In my 30s, one of my favourite business books was The E-Myth Revisited by Michael Gerber. If you haven’t read it before, here’s the AI-generated, one-sentence summary. “The E-Myth Revisited is a book about entrepreneurship and the common myth that most businesses are started by entrepreneurs when in fact they are started by technicians who know how to do the work but not how to run a business.” The phrase that has bounced around my brain for the last 15 years is this. “If your business depends on you, you don’t own a business—you have a job.” It started out as motivation. I was going to buil ..read more

When I was 14, I got my first job as a bookkeeper. It was a summer job. Someone at the office where my mom worked had quit suddenly, so they needed help. Yes, when everyone else was at the pool getting sunburns, I was in an office from 9 to 5. I was paid minimum wage, which at the time was $4/hour. On Saturdays, I came in and helped clean the office. Cleaning the office paid $5/hour. This is when I realized too many business owners don't value bookkeeping. It's not because I think bookkeepers are "above" the cleaning staff. It's because it was a deliberate decision by the owner. They didn't ha ..read more

Have you ever looked at one of the reports your bookkeeper sent you and...actually, let's stop that thought there. For many freelancers, solopreneurs, or small business owners, that's about as far as you get. You're sent some type of financial statement that seems important, but you aren't given any instruction or guidance on how to read it. There may be valuable data in there that could help you improve your company's financial performance, but it's hard to figure out where to start and what to focus on. So instead, you toss it into a folder and forget about it. This post is part of a series ..read more

In many ways, a good budget spreadsheet is one of the most valuable tools you can provide for your bookkeeping clients. Is it the most common task you will perform in your bookkeeping business? No, probably not. Most business owners just want the bare essentials. They want their bank account reconciled and a basic set of financial statements so they can hand everything to their accountant at tax time. Those are not the clients we will focus on today. In fact, I'd argue those are not the clients we should focus on...period. Let's focus on the small business owner that wants to know more about t ..read more

If you run your own business, this advice is for you. You might be doing everything yourself, including the bookkeeping. Or, you're just getting started and haven't even decided on accounting software yet. At some point, outsourcing your bookkeeping will make your life easier. Having a professional provide bookkeeping services can be a huge benefit. Unfortunately, it can also be a source of frustration if you don't go in with a solid plan. In my decades of running a bookkeeping business, I have seen too many entrepreneurs underutilize my services. I want you to grow your business and I think ..read more

In a recent post, I wrote about how to charge for bookkeeping services. I mentioned that a downside of hourly billing is that there's no incentive to get more efficient. If you find a way to achieve four hours of work in only two, all you've done is cut your invoice in half. In that scenario, having an arsenal of bookkeeper productivity tips isn't all that useful. Once you start billing based on what you're delivering to your clients, that's when you want to save time on your important tasks. Ever since I made my bookkeeping business fully remote in 2010, I have been obsessed with productivity ..read more

This is the year! If you run your own business and you've been handling your own books, it's time to outsource your bookkeeping duties. I know the pain of getting your small business off the ground. You are looking for cost savings wherever you can find them. You will do every job yourself, even the ones you've never done before. Just as long as you aren't spending money you don't have. While this is necessary in the beginning, that doesn't make it a good long-term decision. Whatever your small business does, you excel at that skill. You have worked long hours to get to the point where you cou ..read more

As bookkeepers, we make mistakes all of the time. These costly mistakes can cause problems for our clients and rob us of thousands of dollars in lost revenue each year. These are not technical mistakes, although there are plenty of those too. Quick tip: if the amount you're out of balance is divisible by 9, you flipped two numbers somewhere. And while these are all common bookkeeping mistakes, they could also be called common bookkeeper mistakes. These are habits and routines we get into when we're busy and want to get the work done. Like all bad habits, they tend to worsen the longer you've ..read more

A long time ago, I wrote about how to charge for bookkeeping services. It felt like it was time to revisit that topic. One of the primary challenges I face is the "money talk". As an introvert, I struggle with discussing my rates. It's a silly hangup, but I always want to find a way to skip past my hourly rate or the total cost of my first invoice and get straight to the work. I think a lot of employees dislike asking for raises. The thing you forget when you go out on your own is you've now got several bosses. If you need to raise your rates, you're suddenly asking a dozen bosses for a raise ..read more

Over the years, I have received a lot of questions about getting started as a bookkeeper. These usually fall under two categories. Where do I go to learn how to be a bookkeeper? How do I get my first bookkeeping client if I have no work experience? These are both great questions. Let's talk about the second one today. The age-old paradox is trying to land a job in order to get experience, but every job wants you to have prior experience. In this post, we're going to assume you have some bookkeeping knowledge but just no job experience. Maybe you've taken a class or two. Maybe you've just han ..read more