In this episode, you get a sneak peek behind the curtain of my monthly live Q&As for students and inside of my free Facebook group.
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Resources mentioned in this episode:
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Click here to get the free First 100 Leads Training with James Wedmore >>
Join the next free training at ambitiousbookkeeper.com/training
In this episode, you get a sneak peek behind the curtain of my monthly live Q&As for students and inside of my free Facebook group.
In this episode you’ll hear:
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper
Click here to get the free First 100 Leads Training with James Wedmore >>
Join the next free training at ambitiousbookkeeper.com/training
Have you ever had a question like how to start a cleanup or following up with clients after you increased their prices or perhaps contracting with another bookkeeper as you're building your own book of business? Well, you're in for a treat today. I'm answering all these questions and more in this replay of a live Q and a I did inside of my free Facebook group. So if you're not in the Ambitious Bookkeeper Facebook Group, go ahead and search that up and request to join. We will approve you once you answer those pesky little questions in order to join, but once you're in there, you do get access to a whole community of almost a thousand other bookkeepers. And I try to answer as many questions as I can. We have amazing bookkeepers in that group with so much knowledge and expertise, and it's a very supportive atmosphere. I do. Hold these live Q and A's every month for my students. And for those in that Facebook group we actually do hold the live Q and A's off of Facebook now. They are in zoom. So if you're not a Facebook user, You are not completely missing out. go ahead and email support and ambitious bookkeeper.com for the link to the live Q and a. If you're interested in joining one of those. All right. Let's get into today's episode. Hello, hello, and welcome to the March Live Q& A. this is our monthly live Q& A. I broadcast this into both of my Facebook groups, my, Accelerator Students Only group, as well as the free Ambitious Bookkeeper group. Here we go. Here's our first question. What is a good way to start a cleanup? I do have a podcast episode on this I can't remember which episode it is and what it's called, but basically I walk through the entire balance sheet. And so that's where I always recommend starting on a cleanup. You look at the balance sheet for a Start with cash. So if cash and the bank accounts are reconciled, you know everything is in, that came in through the bank. then you go through each other individual balance sheet, account and verify the balance. You should have some sort of supporting documentation to, corroborate that balance. And if you can't, when you look at the detail of it and it looks like, for instance, In QuickBooks online, they have a couple accounts that you actually can't even get rid of, which is a huge pet peeve of mine. One of them is uncategorized asset. And a lot of times, especially if, the client or the bookkeeper is just kind of clicking through and, and accepting bank transactions without really looking to see where QuickBooks is coding them, a lot of stuff, especially transfers end up in this uncategorized asset account. And so things like that, you want to look at and clear out and correct. So that is where I always start. If your balance sheet is correct, then you know, you've captured everything. however, I will caveat that doesn't account for anything that the client, intermingles with personal funds. They have to provide those, those things for you. But if they're using bank business bank accounts and they're everything's linked, and you reconcile the bank account and you reconcile the balance sheet, you know, everything is in. It may or may not be clean on the PNL, but at least, you know, everything is in. So that is where I start. Um, and I do actually have, another resource for you that we just, we just kind of launched it, but we've only sent it to our email list. So make sure you're on our email list to get secret goodies. one of the other things that I start with is for a cleanup is for any new client that comes to us that has existing books, we start with a diagnostic before we do any work. That way we can evaluate where they're at, What kind of shape things are in and then we can recommend next steps and also price a cleanup more effectively and know what we're getting into if we've done that diagnostic. So I've just released a diagnostic review mini course, that you can get on our website. If you go to ambitiousbookkeeper. com slash store, it should be up there. previously this, Information and I guess court of like educational material. I don't know. I'm like drawing a blank on what to call it. Previously, it was only available inside of the Bookkeeping Business Accelerator and as a bonus to Workflow Queens Kick off with Asana for bookkeepers and accountants, but I've gotten so many requests for just that piece, on how to do a diagnostic review, and how to charge for it and all that kind of stuff is in that mini course. It should only take you a few hours to go through. And you can also put your team through that if you are wanting to offload that piece of your business to somebody else. All right, so that's that. Okay. I do not have a bookkeeping business yet, but I keep seeing articles on how AI will replace bookkeeping. Is that a cause for concern for aspiring bookkeeping business owners? And how do we make sure we stay in business and provide value? This is such a great question. I personally think that as long as you focus on the relationship with your clients, that's something AI can never replace. And, to an extent, we're already using AI inside of our bookkeeping, like to make our jobs more efficient. For example, QuickBooks and Xero, they, they memorize how you've recorded transactions in the past, and they will prompt you to just accept that. It still takes human intervention to make sure that things are accurate and to kind of handhold the business owners that need the accountability and want to understand their numbers. So the type of businesses we help may shift, right? You're going to be looking for people who are interested in that One on one relationship and interested in learning and being aware of their numbers and having some, a human interact with them to walk them through things. The business owners that aren't interested in that are already using stuff like QuickBooks Live and things like that. And you'll come across those. They'll be very price sensitive and all that kind of stuff. So the value that we add is in the relationship and in the additional strategy and things that you can provide. So one of the things that I. I talked to my students yesterday on our hot seat call was about, taking your experience, not just in bookkeeping and accounting, but in business operations. So if you've had a job ever, any, in any industry, you understand to an extent that businesses operations and the more curious and stuff that you can get around your, client's operations and their pain points and their business model, the better and deeper your relationship is going to be with them. So that's where you should focus on helping them realize like you are interested in understanding their business and helping them. so I personally am not afraid of, AI replacing bookkeeping. It's already replaced a lot of the tedious stuff. I don't think it will ever replace the human relationship, that is bookkeeping and like the finance aspect. So it may require you to learn some more advanced skills so that you can have the conversations with clients, focus on that. your relational skills, as well as the accounting knowledge, like the, not just bookkeeping, but like actual accounting. and there's some great courses for that. You can go to community college and get an associates or just take an accounting one on one class so that you understand the foundations. Because even with AI, there's going to be glitches and issues that you need to understand how accounting actually works to be able to troubleshoot and fix those things. okay. I just sent an email to each client saying that I'll be raising their rates starting in April. Congratulations. I sent engagement letter addendums with their new rates, but didn't ask them to sign because our terms allow for periodic rate increases. Surprisingly, I have heard nothing back. Should I be concerned? Should I follow up or should I just build our new rate and see what happens? I would evaluate on a one off basis which clients you think that you should follow up with because you know your clients, right? There may be some clients that you're like, this client probably hasn't even read that email. So you know that you need to follow up with them and just bump it to the top of their inbox or shoot them a text or whatever and just say, I'm just confirming you got this email about the rate increases. Those will be going into effect April 1st. Please reply with any, Any concerns? Otherwise, I'm going to assume that no response is, that you're okay with it and I will be increasing your rates. I don't know if you have them on auto ACH or what the deal is, but I would just follow up with the clients that you think That you need to because you know your clients the best. that's how I would approach it. I personally, I would do like two emails to each of my clients, like the initial one, and then another one leading up like maybe a week before that says the new rate is taking into effect, blah, blah, blah. But also, The clients that care, they will notice and they will say something when you charge them. So you could also just collect the fallout when it happens. What do you think about contracting to work for another bookkeeper while growing your own firm? I think that's a really great, way to get your feet wet. To get extra income and to see how someone else operates their business as well, especially if you don't have experience running your own business yet or experience being client facing or know what you're going to come across. It's a great way to be exposed to all the little issues that could come up with not having to deal with the client communication. I'm assuming you wouldn't need to if you're contracting with another bookkeeper, but you may. So I think that's a great. Great way to start out and to get more experience and to kind of see like which industries you like working with and which ones you don't and all those things. I'm switching from a sole proprietor to an LLC, also name change. Want to start the switch for next quarter, so starting April. Any suggestions for making the shift seamless for my clients? Sending new engagements, etc. Also, can I just change my name on QBO for my own books? Okay, so I've done this a couple times. I started out with a different business name and a sole proprietor, and then when I created my LLC, that's when I think that was right around when I did the whole rebrand of the name as well. And so yeah, I would just send an email out to all of your clients that's letting them know about the name change and let them know to be expecting an updated engagement letter. and I wouldn't worry about having all of that like done right away, like April 1st, you can trickle it all out, but I would definitely start with telling all of your clients about the name change. Let them know nothing is going to change. about their services or anything. You're just, growing as a business. And so you're incorporating as an LLC, and you'll be sending out updated engagement letters for everybody to sign. And this is your new, if you're switching emails, you can let them know, like, now's a great time actually, even So to let them know that like, this is the email to email in when you have blah, blah, blah. And if you don't have like a centralized help or support inbox, now is a great time to set one up and let your clients know that this is the only thing that'll be changing is the way we communicate and da, da, da, da, da. Like here's the email address. Please use this going forward. And yes, you can just change your name with QBO online. Some things that you change your name with may require you to submit your LLC paperwork. and all that good stuff. But yeah, When I've done a rebrand, I just change all those things as I come across them. It's like, when I log into this, whatever, I'm like, Oh, that's the old name. So let's change it. and you'll find that kind of stuff happening for the next, like, year. Yeah. but yeah, and congratulations on setting up your LLC and all that good stuff. so yeah, you should just be able to change your name for your own books and then update if your EIN number changes. Make sure you update that in all those areas too. Q about pricing and packages. How do you talk with clients who don't need All services on a particular package level. For example, if you have a client who doesn't need SalesTaxNexus, but that's a service at that package level, they otherwise fit in, do you reduce your package price or customize the package for them in some other way? I just remove that from the package and keep the price the same. Right? I really, the way that I price my clients is I price it to the client. So even though I have like a price for each package, that's the base price for each package. technically have four packages. I'm not promoting my CFO package at this time. So I'm just going to talk about the three that I am. Essentials, Advanced, and VIP. My essentials package, is the bare minimum that every client gets, no matter how big or small they are, no matter what their volume is. Like they all get this. one package. And there could be a client that makes 100, 000 in revenue on that package. There could be a client that makes 300, 000 in revenue on that package. And I'm going to price them a little bit differently because of the complexities of their own businesses, if that makes sense. But they're all still getting the same thing. It might just be like a volume thing. And so my advanced package, my middle tier package is the one that I will put people on that have sales tax and payroll and things like that. and it's usually when they're at about 500k in revenue. So it's good to kind of designate, The revenue ranges for clients, where they fit into each packages in general. It's not always going to be that way, but in general, like which clients revenue fit into which packages. So you can kind of, they can kind of self select into the package that they need. so if a client wants everything that's in VIP, so a VIP gets a monthly loom video, not just financial statements. if the client wants that package because of the Loom video and they also are in that revenue range, but they don't have sales tax and they don't have payroll, I will still price them at the base price for that package, which is 650. if they have payroll, Sales tax, then the price goes up. Does that make sense? So, this is a way for me to, make sure I never drop below a certain price point for each package. So I not only have a base price in general, which is our base package, but I also have base prices for each level. And those are the prices that are on my website. So, it's always starting at. I hope that helps. When you talk payroll in your package, what service do you provide? so we have all of our clients set up on a third party payroll processor. And right now, I think all of our clients are now on Gusto. Thank the Lord. I, for a while, had someone on ADP, had someone on JustWorks, and we just finished converting our JustWorks client over to Gusto to save her some money. And, so when we say payroll in our package, that's just an extra layer of complexity that happens in the bookkeeping To manage the integration and match the payroll, transactions in the bookkeeping. And so since that creates more stuff that comes up, also when clients have payroll, even though we're not, we don't run the payroll for the clients. We show them how to do it. Someone in house needs to do that and approve timesheets. But doing this setup takes our time. We usually help them through that. if they get. Employees in new states, we help initiate the new state paperwork through Gusto and a service called CorpNet. And so we facilitate all of that. And then the client will inevitably have questions about payroll and sometimes HR stuff. So that's why Anyone who has payroll, they're automatically going to be in that advanced package, or hire because we know that there's more complexities about their business. And then, something that has to be reconciled at year end. We manage making sure that The W 2s are reviewed, that the W 3 ties out with wages on the P& L. All these extra little things that happen throughout the year, cause more complexities, right? So, that's why, our base package is only for a solopreneur with maybe contractors. But anyone who has payroll or sales tax, they're automatically in one of our middle tiers. Are the types of digital products clients, for whom QBO would be a better fit versus Xero? I think that's your question. I'm starting with a focus on QBO, but I'm wanting to focus on e commerce digital product businesses. So, I personally think that Xero is better for all e commerce and digital products, but if you talk to Alyssa Lange, Workflow Queen, she uses QBO. She, she helps these types of clients too. And she has her process and everything that she likes. I prefer Xero because you can link Stripe and PayPal as bank accounts in Xero without a third party process, like without a third party integration. And, we can, um, Use A2X, which you can also use with QBO for e commerce. I like Xero better. So I personally think it's a better program to use for online entrepreneurs. But if you are really comfortable with QBO and you know where the things are, You know, can kind of fall apart in those workflows, then stick with QBO. It's not, there's nothing wrong with that. but yeah, I prefer Xero because it has a direct integration with Stripe and PayPal , and now Kajabi payments. And most of our clients use Kajabi for their online courses and digital products. And, they have a direct integration with Xero now. So it's really, really nice. Do you have anything in your courses that goes through reconciling payroll? I do not. I would actually recommend going through a payroll certification or like go through the Gusto people certification basically, I don't know exactly what you mean by reconciling payroll. There could be lots of different things happening here and it depends on the payroll processor that you're using as well. So for example, when we had a client on ADP, the way you have to set up ADP integrations with Your bookkeeping software is to create a clearing account, a payroll clearing account. And so that requires you to actually like look at your payroll reports to see, especially if they have physical checks and direct deposit, it becomes a giant mess. So that's one aspect of reconciling payroll. Some clients and bookkeepers go the route of, especially with ADP, of just booking everything to wages and then truing it up at year end. I don't really like that method because I like to have monthly numbers, but if a client is okay with that, that's all right. But then it's like, if something happened throughout the year that makes it a mess, it can just, it can end up taking you a lot of time at year end to fix that. that's another reason why we use Gusto because the integration is really good. It creates a bill in Xero. that matches up to what comes out of the bank and they make the journal entry on the background. And, for the most part, everything has been super seamless in that as long as you set up your integrations correctly. that helps me because I won't launch with offering monthly bookkeeping until I learn and get certified in Xero. Just focus on QBO cleanup, setup, and reporting training. Awesome. and then you can start doing Xero migrations. we use JetConvert to do, if QBO is clean and we want all of the vendor and everything information to come through to Xero, then we use JetConvert. If it's not, we typically just do a fresh start in Xero and let our clients, keep QuickBooks, like, cause you can still access the data for, even after you cancel your subscription. So, for payroll reconciliation, just quarterly and year end, so books match reports. So, I'll just give you a quick, quick and dirty how to reconcile is run your payroll summary reports, and then look to see what the net, gross pay should match your wages account. And then your payroll taxes, employer taxes on that payroll summary should match your tax expense. that's how it should line up. And if you have withholdings for like benefits and things like that, you want to make sure that anything withheld from the employee is put into a payroll liability account for benefits, and then you want to make sure you match your, benefits payment to that same liability account, if that makes sense. Quick and dirty reconciliation. I feel like I hit a wall as far as finding clients, just feeling down and demotivated. Oh, unable to land any consultations. I do have some people reaching out, but no one even goes through with the discovery call. Following up does not seem to work either. They just end up ghosting me. Any tips on landing and finding these clients? Okay. My question for you is where are these, leads coming from initially? and then my other question for you is what type of clients are you marketing toward? Like, I guess first answer the question because you may or may not be marketing. It could be like a word of mouth thing. So I want to get to the bottom of where are these bad leads coming from? And then where can we find good leads? So where to find good leads really depends on what type of client you are wanting to work with. And then making sure that you're marketing to the client who can afford you, who's serious about working with a bookkeeper. And so that you can position your value to that type of client and they won't ghost you. Another small tweak you can make is do not schedule discovery calls without having a conversation with someone first or, have them pay for the discovery call. Even if it's like 5, people will show up to that. what I've done is I don't even have my discovery call link available for anyone to book until they fill out an interest form. So I already know they're, they're selecting, they're self selecting in and people are self selecting out and I don't even know about them because they won't even fill out that interest form. And on the interest form, I sh I state my minimum price and I state that we are, Only use Xero, so they have to agree to being open to switching. Otherwise, we won't even get on a call with them. I'll just send them to someone else, that does QuickBooks. those are some little tweaks that you can make to filter people out that aren't serious. And I don't ever have no shows for discovery calls anymore because it requires them to fill out that form and then I invite them onto the call. I don't charge for discovery calls anymore, but before I did this method, I did. I started out with 15 for like a 45 minute discovery call and then I changed it to 75 for a 45 minute discovery call. And then now I have it, a 15 minute discovery call for 15. And if someone ends up finding that link, right, then I'm still filtering people out. But, the people that fill out my interest form and then I invite them onto the discovery call, I send them a coupon to book it for free because they've already done the self selecting in. An opting in situation. So I hope that helps a little bit. what kind of things are on your interest form? If you go to, of course, bookkeeping. com slash contact, you will see my whole interest form right there. So you can take a peek at it. And then, how do you market to higher value clients? I'm pretty much done with Upwork because of the types of clients and lower value I was getting there. Social media and website doesn't draw any attention. I've niched in restaurant and retail, but I have no idea where to network. Okay, so restaurant and retail, I would start following those types of accounts. and, start building relationships. And then those are good local businesses. So I would do whatever kind of local networking you can join. I don't know if you're male or female, but if you're a female, you can join a women's networking group. if you're either, you could join, the chamber of commerce, you could join BNI, you could join, sometimes there's different. cultural groups that have networking, business networking events, depending on your demographics. I would do that and join local Facebook groups as well. I am a part of several local Facebook groups of business owners, of moms, of just in general Facebook groups. And yeah. I've been seeing so many posts recently of people that are looking for bookkeepers or accountants because it's tax season. So, capitalize on this time of year right now and offer someone like let me do, a free diagnostic where it's like a real quick and dirty, like whatever, right., do whatever you can locally and, you can also, depending on your budget, Look, I'm recently been seeing a lot of this lately. Our chamber are like local events and different groups within town are actually looking for sponsorships for lots of things. Like our town has a lot of Christmas, events and like summer music concerts and all this free stuff for the community. And they are looking for sponsors and you get shouted out in their flyers or with a banner or whatever, depending on your budget. and then we have a local, Young Professionals Network, which is a sub chapter, like a sub group of the Chamber of Commerce, but it's for entrepreneurs or business owners, under 40. And they put together local events and, Things like that too. So I've joined that just to be on their directory, like lots of random things. Even though I don't really look for local businesses, I just like to be involved in the community. so I would suggest that, especially if you're in restaurant and retail, start connecting with people in those industries and tailor your social media posts to target, Restaurant and retail pain points. So sales, hopefully you understand sales tax. I would almost not recommend you work in those industries if you don't understand sales tax, cause that's a really big component, but that's a really good marketing angle for people to, to talk about sales tax stuff. To use their lingo for point of sale, for tip reports, and things like that, that you would be required to do if you're doing bookkeeping for those industries. So hopefully those ideas helped a little bit. My last suggestion is going to be mindset. which really should have been my first suggestion. but I had to get you to stay somehow. So I would try to shift how you're looking at things. And, try not to get stuck in the, like, victim mindset of, like, nobody on Upwork. is willing to pay prices, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like the right clients will come to you. You have to make sure that you're marketing to the right clients. Like don't market to a restaurant that, you know, is struggling or like, you know, they're not making a lot of money, or retail or whatever. so that's another thing you have to, to make sure you're in the room with the right people. and. a really successful restaurant or retail operation. Retail, they may be on social media. I don't know about a restaurant. Like they'll probably have someone else doing their social media. so if you can like do the chamber thing or like go to events, start talking to people when you go into restaurants, like you never know and just tell people that like what you do. You really never know. on that note, We have a local, toy store that just opened up this last year and I'm in there all the time with my kids cause they have really nostalgic, like good quality toys. And so whenever we have a birthday party to go to or whatever, the kids have some money to spend, we go there because I want to support a local business. And I've been in there a lot, but I also network with that part of the community. So there's a lot of, there's like a music scene down there. And, I'm in the music store a lot. And in that area of our downtown where the toy store is, it's like this, they call it no co district because it's North Cortez street, district. It's like a sub community within our little downtown. And so like, I've made some connections just on a personal basis with a lot of the musicians, some of the business owners and stuff. And I went into the toy store one time. And I was checking out in the owner. was behind the register and he's like, hey, aren't you a bookkeeper? And I've never been introduced to this guy before. Someone else must have said something about it. And I was like, yeah, I am. So a little side note to this. And so you don't have to carry around business cards. There's an app called Blinq, B L I N Q. You can load your information onto this like QR code and share it. And it's always on your phone. It's an app. So I would recommend setting that up so that if you are at a restaurant or at a local shop, you can easily share your information. so anyways, random story, someone else told him I was a bookkeeper. I had never, you know, even said anything. So it pays to Build relationships in the community because you never know. Okay. actually BNI chapters, even though I'm terrified. Do you have any experience with those or tips for a productive visit? Yes. So, BNI usually only has one bookkeeping seat and one CPA seat. but if you, can find someone who is already part of that group, you can come as their guest, even if that seat is taken. And that would even be a good opportunity to just try to be somebody's guest a couple times and then work on your five minute pitch. Of like who you are, how you help, and the type of businesses you help. very straightforward and simple. Don't overthink it, but practice it before you go to that, that thing. And then do you, do the business card on the, phone. Yeah, so that's my biggest tip is practice your, five minute elevator pitch. Most people know what a bookkeeper does, but if you're interested in working with restaurants and retail, incorporate that in your pitch and try to find someone who's already a member that you can be a guest of if the bookkeeping seat is taken. You can usually go to your first, like, two meetings for free, if it's not even taken. So, would definitely recommend that. and I actually, one last note on this, because you said you're terrified. I have a Five centering meditations. It's 7. I will come into the groups and drop the link. I recorded five little meditations for different scenarios in your business. And one of them is before you go into a networking event. So if you're interested in that, I'll drop the link in the groups after this is over. it's a bonus inside of my programs, but, so it's brand new and I'm really excited about them. people have told me in the past that my voice is really soothing, and so that, like, they get feel relaxed when I, when they listen to my podcast. So I was like, maybe I should record some meditations. but they're specific to, ones before you go into a networking event. One is before a discovery call. One is, before a difficult conversation with a client or an employee. one is, is about money mindset. I can't remember what the last one is, but, yeah, I'll drop the link for you guys. All righty, everyone. Thank you so much for joining me today. I hope, you found this very valuable. have a wonderful rest of your week and everyone have a beautiful afternoon.