At a glance
Hawkins & Co. Accounting has built their firm on a simple idea: when your systems run better, your clients do, too.
Since 2013, the Windsor-based firm has delivered high-impact advisory services to clients across Canada and globally. Their mission isn’t just to manage the numbers, but to help business owners actually understand them.
For Danielle Ramsten, COO, and Dana Erickson, PCP, Staff Accountant, accounting is about building relationships and providing a “Powered Process” — their tech-forward service that automates back-office grunt work with a curated stack of apps that “talk” with each other, so that clients can get accurate, real-time financial data to make confident decisions.
And payroll is a big part of that equation.
With over 100 clients powered by Wagepoint, the firm saw a clear path to growth. While Wagepoint 1.0 was their reliable tool for helping clients self-manage their payroll, Wagepoint 2.0 opened the door to a fully managed service model. The new system provided the structural backbone they needed to bring payroll in-house, strengthening their client relationships while building a more profitable, scalable service offering.
Hawkins & Co. were really intentional about the time a migration might take, but as it turns out, the ‘big lift’ they’d braced for was actually a quick win.
This is their journey.
Client trust built on fewer “brown envelope worries”
From early on, Hawkins & Co. made intentional decisions about their tech stack, prioritizing tools that are intuitive, reliable, and easy for clients to use.
Wagepoint 1.0 quickly became their go-to. As Danielle explains, the team specifically chooses user-friendly software because their clients don’t need to know “everything and the kitchen sink” about payroll; they just need to focus on running their businesses.
Its clean interface and seamless connection with Xero made Wagepoint 1.0 a natural fit for how the firm operates. “We really try to avoid siloed systems that don’t speak to each other, and with the way that Wagepoint and Xero integrate, it made it that much easier for our team,” says Danielle.
For clients running payroll themselves, that simplicity mattered.
Wagepoint gave them a straightforward way to stay compliant and in control, without getting overwhelmed by the process. It helped ease the stress around payroll and those all-too-familiar “brown envelope worries” from the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA).
The move to Wagepoint 2.0
For a firm like Hawkins & Co., standing still isn’t really an option.
As they continued to grow their payroll services and refine their “Powered Process,” they were naturally drawn to the potential of Wagepoint 2.0. The new platform promised more flexibility, better workflows, and new technology that would better support a foundation for scaling their services.
They began exploring the move in 2024, but like many early adopters, the timing wasn’t quite right for their firm. Some features (like custom codes and multiple jobs) didn’t carry over at the time, and the prospect of retraining clients introduced additional complexity. With migration timelines evolving, the team made a deliberate decision to pause and revisit it later.
From “daunting” to “done” in five minutes
A key turning point came in 2026 with one of Hawkins & Co.’s hospitality clients. Managing multiple boutique hotels, the client hires 20–30 seasonal employees per location each year, and their onboarding process was entirely manual. Chasing new hires for tax forms and banking details had become a major bottleneck.
Wagepoint 2.0 offered a clear solution: employee self-onboarding.
That was the push Dana needed to revisit migration. And, this time, the experience was completely different — not only smoother, but surprisingly fast.
While there’s still some standard due diligence involved — like reviewing year-to-date (YTD) figures and confirming wage codes — the heavy lifting is now largely automated.
By her fifth client migration, Dana had the process down to a science. She was confidently handling migrations on her own, knowing she had a world-class support team on standby if she ever hit a snag. What once felt like a time-consuming project had become a quick, repeatable workflow.
The 2.0 difference: Turning “easy” into “effortless”
For the Hawkins team, the transition to Wagepoint 2.0 was intuitive from the start.
The learning curve was minimal, and when questions did come up, help was available. Between Wagepoint’s knowledge base articles and the AI chatbot, Digit, Dana was able to quickly get up to speed and confidently support both internal workflows and client needs.
“They’re both easy, user friendly systems, but 2.0 is laid out a lot better and more modern,” says Dana.
For Hawkins & Co., a few upgrades stand out:
Enhanced visibility and reminders
The new partner dashboard provides key information at a glance, including a payroll calendar and clear notifications on processing deadlines and pay groups, so that nothing falls through the cracks.
Self-onboarding
Employees and contractors can enter their own personal and banking information, and upload their own TD-1 forms. That’s a huge win for Hawkins & Co.’s hotel client. “Our clients no longer need to upload tax forms and personal detail forms,” says Dana. “All I need is the contract with their full name, email address, wage, and vacation pay. They don’t have to chase their new staff for these forms anymore. So they’re very, very happy about that.”
Bulk custom codes
For clients with more complex setups, like a physiotherapy clinic with numerous pay codes, 2.0 makes it easy to assign codes in bulk rather than updating each employee profile individually. Plus, Dana has even more self-serve flexibility in 2.0. She can now create those codes herself on the fly, keeping her workflow moving without contacting support.
Stronger Xero integration
With automated journal imports and clearer separation between source deductions and net payroll, clients get a cleaner, more transparent view of their payroll data and finances.
Individually, these improvements save time. Together, they fundamentally change the payroll experience — for both the firm and their clients.
For Hawkins & Co., the move to 2.0 has turned payroll from a manual task into a scalable growth engine. Here’s how the two versions stack up side-by-side:
Building client trust, one payday at a time
Hawkins & Co. has now made Wagepoint 2.0 their standard; all new clients are onboarded directly to the new platform, and they already have more than 20 clients thriving on it. For Danielle, the “modern” feel of 2.0 enhances the reputation of the firm, and makes it easier to sell their payroll services.
She explains that in the digital age, clients expect their advisors to be at the forefront of technology. If an accountant recommends a tool that looks like it belongs in a previous decade, it can undermine the client’s confidence in the firm’s overall expertise.
“The last thing you want is to have someone log into something and it looks like it’s from 1987. [Clients] trust us as their advisors for accounting, payroll, and financial services. That trust is much easier to build when they know that we’re staying on top of our knowledge and what’s going on out there in the industry.”
— Danielle Ramsten, COO, Hawkins & Co. Accounting
By providing a sleek, mobile-friendly interface that matches the high-end software clients use in other parts of their lives, Hawkins & Co. reinforces their position as forward-thinking advisors.
Advice for firms still on Wagepoint 1.0
For other accounting firms still charting their path to 2.0, both Dana and Danielle understand the due diligence that goes into a move like this. They’ve been in those shoes.
But after seeing their migration through, the process involved, and the payoff for their own firm, their advice is simple: just start. It’s worth it.
Rather than treating migration as a one-time mega project, they recommend approaching it incrementally. Start with a few clients. Run both systems in parallel. And build momentum over time. With this approach, Danielle says she “doesn’t see any reason” why a firm wouldn’t move their clients over to 2.0.
“At this point, there are no hesitations. I would say yes, you’re going to love it as soon as you start using it,” says Dana.
Ready to make the move?
By making the switch, Hawkins & Co. turned payroll into a scalable growth engine without the heavy lift they expected. If you’re ready to see what that could look like for your firm, you don’t have to figure it out alone.
Explore our migration knowledge base hub, where you’ll find step-by-step guidance, quick answers to common questions, and everything you need to confidently move your clients from 1.0 to 2.0.
