When to outsource your bookkeeping, how outsourcing compares to hiring an in-house bookkeeper, and best practices for working effectively with a bookkeeping service.

Episode Host: Henry Lopez is a serial entrepreneur, small business coach, and the host of The How of Business podcast show – dedicated to helping you start, run, grow and exit your small business.

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The following is a full transcript of this episode. This transcript was produced by an automated system and may contain some typos.

00:05

Henry, welcome to the how of business with your host, Henry Lopez, the podcast that helps you start, run and grow your small business. And now here is your host. Welcome to this episode of the how of business. This is Henry Lopez and my trusted service partner and repeat guest Jody, Arrant Welcome back to the show. Thank you for having me totally we’re going to talk some more bookkeeping here, but from a business owner’s perspective. So back on episode 588, Jody joined me and we had a broad conversation about bookkeeping fundamentals. We talked about and announced our new the how a business bookkeeping service. I’ll share some more about that today, but today is going to be a deeper dive. We’re going to ask these questions, when should you outsource your bookkeeping, versus maybe you doing it yourself as a business owner or hiring somebody to do it in house? When should you make that decision to outsource, and why might that be a better option, and when in your business, and then, how do you work effectively with an outsource bookkeeper? And really, some of those rules will apply even if it’s your internal bookkeeper, but more so when you’ve hired an outside of your company bookkeeper. What are some best practices there? And of course, Jodi is an expert. She has her own bookkeeping firm. She is a bookkeeper herself, a quick book, certified bookkeeper, and so she’s going to help me with addressing those questions. You can find all of the Howard business resources, including the show notes page for this episode, and to find out more about my one on one and group coaching programs and our new bookkeeping service all of that, just go to the how of business.com I also invite you to consider supporting and joining the how a business community on Patreon and subscribe wherever you might be listening so you don’t miss any new episodes. So let me tell you briefly a little bit more about Jody. We did have an interesting conversation on episode 588 about her entrepreneurial journey. Here we get right to the topic. But Jody is a founder of J R Rand consulting, which is a US based bookkeeping and consulting firm, and with over 17 years of experience in bookkeeping, payroll, QuickBooks consulting, Jody helps small businesses streamline their finances so they can focus on growth, which is what we want to focus on. Most of us are not in business to be bookkeepers, and so that’s why it’s so important to get help. Yeah, again, Jody is my partner in the new the how of business bookkeeping service. We had just launched that here at the beginning of 26 and so she behind the scenes, if you will, is who I’ve partnered with, her and her US based team of QuickBooks certified bookkeepers are the ones doing the actual work, right? It’s my business. It’s my name from a reputation and promise to you on the line. But of course, I’ve got experts like Jody doing the actual bookkeeping work, but that’s how we know each other. So with all of that, Jodi, welcome back to the show again. Thank you. Alright, here’s where I want to start. I want to start with that decision to outsource your bookkeeping. And what I find is that most small business owners, most of the people listening, either planning to start a business or have recently started a business, or have a small business, they’re doing it themselves, or the spouse does it on the weekends, or it doesn’t get done until the end of the year, any combination thereof. Right? We’re not going to focus so much necessarily on why having up to date and accurate financials are important. But suffice it to say, if you’ve been listening to my podcast any like the time, you know how critical that is, but some of the reasons why it might make sense to now outsource this, as opposed to you trying to do it yourself. I’ll start with the obvious. I just mentioned it. As a business owner, this is not our core competency. We should be focused on what leading the business on, focusing on the areas of the business that need work or improvement, maybe leading sales, worrying about marketing, staying in contact with the customer, maybe making the product or delivering the service, if that’s where you’re at, those are the things you need to be working on, the things that serve your customers and clients, not being stuck hours a week or at night or after you got everything else Done, doing the financials, so you probably behind on reconciliations, maybe, and so you don’t have up to date financials. You’re even avoiding logging into QuickBooks because you dread it, right or it’s a mess. And of course, if you don’t have any trust in your numbers, then you cannot use that as that critical data point. It’s not the only thing that we use as small business owners, but it’s a an important tool and helping us decide how are we performing? What do we need to correct all of those financial components that are so critical to helping us make business decisions? So if you, if you can’t even understand maybe what a P, L tells you, or you don’t even know how to begin to categorize properly your expenses. Then, then you need help, right? And it doesn’t make sense for you, as you’re listening to go become an expert in QuickBooks, it just doesn’t make sense. So those are some of the reasons that you know you’re scrambling for your financials. Your business has gotten more complex, maybe, maybe now you have other components beyond that.

05:00

The initial, the initial transactions of the business. But what are some of the signs besides those? Or maybe you want to add to those, Jodi that you see that lead you to believe and and advise that they that the business owner needs to move beyond the do it yourself, to getting some help, yeah, well, and really just building off what you said, that’s what I see a lot. When people come to me, they’re behind on their books. They’ve never even reconciled their bank accounts. They don’t even know what that means to reconcile. They’re not confident in their reporting. They don’t know how to read a P L, and I think that’s so important for a business owner. Even if you are going to outsource your bookkeeping, you do need to have some understanding of it, but you don’t want to be spending every weekend, every evening, all day long, working on your bookkeeping. So that’s why you want to hire a bookkeeper and let them take that off your plate. What are some of the things that you’ve observed happen as a business grows? Let’s, let’s look at that scenario. You know, you’ve been in business for a year or two, or whatever, now you’re growing. What are the things that you see that begin to add complexity to the bookkeeping process? Yeah. So I would say when payroll becomes more multi layered, so you’re adding things like retirement benefits, you’ve got to track PTO, you’ve got contractors that you’re hiring, so now you’ve got to make sure that they fill out a w9 and you’ve got to submit a 1099, at the end of the year for them. Those things are all things. I see people reaching out to bookkeepers to take those tasks and then also when they’re wanting to apply for a grant or they need financing and they don’t have up to date financials, so they’re scrambling, trying to figure out what they’re going to do because they don’t have their numbers are not up to date. I also see as things get more complicated now, categorization of the expenses can get a little bit more complicated. Or do I capitalize this, or do I expense it? Those kind of questions start to come up, right? Yes, absolutely. There’s a lot of questions on what’s deductible, what’s actually an owner’s expense? So those are questions you can have your bookkeeper help you with and your accountant. So it’s important to have that extra person in your corner helping you through those processes. Absolutely. The other thing that I see that happens is especially like, for example, the Profit First approach recommends having multiple bank accounts, and then you might have credit card accounts. So that’s the other level of complexity. Often it’s not just one simple checking account that you’re going to link to QuickBooks and download. You know, we just onboarded a client that had, I think she has seven different accounts, right? So that adds a layer of complexity, doesn’t it? Absolutely, yeah, that’s, that’s seven bank reconciliations that you have to complete every month and go through and make sure that those are all accurate. It’s basically like balancing your checkbook. So that adds more layers that people don’t have time for, or they don’t understand. Some of the workflows in QuickBooks can be really confusing if you don’t know how to use the software too. So it’s really easy to add duplicates and missing transactions as well. Yeah, you had mentioned, for example, payroll, or maybe we have now a depreciating asset, so not that you’re going to calculate for them. That’s where a CPA comes in. But making those journal entries, most people don’t, you know, even me, I don’t not completely comfortable making a journal entry. I understand the basics of it, but that’s where you come in as well, for those adjusting entries that we might make at the end of the year or based on guidance that a client may have gotten from their CPA, right? Yes, exactly. A lot of CPAs will send a list at the end of the year, after they filed taxes, and it’ll have that list of journal entries that need to be done in QuickBooks. So that’s something a bookkeeper can handle for you, because you’re probably not going to know where to start on that, all right. So that’s when, when to start thinking about outsourcing. And you probably know it, you feel it, you you know you’ve been putting that off, and maybe you were even good at it initially, when it was simpler, when you had more time. But understandably, there are other things now that are more important for you to focus on. So if that’s you, then then it’s time to either hire somebody or assign it to somebody, maybe that you already have on staff. That’s often what I see happening an office manager, a practice manager, they might have that responsibility, and maybe they might handle it. Maybe they’re the ones that then work with an outsourced bookkeeper, or work with the CPA or both. But that’s that if you’re not, the end result, though, is if you don’t have accurate and timely financials that you can depend on to make business decisions. And then, if you look at the root cause as to why, typically, it is because that’s not an area that you’re strong in, and it’s not an area you want to get strong in, right? That’s not your core business. All right. Let’s move on then to that outsourcing versus in house. Do I hire a bookkeeper, or do I outsource it to a bookkeeper? And that could be a bookkeeper that you’re already might have been referred to, or if you wanted to consider the how a business bookkeeping service that Jody helps me provide, that decision between hiring and outsourcing. So let’s talk about that. So let’s, let’s explore why outsourcing first, and then we’ll kind of compare that to what it might look like if you have somebody in house. Certainly. I’ll rattle through these Jodi and then you’ll add to it, outsourcing, typically is lower cost and hiring a full time employee, right? The burden?

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End of that. Not just a salary, but now you got to provide them benefits. Now you got to pay payroll taxes. Now you have to deal with an employee. Not that that’s always bad, but that’s that’s a reality. So you got to pay taxes on them. You have a lack of redundancy, because now this one person is your bookkeeper. Now I have seen environments where you have somebody in house, like I mentioned, but they have a resource to go to, and that’s a great compliment, if that’s the size that you’re at. But it’s easier to justify that next level, to outsource it, than it is to hire somebody. In my experience, just as a business owner, there’s also not the burden of training them, because when you hire somebody like Jody, or hire us as the your bookkeeper. We have that expertise. We know how to do this, right? But what else would you add to that equation of, do I go outsource or do I hire somebody in house? Yeah. So going back to the training and oversight, if they have a question or they’re unsure how to do something, you’re going to be their first resource. So if you are really unsure about bookkeeping, and you’re supposed to be helping them, that’s going to get a little bit complicated and cloudy there, I think, right away, and then, and then also, they’re your one person. So if they go on vacation or if they’re sick, those bookkeeping tasks are going to fall on you. So now you’re kind of back to where you started when they’re out of office. Yeah, great points. I think that’s such a key thing, is now you have one person, and if that person’s gone, or if they leave, there goes a lot of that knowledge. You got to train somebody else again. The other thing I have found, and this applies to any of these types of positions where you bring in, like a fractional CMO or a fractional CFO or an outsourced bookkeeper, is what you’re leveraging, is you see how you are getting to learn and then share with me as a client, the best practices that you’re learning from many different clients in many different industries. When I have somebody in house, invariably, they get siloed. All they know is my environment, right? So I think there’s a lot of benefit to anything that. That’s why we outsource a CPA where, you know, it’s a long time before we grow to a point where we would hire a CFO, but in part, where we’re getting is that person is a wealth of knowledge, because they’re seeing how a number of other companies are tackling the same questions. Yep, no, that’s so true. I’ve gained so much knowledge from working with different types of clients. I’ve never really been one that’s niched down. I’ve always just kind of gone by small business and volume versus industry, because you learn so much when you’re working with all these different industries. The way people you know, handle their workflows and their processes, the way the bookkeeping is done, you gain so much knowledge. So outsourcing a bookkeeper that has that experience is going to bring so much to the table. The other thing that I think can come into play here with an outsourced bookkeeper is segregation of duties. In other words, now you have an independent third party that you should be able to trust. I mean, that’s something you gotta look for, obviously, right? But it’s someone else that has another set of eyes objective on the books. Is that fair? Yeah, definitely. And that can be critical, especially let’s say you’re in a situation where you know it’s not that you wouldn’t have the trust necessarily, but let’s say you know you have partnership, and what partner is going to do the books the other one, it’s not that you don’t trust, but it would be. It’s nice to have that third party that’s managing the books objectively, without any biases whatsoever, yeah, coming in with a fresh set of eyes, knowing what to look for, reviewing things, seeing little, little things, little red flags that need to be addressed. And I think that’s really helpful. Yep, absolutely. In my experience, most small businesses under a million dollars in revenue, it usually does not make sense to hire a bookkeeper. The exceptions, and I’ll get your opinion here in a moment, the exception are, as I’ve mentioned, if you already have, in your infrastructure, in your team, somebody who has, you know, maybe a chief admin person or an office manager, and you hired that person purposely with some accounting knowledge that might make sense, yeah, I would still maybe get that person help, or at least get, of course, You need a CPA to back up that person, but that might be an exception. But where do you kind of see, and I know this is kind of a broad interpretation, but loosely, at what revenue level do you see that people decide all right, it might make sense. It doesn’t mean it may not continue with outsourced help, but they’ll start to bring somebody in house. I think that 1 million revenue line is kind of a good deciding factor, because at that point, you’ve probably got at least 20 or more employees on payroll, so you’ve got all these extra complications and layers on there, on top of everything that you’re doing and all the complexities of your income. Maybe you have multiple streams of income. Maybe you have to split out those income into different buckets. Those layers are really when you start needing that additional help. So that’s when you really want to look and say, Okay, can I actually manage this myself? Or should I bring someone else in good qualifier there, once you have that level of complexity in paying or with your payables or receivables or whatever the case might be, yeah, all right. Excellent. Good stuff, right? Let’s.

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Move on. Then to the next section that I wanted to talk about, which is what to look for if you do decide to outsource, what are some of the key things to look for? Again, I’m going to go kind of down the list, and then if you can add further thoughts or color to that, that would be great, I think. And there is the opportunity to search for US based certified QuickBooks. If QuickBooks is a platform you’re going to be on, we’ll talk a little bit more about that. Bit more about that. But US based bookkeepers, I think that’s important, not that I don’t, not that I’m against using overseas VAs or other freelancers. But I think when it comes to bookkeeping, I feel more comfortable with that being US based, that’s just me, the QuickBooks certification, because we use QuickBooks for the how a business bookkeeping service? I’m not saying it’s a perfect platform. I’ve got all kinds of issues with it, but it’s the best of what’s out there, I think. And the other thing, let me just stop here with this question, Jody, what I have found is the other reason I always recommend QuickBooks, and I don’t get paid for them to recommend it, is that you can find lots of people who understand and are certified on the platform, and that’s an advantage. Is that fair? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think QuickBooks is probably one of the most used bookkeeping platforms, and that’s why I strictly work with QuickBooks Online. We don’t work with any other bookkeeping software. Yeah. Now, if you have another financial platform, and I’m not saying you should switch to QuickBooks, yeah, yeah. If you’ve got gusto, or whatever you might have in house and that works for you, that’s fantastic. I’m not bashing anything else. I’m just saying, if you’re making a decision on which financial platform to go with, either you don’t have one, or you’ve been on QuickBooks, that’s why we’ve chosen to make that the platform that we will support exclusively with the how a business bookkeeping not making any judgment on is it better than anything else. It’s just what’s more pervasive. They are the 800 pound gorilla. And the benefit in particular that has is you can find people, consultants, bookkeepers, experts, that understand the platform. And that’s valuable. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. The other thing I think is important to look for, it’s amazing to me. I’ve had several clients, a couple of clients that come to mind, where they’ve outsourced the bookkeeping, but they don’t have any access to their books. All they get is their financial reports emailed to them at some point the next month. I think that’s a big mistake, to relinquish access to your financials. Yes, I agree. I have seen so many incidences where clients cannot get access to their books because a previous bookkeeper or an accountant is the primary admin, and they’re struggling to get access. And then I’ve also seen incidences where they’re afraid to let go of a bad bookkeeper, because they hold the key to the kingdom. They have primary admin access to their software, to all their files. So they’re afraid to let go of this person, because they have everything agreed. And I just, I don’t think that’s good idea. I really think that the client should be the primary admin, and they should make the bookkeeper and the accountant accountant users in their software. It’s such a huge point. In other words, the way that we’re doing with the Howard business bookkeeping, which a lot of the reputable firms, were not unique in this, but is that if you decide to cancel your subscription, you can take your QuickBooks account with you. You can keep that you certainly have the data. The data is yours. But another way this came up, I think it was last year was working the client that had that situation, and I don’t even know what platform it was on, because it could have been that this the bookkeeper or the CPA was using QuickBooks, but they just had not given access to the client. Now I get sometimes the argument is, well, I don’t want, if this is the bookkeeper, I don’t want the client messing anything up. And that’s a valid concern. We have to deal with that. But I much rather error on that side than you not have access. What happened was, it was in the middle of the month, they finally had gotten to a point where there was some level of trust in the financials. And said, Hey, let’s run a report just by this category, for this period of time compared to last year. Well, she couldn’t do it. She could because she couldn’t log on to run that report. And it’s like, Oh, my goodness. You know if all you’re going to get is that once a month reporting, that’s better than nothing, but you got to have real time access to your financial data. Yeah, you you have no idea what’s actually going on in there. And as bookkeepers, we’re not mind readers. I say this a lot. We do our best to categorize and code things, but there’s lots of times where we’re trying to figure out what an expense is for, or we’ve got things in what I call like an Ask client category, kind of like in a suspense account, and so we’re waiting for the client to get back to us on questions, and if they have access to QuickBooks, they can review those things. They can make sure that things are up to date. They can notice any nuances, because they know the inner workings of their business. They know what they’re spending money on, or where this income is coming from. So they can kind of give us those insights. So it’s important that they can get in there and see what’s going on and be that other set of eyes in there absolutely All right, so a couple other things, and then I want to get what else you you’re thinking of here. Add on to as far as what to look for if you’re going to outsource to a bookkeeper, make sure you’re clear on the scope of services, as you would with anything. Make sure you understand the agreement that you’re signing up for. What’s the term, what’s included, what’s not included. Even with us, with the Howard business bookkeeping, there are certain things that are included. There are certain things that.

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We would have to charge you extra for beyond the monthly subscription, right? So that’s that’s very common. Just be sure you’re very clear on what is in, what’s out. In our case, we have, I think it’s a pretty thorough agreement that spells it all out. And that’s what you’re looking for when you engage a bookkeeper, I think, in my opinion, but what else? What are some of the other red flags like, for example, if you look at it from the perspective of people that have come to you switching bookkeepers Is there are there other things that they’ve experienced that people should be looking out for? Yes, that are negative, yeah, not not receiving regular reporting. So if they’re not receiving reports on a regular cadence, so maybe the client you know wants reports monthly or quarterly, those reports are going to show that the bookkeeper has the books up to date. They’re not doing the bank reconciliation, so they’re that. What might mean they’re behind on the books. Those things are going to be key indicators if the books are actually up to date or not, or if they’re behind on on what they’re doing. Excellent. Excellent. Any other red flags that I didn’t cover already, or things to look for when you’re outsourcing a bookkeeper? Yeah, so if you’re looking to hire an outsourced bookkeeper, and maybe they don’t have, like an actual firm, but they’re just an independent bookkeeper, I would look at their experience. So I think Quickbooks online certification is a great a great thing to have, because it shows that they understand the software. But do they actually have experience in bookkeeping? How long have they actually been doing bookkeeping? One of the ways that I really learned bookkeeping was on the job training, actually getting in the weeds and working on bookkeeping. So how long have they actually been doing this and learning these processes and understanding the fundamentals of bookkeeping that is super important when you’re hiring somebody. Do they actually know what they’re doing? Have they done it? And that ties back to the point I made earlier that we both made earlier, about one of the benefits of outsourcing is you’re leveraging that vast experience. Yeah, if I were to go to try to hire a bookkeeper of your level with 17 years of experience, I wouldn’t be able to. It wouldn’t make sense financially, right? I’d have to pay a lot more than it makes sense for but by outsourcing to you, I’m tapping into that broad knowledge and experience that you do have. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So looking for that, looking for those certifications, and asking them about their experience, even the point you mentioned, you know, you’ve had the opportunity to work across industries, not just in one segment. That’s not critical, but that that helps or the fact that you have broad knowledge across different businesses, I think is a differentiator. Yeah, I think so too. All right, let’s move on to the last section, which is how to if you decide to outsource. And some of this, I think, again, might apply even if you do have somebody in house, but how to work effectively with your bookkeeper. I think that the key thing. And you’ve touched on this already, but I want to reiterate and emphasize, and then I have some specific questions. I think the mistake sometimes people make is they surrender their financials to the bookkeeper. I find it that happens is, well, at least now my finances are in order, so that at the end of the year, when I turn it over to my CPA, they can do the taxes. That’s great. That’s better than having nothing. But what it tells me is you’re still not using the financials as a tool to help you make business decisions, right? It ties back to that conversation of the person I gave an example of that they didn’t even it hadn’t even been an issue for them that they don’t have real time access to the numbers because they haven’t thought they needed that, right? But I assure you, you do not want to surrender what the finances are telling you and what’s going on financially in your business, right? So tell me a couple of those things you’ve mentioned someone already, but let’s reiterate them. How your clients when they work well with you. What are some of the things that you are doing or that they are doing? I would say the number one is good communication. Are you constantly, you know, to asking questions, talking with your bookkeeper and your client. Maybe there’s things that pop up that need to be addressed. Are you having regular meetings? So maybe on a monthly or quarterly basis, you’re meeting with your bookkeeper to review those financials, and then in between those meetings, you’re making time for yourself to review reports, review financials, ask questions. It’s it’s not a set it and forget it, type of situation you really need to be involved. Yeah, I think that’s such a key point, because it’s, there’s so much there in reviewing those monthly financials, what it tells me is you’re actually using it to help you measure the business and to make business decisions. But also, it is so much easier. It ties, I think, to the communication point to fix a problem that happened last month, as opposed to something that didn’t get reconciled six months ago or a year ago. You you start to forget what that is, right or how does that, and then it accumulates, and now it’s this big, giant project. If you adjust every month, keep it clean, work with your bookkeeper to address those transactions that did not get automatically categorized, or the receipt that we need to make sure that we categorize it properly. That is part of all of that communication and reviewing those numbers on those reports anyway on a monthly basis, right? Yeah, absolutely. It’s important that the client gets back to you as soon as possible, because there’s lots of times when I have clients.

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That leave things for months at a time, and then now they’ve got to go review this giant list at the end of the year and get everything cleaned up. And it is. It’s hard to remember what, what, what expense was from, you know, six, seven months back, one of the best practices that I learned a long time ago as a business owner as it related to making sure I know the flow of money, especially as the business grew beyond me or one or two people, once you have employees right and you have opportunities for someone to do the wrong thing, you know, we touched on it, that part of what opportunity creates those an opportunity for someone to do the wrong thing is what you’re trying to avoid, not that people are looking to do that, but we got to protect ourselves. We got to make sure we know where the money is flowing, that we got all of our money, even if, even if, it’s not because an employee did something wrong. Let’s say, for example, I have a lot of medical practice clients that are depending on insurances to pay them, so that that collection process they need to keep their finger on to make sure they need to be aware if they have any other kind of a collections from clients. What does those receivables look like? So that’s another way that, as the owner, probably at a smaller organization, I got to keep my finger on what is the aging of my receivables, right? Yeah, the other thing I always believed as an owner that I wanted to at least review. It used to be, it used to be what I would do, but now with this technology and with the bookkeeper that can do it, but that is the reconciliation, in other words, and I can do that by simply scanning through my PNL, where did the money go? And I love the practice of and I think everybody, once they start using it, I will actually not wait for the PDF report. Once my bookkeeper tells me books are ready, I will sign in run it, because I love the interactive report, where I can click on a number and drill in and say, Oh no, this got categorized incorrectly. Or, what the heck was this $5,000 purchase that’s being hidden in the equipment? What is that? Yeah, yeah. So that’s how I like to see my clients, and what I do to actively stay involved, using the numbers to help me make business decisions, but also to monitor the flow of money in and out. Yeah, I actually have a few clients where we meet, and we actually do that in on Zoom, we go through the P and L, and I can click into the different numbers, and they can see what is in each bucket, and, oh, no, that was actually advertising. Or no, that was this. So we can move things and adjust right there. It’s it’s great. Okay, so we’ve talked about kind of the things that the owner should retain responsibility for. You mentioned communication and, of course, reviewing those reports or that data, as we just described. Is there anything else that comes to mind that you see that makes for a great working relationship with your clients? As a bookkeeper, I think just kind of going back to the client, following up on any requests or questions in a timely manner. I think that they should set maybe like a workflow or a cadence for themselves, so that they can follow up on requests and give themselves time to review those financials. I think it’s important that they put that into their tasks monthly. Yeah, don’t let that pile up, you know, and it keeps brings to mind now going back to the example of this recent client who joined our bookkeeping service where she has given credit cards, there’s there’s four company credit cards herself and three other employees. And so what that requires on her side is policies and procedures as to how people need to account for those expenses, right? Yeah, you as the bookkeeper are going to make sure that those transactions get loaded, that they get categorized, but sometimes it might be an expense that you don’t recognize. Well, that’s where a receipt comes into play. Oh, by the way, you know the IRS does want you to have receipts, even if it’s a digital copy of receipts. In particular, when it’s meals, we need to categorize those separately and differently. So all of those are things that I think we must also own. As the business owner, the bookkeeper is not going to do all of that for us. They’re going to help us with that, but you got to have those procedures in place for those people that do have a credit card. And what is the practice? What is the policy? Yeah, and you can talk to your bookkeeper, because there are a lot of platforms where they offer like we use with a lot of clients. I use bill.com and Divi and so those cards, they can actually set limits on the cards. They can make sure that somebody has to approve the transactions, they have to upload receipts, and they have to categorize the credit card transactions as they expense them, which is really nice for the bookkeeper. So there’s some really cool programs out there that you can ask your bookkeeper about, and they can help you get more organized than that, too. Excellent, excellent, great advice. All right, let me summarize then some best practices, and I’ll get your input here as further summarizing some of what we’ve talked about. Best practices around bookkeeping, that monthly review of P and L, at least in the balance sheet. In my practice, I don’t always necessarily look at the balance sheet every month, but at least on a quarterly basis. But that P and L is the key statement. I like to look at it online, live, and that’s what I recommend. So that you can drill in timely submissions of all of the documentation that your bookkeeper needs, like we just talked about, with receipts clear and often, communication respond to the bookkeeper when they’re asking you for Hey, what? We don’t know how to interpret this transaction. What was it? And it could be.

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As simple as uploading a receipt or just answering the question, not letting that build up. I think it’s critical that segregation or separation of duties, to avoid fraud and to have another set of eyes leverage that. And then, you know, a process like we talked about as an example, with employees that might have a credit card. What is the policy make sure you have a process there in place to control that. In that case, that outflow of money. Anything else you would summarize or highlight before I close it out here, I think that’s pretty much it. Yeah, okay, right. So as I mentioned, I’m excited again to announce the how of business bookkeeping service. It’s a service that I’m bringing to my clients under the how of business brand. Jodi is my trusted partner, so she and her team provide the actual certified bookkeepers US based bookkeeping behind the scenes, but it’s still the how a business that you’re dealing with. So you have my reputation and my trust that we’re going to take care of you and provide you a professional level of bookkeeping service. It’s really is, you know, if you’re a small business owner and you want to spend your time on something else and it doesn’t make sense for you to hire a bookkeeper in house, then that’s what we’ve built, the Howard business bookkeeping for. It’s a structured QuickBooks place. That’s the platform that we use with a fixed monthly subscription for a scope of services. If you need additional work, then Jody has very reasonable rates for that to help you with catch up, for example, or a particular project or something else. So it’s all priced for business, small business owners, and that’s who we’ve designed it for. So if you want to learn more, just go to the how a business com, various places you can click and learn more about the how a business I have a whole page. So on the menu bar, if you look to services and resources and bookkeeping. Have it all laid out there. And then the step I encourage you to take, if you’re interested, is to schedule a consultation with us. It’ll either be myself or Jody, and we’ll make sure that it’s a fit understand what you needed, a way of bookkeeping, and then we’ll let you know, yes, we can help you, or we’ll refer you to somebody else, if that’s what it takes. But schedule that free consultation, no obligation. And that would be the next step if you’re interested in the how of business bookkeeping services. All right, anything else Jody, that you wanted to add to any of that? Before we close it out, I would just say again, don’t just set it and forget it with your bookkeeper. Be engaged, regardless if it’s in house or outsource. Just really be involved and keep an eye on those financials and set that time to really review your books and set up workflows and processes. It’s really important. Agreed, agreed. And I would just then summarize that, you know, I’ve spoken to this point so many times on the podcast, how critical it is to have our financials accurate and timely and in order, so that it helps us not just measure our performance, because in to a big extent, it might be that you might say, well, it’s just it tells us what we’ve done in the past, but that’s important to help us determine what direction we’re going to take in the future. I think that if you are running a business without that input, it’s just one of those critical inputs of your financials, you’re steering partially blind. You’ve got to have those numbers to help you make the right business decisions. And so it is critical. And if you’re at a point where it doesn’t make sense for you to do it yourself, and it probably doesn’t make sense to hire a bookkeeper in house, then I want you to seriously consider outsourcing it to a qualified bookkeeper. Absolutely. Jody, thanks again for being back on the show with me, and we’ll hopefully have you back on to discuss some other topics. Those of you listening, if you’ve got bookkeeping topics that you like to see us address, just put a comment or send us an email on the show notes page. There’s an opportunity at the bottom of the show notes page to enter a comment so you can share it there, and we’ll be happy to take that as input for future topics. But this is Henry Lopez. Thanks for joining me on this episode of The how of business. My guest here again today, and my trusted bookkeeper is Jody Arrant and I release new episodes every Monday morning. You can find a show anywhere you listen to podcasts, including the Howard business YouTube channel and at my website, thehowofbusiness.com, thanks for listening.