I wanted to talk to you guys about some of the things that bookkeepers and accountants are doing that business owners don’t like and that might not be beneficial for your business.
I saw a thread in a Facebook group of what business owners are seeing that bookkeepers do and accountants do that they don’t like and don’t find beneficial for their business.
So I’m just going to go over a few of these and then I’m going to go into the things that you might be missing out on if you are doing the bookkeeping yourself and then discuss what you should be looking for in a bookkeeper and an accountant.
What I’ve Heard Bookkeepers are Doing Wrong:
Some bookkeepers just do data entry and just do reconciliations.
Basically the bookkeeper goes in, they enter your transactions, they reconcile your accounts and you don’t hear from them unless they need something from you.
So there’s little contact unless they need something from you in order to do the data entry and the reconciliations. You’re basically not getting updated on how your finances are doing.
They’re not giving you guidance to help you with your money, right?
So you have no idea if something’s going wrong. And sometimes these bookkeepers just don’t know how to read the reports.
Some bookkeepers are literally just data entry bookkeepers.
They also don’t provide you guidance with your money. They’re not updating you in a timely manner.
So your bookkeeping is getting done late. Maybe they’re only going in QuickBooks every couple months and doing the work.
I’ve had clients come to me who say “my bookkeeper hasn’t touched my books in months but I’ve been paying them”
That is a problem. Your bookkeepers should be on top of your books as long as they have access to the information they need from you.
Another problem is bookkeepers are not asking about your goals. Not all bookkeepers are concerned about the business owner’s goals. If they are going over reports with you, then they should be looking to see that you are moving towards whatever goals you have financially for your business.
What if I DIY My Bookkeeping?
I do recommend that if you are DIYing your bookkeeping to find somebody who can train you to use QuickBooks online or find a course for DIYing your bookkeeping using QuickBooks online.
I understand that everybody isn’t at a place where they are ready to hire a bookkeeper or to pay to have a bookkeeper.
A lot of things I see when you are DIYing your bookkeeping is inaccurate data entry. You’re not entering your information to the right accounts. Sometimes this can be because of the way you set up your rules on your bank feed.
I’ve seen that very recently the bank feed rules were not set up so that transactions were going to the right accounts.
Next, your books are not always reconciled. This is another one I’ve seen recently. There was years worth of data that had not been reconciled causing duplicate entries and a whole bunch of other issues.
You want to make sure you’re reconciling and then viewing those reconciliation reports to see the transactions that are not clearing and research them to find out why they didn’t clear.
Just because you reconcile doesn’t mean that the transactions that did not reconcile just disappear; they stay on your books.
Another, is the reports are inaccurate or you’re not reading your reports at all, right?
We want to make sure that we are entering our data correctly so that our reports are correct.
But we also want to make sure that we know how to read these reports. Do you know how to read your balance sheet, your profit and loss, or your statement of cash flows?
Make sure you’re learning about these reports so that you can use this data to find out how your business is doing and what certain ratios you want to track & what trends you’re looking at in your business to help you towards your goals. This will also help you to see where there’s an issue that may need to be fixed.
Another big one is that QBO is not set up correctly.
I see this all the time, where business owners are not entering the right account in the chart of accounts.
They are adding an account to their chart of accounts but they’re not changing the account type. The account type is very very important.
You need to make sure you’re getting this right. This is more important. When you’re reviewing your reports, the account type affects where that account is going to show up on your balance sheet and on your profit and loss.
If it is not entered correctly then your transactions are going to go to the wrong accounts and show up incorrectly on these reports.
That brings me to the next issue with setup, which is your products and services are not set up correctly.
If you are using products and services to invoice or enter sales receipts you need to make sure that the income account that these are tied to, when you set them up, are actually an income account.
You need to make sure if you are tagging it for income it is going to an income account. This is another problem, because it will affect how you are seeing your reports in QuickBooks and cause them to be inaccurate if they are not set up correctly.
What you should be looking for in a bookkeeper:
A bookkeeper that goes over your financial reports with you.
I generally do video overviews. I will record a video in Loom, I will password protect it, and I will send it to you once your bookkeeping is done for the month.
I also have a few clients that like to do a meeting over zoom so that we can discuss it which I am open to doing as well.
Your bookkeeper should be helping you understand your reports. They are showing you where you’re doing well and where you need to improve.
They are keeping track of where you’re at towards your goals if they are aware of them.
They are updating you on your books regularly.
They’re not coming to you at the end of the year asking about something that happened in June, or worse, February.
They should be updating you regularly on either a monthly or quarterly basis so that you can get the benefit of knowing how your finances are doing and what you need to do to improve going forward.
Finding out what happened in February a year later is not going to help you fix what happened in February. Chances are whatever happened in February continued throughout the year. And you’re just now finding out about it in January of the next year.
They’re going to give you guidance.
They’re going to be looking at these reports with you, or going over it in a video, and they’re going to see common trends in your business.
If they’re looking at month over month or quarter over quarter they’re going to see trends in your business. And they’re going to be able to give you guidance going forward to help improve your finances for your business.
They’re also going to talk to you about your goals.
So like I said in this facebook group thread there were a lot of people saying that bookkeepers are not helping them to reach their goals. They’re not even asking about what the business owner’s goals are.
We need to have a clear picture of the milestones we are trying to reach along the way to get towards those goals.
Comment below. I’d love to hear what your current bookkeeping situation is.
Are you DIY and do you have a bookkeeper? Do you love your bookkeeper or is there something you wish your bookkeeper would do differently?
This is great feedback for me as a bookkeeper so that I know how to better serve my current and future clients.
Also, if you are DIY in your bookkeeping, find someone to pay for training or purchase a course that teaches you how to DIY your bookkeeping.
You want to make sure that you are doing it accurately from the beginning. Cleanups are very expensive. The longer you wait to do it correctly or do it at all, the more it’s going to cost to have somebody come in and do it for you and clean it up for you.
I look forward to hearing from you guys soon and I hope you have a good rest of your week.
Also! Join me in my facebook group to network with other awesome female entrepreneurs!
https://www.facebook.com/groups/profitablefemaleentrepreneur