What Trident Advisory was up against.
Trident Advisory is an 8-person firm in Toronto with a fast-growing bookkeeping division. They needed two dedicated bookkeepers but were priced out of the local Toronto market, where bookkeepers were demanding $55k+ with no guarantee of retention. They were also wary of offshore after reading negative stories online about poor English, poor work quality, and high turnover.
How SOA narrowed the search.
SOA’s discovery call focused on Trident’s mixed-software environment (Wave for very small clients, FreshBooks for freelancers, QuickBooks for established small businesses, all with Hubdoc for document automation). The matching AI looked specifically for candidates with hands-on experience across multiple Canadian small-business platforms — not just one.
Who we placed, and how fast.
SOA matched Trident with two bookkeepers — one specialising in Wave and FreshBooks, the other in QuickBooks and Hubdoc. Both had previous Canadian small business experience and completed a custom onboarding training tailored to Trident’s client base. Total time from discovery call to first billable hour: 9 days, the fastest placement in SOA history.
We were skeptical about offshore but SOA’s process gave us confidence. Our bookkeepers have been with us 18 months — we couldn’t run the bookkeeping division without them.
What happened after year one.
Both bookkeepers have now been with Trident for over 18 months. The bookkeeping division grew from 38 clients to 60 in year one, with both new bookkeepers carrying the majority of new intake. Rachel has expanded the division’s service offering to include monthly management reporting — a higher-margin add-on — since her senior bookkeeper now has the operational capacity to lead it.