A look at our milestones over the years
Chad & Josh meet in February 2013 with the idea of combining technology & tax under one roof.
In July 2013, we hired our first employee and Cloud Accoutant, Dave MacPherson. He requested four test-run days with Chad & Josh which began our commitment to trial work days for every potential hire at LiveCA. Dave is now Partner, Strategy & Finance.
In December 2013, Tyler Bradley joined the team as a Chartered Accountant & the team grew to six members that year. Tyler is now Partner, Client Services.
Through 2014, the team grew to 11 members, we were invited to speak at conferences & on podcasts for being the fastest-growing accounting firm in Canada, & we continued to develop relationships with apps like Xero, Hubdoc, and Receipt Bank. We also took our first company retreat to Algonquin Provincial Park.
In December 2014, Chris Frame was hired as our first Onboarding & Training Manager which began the Onboarding & Tech Team.
In 2015, we presented at the First Canadian Xero event in Vancouver and the National Bookkeeper’s Conference. The LiveCA team grew to 16 team members.
In 2016, we held a team retreat in Toronto in January and another retreat at Bear Camp in July. By end of 2016, we had a team of 20 with a larger Onboarding & Tech Team.
In May 2016, we were approved by CPA Ontario to train CPA students in the Pre-approved Program Route (PPR). At the time, we were the first virtual CPA firm with a pre-approved student training program in Canada.
The rules have been in place since 1902 and both CPA Ontario and CPA Canada worked incredibly hard behind the scenes to help modernize legislation.
In January 2017, we had a team retreat in Las Vegas & the Bookkeeping Team was formed. In May, we hired our first two Office Managers and in July we created our first Client Service Pods.
As we know them today, these Pods are made up of a Manager, two Associates, and three Bookkeeping Associates.
In September of 2017, we had a team retreat in Prince Edward Island. At that time, we were a team of 42 employees and at that retreat we announced the new Payroll and Accounts Payable Teams.
In October 2018, Chris Frame, Dave MacPherson, and Tyler Bradley were announced as Partners at LiveCA. Josh moved into the role of Partner, CEO and Chad to Partner, Corporate Development.
In October 2018, we rolled out a travel allowance to the team of 50 and from that saw team co-working trips to Portugal, Mexico, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Costa Rica, & the list goes on! We also put in place a dedicated Tax Team, an Operations Manager, and an HR & Culture Manager.
In 2019, our team of 60+ took part in regional meetups across 6 provinces, co-worked & had workations in new time zones like Japan and Thailand, & met up with Chad and his family as they traveled across Canada in their RV.
Despite the challenges 2020 has brought us all, we supported our team and customers well.
A dedicated government relief task force was set up, emergency leave situations were covered admirably and each customer received extra attention to address the stresses of 2020.
Looking back, we are proud to have screened over 21,000 job applications, completed over 250 trial work days and served over 650 customers.
In February 2013, Josh and Chad met to share what they were doing with their own respective companies. It was clear that matching tax with tech had a lot of potential.
A few months later, they had a joint bank account (without ever meeting) and the trust has never faltered since.
As the company began to grow, it was clear
With the introduction of new partners, service offerings and a relentless focus on systems, we're able to serve larger and faster growing companies more effectively.