."

"I want to move to a system where the client's credit card is basically just charged on the first day of the month and we just get payment automatically... I want to make the AR process as seamless as possible, and I just want to get a little bit more strict about billing. i.e, we will not start doing your work until you pay us."

After this spiel, Perplexity drafted a series of Notion docs that solidified my thinking into actionable next steps. The results were way better than I imagined, but it took a fair amount of time to read and react to all the AI-generated content. My ideas were at the core, but it was astonishing how easy it is to make lots and lots of docs/slides/images now. I briefly wondered if this exercise would become the “enshitification” of Hash Basis, but I think it’s okay since I actually read the AI-generated slop and edited it. 🤷🏻‍♀️ Here’s our version of Hash Basis 3.0, which I ideated and pulled together in a weekend, all thanks to Perplexity.

Team & Hiring

I finally have more coverage on the bookkeeping side! One of my existing contractors took on more hours and responsibilities, so I’m finally moving out of prep work (at least the majority of it). It took almost four years to get to this point, and I’m so thrilled. I still have a few other part-time contractors, but having someone more full-time is definitely a game changer. Perplexity wrote her updated job description, including an updated portfolio of clients she was in charge of and a bonus system tied to month-end accuracy and efficiency.

Perplexity also built a training and onboarding plan for her since was taking on several new customers. I’m a big fan of checklists and clearly defined outcomes, so I particularly liked this section called “Success criteria for end of October”:

By the end of October 2026, the following should be true of the contractor. She:

• Owns recurring portfolio closes within the agreed scope and close calendar
• Completes the standardized close checklist and signs off before reviewer handoff
• Maintains draft client runbooks for assigned clients
• Documents open items, questions, supporting-file gaps, and escalation points clearly for review
• Keeps the W-9/W-8 tracker current for the assigned portfolio and advances the identified vendor-audit work
• Uses approved systems, MFA, least-privilege access, and required security practices
• Maintains informational workload tracking and raises sustained capacity concerns promptly

I toyed with the idea of hiring a fractional crypto controller, but I realized the cost doesn’t outweigh the benefit yet. I’m still interested in actively working in the business, so a manager-style role only makes sense if we grow more and I’m looking to fully step back.

Security & Compliance

Ah, you can’t have a functioning accounting firm without thinking about security and compliance items. We’ve been upgrading our security ever since we built the WISP Workshop tool through Perplexity computer. There’s so many detailed things to think about, from cyber insurance to google drive access audits and malware detection. One of the biggest gaps we had was in educating our contractors on security best practices and collecting security attestations from them.

So without further delay, I had Perplexity draft an annual security training presentation and one-pager and presented the training to our staff. We covered a few main bullet points:

• Why data security matters for an accounting firm
• Phishing and social engineering
• Device security and account hygiene
• Data handling
• AI tools policy
• Incident response

It was interesting to think through our AI policy because it’s such a new tool that contains great power and peril. I don’t want my contractors uploading sensitive financial information into the free version of ChatGPT or Claude - which is fairly obvious but it’s good to spell out our policy and review where we can use AI safely and effectively.

Perplexity even created a quiz for our staff and drafted security attestations that everyone signed. The final document was the “Contractor Device Security Addendum.” Contractors typically use their own devices to complete work, so there’s several tech requirements we have to make sure their devices are secure. Examples include:

• Full-disk encryption is enabled: FileVault on macOS, BitLocker on Windows, or an equivalent Hash Basis-approved control on another supported operating system
• Automatic operating-system and browser security updates are enabled
• Reputable, current anti-malware or endpoint-detection-and-response (EDR) protection is installed and active where supported by the device
• Multi-factor authentication (MFA) is used for every Hash Basis account and every client-related account.

Quality Management

This area of improvement was directly inspired by Building a Sustainable Accounting Firm. “Quality” is such a nebulous concept but I was subconsciously trying to deliver it every month - I just wasn’t putting a label on it. We now have a defined standard of quality for our month-end close customers and a numerical way to measure our progress against it. For example:

• All balance sheet accounts reconcile to their underlying support/statements
• New vendors have had W-9 or W-8 forms requested each month
• Statements and documentation are saved
• All crypto transactions are in the subledger and categorized
• Material ending wallet balances per the subledger agree to on-chain
• Cost basis ties from the crypto subledger to the general ledger
• Unknown addresses are resolved with the client
• All closes are delivered by the deadlines on Double

We also place emphasis on our staff getting more accurate and efficient. Bonuses are tied to reviewer-logged errors and time savings over the quarter (through using AI, designing more elegant processes, etc). At the end of the day, our customers pay us for a clean set of books and for the high-touch communication we provide.

A practical result of creating this QM system was the changes we made within our firm management system, Double (formerly named Keeper). Double lets us specify close tasks per customer and assign staff members and due dates to each item. Within each close, I create a new section entitled “Preparer Checklist.” On this list, the staff preparer certifies that their work is complete, all questions have been passed on to the reviewer, and any significant flux changes within the financials have been investigated. It gives more ownership to the preparer and holds them accountable. Everyone wants to feel like they’re done a good job, and these checklists are a tool to get you there.

I also almost created a “close scorecard,” but I figured that would be overkill considering our number of clients. Sometimes too much data can become a burden in itself.

Documentation & Knowledge

Finally, as part of Hash Basis 3.0, I wanted the firm to get better at documenting our knowledge and customer-specific processes. Not only is this key when staff members change, but it introduces order to the chaos - and potential buyers like to see that. I’ve been making Loom videos for over five years now (and I even met the founder of Loom), but these mini-movies are scattered within my account. My goal is to consolidate my month-end processes into different “client runbooks,” essentially just SOPs with text, videos and images. I’d like any accountant to be able to read these runbooks and do the job with minimal errors.

The great part about accounting is that we have several standard procedures, like bank reconciliations, deferred revenue waterfalls, prepaid amortization, etc. The tricky part for crypto accounting is that it’s still hard to lump all our clients into one bucket and run the same crypto close. Our clients are transacting on different blockchains with different tokens and using a myriad of protocols/tools. There’s no “one size fits all” in the metaverse. So instead, our runbooks will be hyper specific on the crypto section with more generalized knowledge for the fiat accounting side.

Other Miscellaneous Hash Basis 3.0 Items

• I set my team up with Perplexity Computer accounts (our approved AI tool)!
• Migrated most team month-end communications to Double - it’s much easier to answer questions linked within a specific task than to sift through them on Slack
• Set a weekly 1:1 with my full-time contractor
• Thought more deeply about what I really want out of Hash Basis and what the long-term outcomes could be

Who knew running a business would inspire so much soul searching! Hash Basis 3.0 might be more of an internal change, but I rather strengthen my inner rafters than paint my exterior a flashy pink and blue. Both the firm and I are maturing and figuring out this whole question of what it means to be alive, to have purpose. And for now, part of my purpose is running a crypto accounting firm that cares about its customers and delivers great, consistent work.