The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

201 ⎸ [Q&A] Nonprofit Niche, Software, and Standing Out as a New Bookkeeper

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 201

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In this May Q&A episode, Serena dives deep into the practical side of building a bookkeeping business, covering everything from software partnerships and pricing strategies to finding your niche and standing out from the competition. She shares real-world advice on working with Xero and Gusto, addresses common struggles with client onboarding, and provides actionable tips for bookkeepers at every stage of their journey.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • How to handle software costs and partnerships with Xero and Gusto
  • Strategies to differentiate yourself in a crowded bookkeeping market
  • The real talk on choosing your niche and why you shouldn't let others talk you out of what you love
  • Game-changing client onboarding tactics that eliminate problem clients from day one

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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welcome everyone to May q and a. super excited to have you all. I am gonna start with, one of the pre-submitted questions while y'all are thinking of your questions. Madison asked, I was wondering if you could tell me how you do things when it comes to paying to use Xero and Gusto. Do they charge you monthly to use them or how does it work? And then do you pass the cost onto the client or split it with them? So for anyone who is new to building your business, this is a question that comes up sometimes. you do not have to pay to use gusto. And you don't have to pay to use zero if you become a partner. if you become a partner of Xero, you do have to get on a call with someone at Xero and go through kinda like your goals of growing your firm. They are kind of, they're not like selective, but it's not as easy to just set up a, a partner accountant. Profile as it is with QBO, they do vet the accountants a little bit more. They wanna make sure that you are actually like serious about bringing on clients and all that good stuff. But once you're a partner, you get a free zero account for yourself as the firm and then, you get a partner discount that the more people that you get, that you bring onto Xero, if you decide to handle the billing for them, you don't have to handle the subscription costs for them. You can select for it to be, you know, billed to the client. as far as Gusto goes, I don't pay for gusto for my clients. I always just extend the discount that we get as a Gusto partner to the clients and let them handle it. And the reason I do that, like I handle the zero billing because the price is gonna pretty much stay the same unless they do like a price increase across the board. But with Gusto, their fee is going to increase every time they add an employee, and I don't wanna be responsible for that. So my process is always to just set them up on Gusto and have it client build so that they're managing the subscription cost. And that way when they add employees or take 'em away, like we don't have to adjust their pricing. so that's my process. You can also choose as a Gusto partner to either extend a discount to them if you have enough people. On your partner profile or take a revenue share? I always like to just extend the discount because it's like, it's like a 10% revenue share or something. It's not that big, so it's like it really doesn't make a huge difference to me, and I would rather just extend the discount to the client. I. So let me, all right, now we got some questions in the chat. Anthony says, I'm a relatively new bookkeeper. What do you recommend doing as far as separating yourself from others? Big fan of your podcast also. Thank you. so my suggestion as far as separating yourself from others is going to be like, figure out kind of. What you stand for and like what you want your brand to be and try to connect with. Like-minded entrepreneurs, number one, and then the other, like more tactical.'cause branding, it's gonna take a while for you to figure out like what you want your brand to be like, or maybe not, maybe you already know, like the type of clients you wanna work with, the type of personalities and you can connect with them. That's gonna be a really great way to stand out and make sure that you have like, really good communication. that's one of the biggest issues that clients. Why clients leave their bookkeepers and accountants is because they don't feel taken care of. They don't feel like they're kept in the loop. so when you have really good communication with your clients, that's gonna. Set yourself apart, but as far as like before you get clients and ways to set yourself apart, that way it's gonna be tied more to your branding and then also the services that you're offering. So a lot of bookkeepers will just do The bare minimum categorize bank transactions and then be like, okay, your bookkeeping's done. I'm a huge proponent of actually going a step further and creating reports for clients and maybe tracking some KPIs. Like it doesn't have to be crazy. When I say KPIs, people sometimes get like, oh my gosh, I don't know, like how to track KPIs. I'm talking like simple ones like. What was their revenue versus last month? What is their gross profit margin? What is their profit margin as a percentage? what is their operating expense as a percentage of sales? So like very simple KPIs. Even just doing that at the end of every month, sending an email with those bullet points is going to set you apart. one of the other ways that we set ourselves apart is by working with one niche. So when clients are deciding whether or not to work with us, if they're in the niche that we serve, we are already standing apart from our competition. Competition with quotes, because we still don't really believe in that. But I mean, there is competition right? But we are already standing apart because we know their industry really well. So that's another way that you can set yourself apart is getting really comfortable with a certain industry and gearing all your marketing and conversations toward that. So hopefully that gets you started. Report back, let me know what you decide to implement as like one of the things to set yourself apart. I'd love to hear it. Sarah says, I am really struggling to find my bookkeeping niche. We just talked about that. Do you have any tips on that? I work with several different clients and I'm loving working with nonprofits, but I don't wanna lock myself into nonprofits either. Okay. Oh, and then second question. I'll come to that in a minute. So as far as finding your niche, if you really love working with nonprofits, why can't that be your niche? that would be my question to you to maybe ponder, like, why are you not wanting to lock yourself into nonprofits? Is it that you, I don't know. I don't know how the answer to that question. So that's something that maybe you journal on and try to figure out. Like, why am I resisting just niching with nonprofits? If you wanna unmute and, and answer, you can. If you already know this, this answer. Yeah. Hi. Um, hi Sarina. So, yeah, um, I just feel like I actually spoke with a CPA partner of mine. It's like, why are you wanting to niche down to nonprofits? Like there's not a lot of money there. But in my experience, you know, nonprofits need a lot of like, help and organization and, and they get grants, they get funding, and it's a necessary investment. Yeah. I've seen the price of audits. Some of them require audits, like they go to like 40,000 for an audit. Mm-hmm. So I'm just thinking if I can help them, like, prepare for audits or just be so I'm just like. I, I, I just have a lot of conflicting information, but I do love them. Nonprofits are like my thing. Yeah. So that's unfortunate that someone is trying to steer you away from a niche that you already love. take people's advice with a grain of salt. they might be considering, like a lot of people's ideas of nonprofits are like the, almost the mom and pop, like small nonprofits that like are bootstrapping things that don't have a budget. They're doing all of everything and like fundraising and. They're not like as well established. Yeah, there's not as much money in those, but like you said, there are some well-established nonprofits that if you do have connections in the industry and you can get one, you'll start getting more and more. And they do have budget for bookkeeping as well. So if that truly is what you wanna go after, I would. Kindly decline their, their opinion and be like, great. That's, that's fine. I'm still gonna go do this. Yeah. And try it out. One, one other thing is like like when I chose my name wall keeping, like, it just like, sounds so like fun and it's just like I wanted to cater to like small businesses in general because it's just like a fun name, but I feel like it doesn't go with like a non. Profit brand. You know, that's also my mindset block. Like w means like should be like a bookkeeping for a fun niche or something. Mm-hmm. And nonprofits is, they're very necessary, but like, it just doesn't go with it. I don't know, it's just. That's just kind of how I feel. Yes. That that's understandable. And also a solution to that might be to just create another, like a DBA that Oh yeah. And like have kind of the brand that is going for the nonprofit and a separate brand that you like. You can, you can have it all under one EIN, but. That's just so something to think about, like, yeah, that's a good idea. Maybe, maybe also a name will come to you later on and you can change your name. I've changed the name of my business a couple times. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Awesome. Okay, second question. I'm a QuickBooks Pro advisor, but I'm looking into Xero as well because a lot of tax accountants have trouble finding zero bookkeepers. Would you recommend using both or should I just keep one? So when I first started out, I worked in QBO and Xero, and I do think it's still important to understand and be comfortable in, QBO, even if you're going to move away from using it, because inevitably you will have clients that come to you. Who are already on QBO and you have to either evaluate their books, do a diagnostic or cleanup or migration, all of the above. so you're still gonna need to be able to work in, in QBO. And so, I like whenever it starts to make sense to you to start shifting everybody to zero. That, like whatever works for you. It took me a few years to get everybody onto zero. and I mainly started with just putting my brand new clients on. Like if they came to me without books, I would put them on zero. If they were already on QBBO, I would work my magic behind the scenes and like start to point out issues we were seeing with QBO and be like, we're gonna start shifting everybody to zero because this is our preference for our team. It makes us more efficient. less errors and all that kind of stuff. So I kind of did that way. And so some clients didn't wanna switch to QBO, they ended up leaving at some point, but not because of that. Or sorry, switching from QBO to zero. and just with regular client churn, eventually we ended up with all of our clients on Xero because when we brought on new clients, I also drew a line in the sand. finally where I was like, I'm standing my ground. Like even if you're on QBO to work with us, we will migrate you. we do migrate people for free. That could be controversial, but it's our preference to work on zero. So, um, and I use Jet Convert, so it makes it pretty efficient. there is an upfront fee for that, but there is usually a discount or a subsidy when you migrate them to zero. So sometimes it's free. So yeah, so that's my advice on that. whatever system you feel most comfortable in and more efficient in is what I would say you should work in. However, if you do work with nonprofits, zero has nonprofit discounts. I think it's like 20%. So. Keep that in mind. Oh, that's good. And they, I've heard their reporting features, like their budgeting is better because QuickBooks budgets, they're, they're honestly trash. Yeah, yeah. And you can have all the class tracking and have like budget for different programs and all that kind of stuff. And Xero pretty easily. So, So, yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Madison says, I have a potential client wanting some cleanup done with specific transactions such as automobiles, home and sale of land that he said were done incorrectly. He's really worried about those being done correctly for a CPA. What's the best way to make sure those are done correctly? So Madison, if you don't have, experience in real estate, I would probably. Ask to connect with the CPA and just ask them to like, see if he'll like introduce you and be like, I just wanna make sure I handle it the way that your CPA wants it. Would you be okay with me getting on a call with them and having them direct how these entries should be done or what it should look like at the end? The other thing that you can, like, I'm not quite sure what's a mess, so I can't really advise is like how to make sure it's done correctly. As far as automobiles, like in general, I would say if the car is not owned by the company, it shouldn't be on the books, on the balance sheet. so that it could be a matter of like asking the client who owns that, who's actually on the title of the vehicle and all that good stuff to make sure it should actually be on the books. and sale of land. Same thing. Was the land owned by the company or not? And then the best way to start is to just ask for all the source documents for all of these things. Like ask for the closing documents for the sale of the land and ask for like an image of the title so you could see who actually owns it if the client doesn't know off the top of their head, that kind of stuff. So. If you're ever in doubt, like just ask if you can reach out to their CPA, just to make sure it's done the way that their CPA wants it. Hey Tina. What's up? I'm trying to move from serving new businesses to more established clients who aren't as price conscious. I've updated my website working on SEO, stepped up my social media posts, but I'm not gaining any traction. In fact, my leads as a whole have all but dried up. What do you suggest I try next? So I always go back to like the basics of. who are the clients I'm trying to attract? Like what's their revenue range? What industries are they in and. Like kind of reverse engineer. Okay. If I was a CEO of this type of business or a decision maker, because maybe you're wanting to work with even larger businesses who you're not gonna be directly in contact with the CEO, but some other decision maker. Where are they hanging out if you're trying to work with big enough businesses that like. There's multiple decision makers, or like the CEO is really busy. They're not gonna be on like Instagram, you know what I mean? So try to figure out where exactly those decision makers are gonna be. Sometimes it's not social media at all. It's like conventions or events or masterminds. I've had. as I've like grown my business, I've found, some of my best referral sources and best leads are people that I ended up hiring for something that makes sense too. So I'm not saying like, go out of your way and like hire a coach for a specific thing. But that is one way that like I've seen a lot of success to get in the room with like those. Decision makers that I actually wanna work with. So my homework for you would be try to sit down and like write down maybe like 10 of the like real businesses that you would wanna work with. And then try to like reverse engineer, like where would these business owners be hanging out? and see what you come up with. I'm curious to, to hear about it. yeah. Awesome. I think it depends on the nonprofit. I have a nonprofit that pays me over a thousand dollars a month, says, Rhonda. Yeah, exactly. Alan says I'm super new, almost finished with QuickBooks ProAdvisor training. Is there a huge difference between QuickBooks and other accounting softwares? Is it just a preference thing that you want to have as many programs that you are familiar with? I think there are differences, like the background of the functionality of accounting software should all be the same. There are some that maybe don't have double entry accounting that you wanna completely steer away from. but it is more of a preference for me of like the user interface, how well it functions, how easy my team is able to adopt things and without like, messing things up. And so for us, like. QuickBooks. I have made a mess of QuickBooks and I have a CPA license. So, um, it's just like a personality like visual thing where it's like, this doesn't function the way that I want it to. Especially like I came from corporate where we had big ERP systems where the controls in the systems we're really locked down where you can't delete transactions, you have to avoid them. So there's always an audit trail. there's layers of approvals and all sort of stuff, so. That's why I prefer zero, because zero functions more like an ERP system where things are locked down. Um, and once you like, we've. Once you have a team and you've trained your team on things, it becomes very inefficient to have them switching back and forth between different softwares and different industries. So like, the more you streamline things with one software or one bookkeeping software rather, and like a general industry, the more efficient, and repeatable your processes are gonna be. So that's my little spiel. I do have a podcast episode on why we Love Zero, 'cause there's other reasons. Um, so I'll save it. Um, you could go listen to the podcast episode. But yeah, it's, there's, there's definitely more reasons than that. But, that is one of the big ones is that it functions more like an actual ERP system. In my mind and the interface is easier for my brain. It's like more simple and clean. I feel like every time I go into QBO, there's new stuff that I have to navigate through, and I'm like, overwhelmed. Rhonda says my question is on Dubsado. I understand the entire process and absolutely love it. My question is on the proposal contract invoice, I like to put my monthly bookkeeping and catchup cleanup work on the same proposal and engagement letter. I. The engagement letter lists what their upfront costs would be with both costs. However, it also used the amount for the continued monthly fee. Is there a smart field or workaround to have it state? Just the monthly bookkeeping plan they choose. Unfortunately, I haven't figured out a way to do this yet, so I usually go in and edit it, or you can do more general terms where. you use a smart field that just says like the package name or something like that. Um, I'm just like thinking through how this workaround actually could work and you might wanna test it out, when you're creating the proposal for the client. I know that for us. We have our packages, but I actually adjust the price every time I create a new proposal because I price the client not the actual package. So we have our base price for each package, but sometimes clients have three or four states of sales tax. And so I increase that, that package price. So I'm already going in and editing the proposal before I send it to them and editing the package to change the price. So. Maybe if you also put the price of what you're doing in the title of the package, if that makes sense. And then change the engagement letter to be that package field, like just the name of the package field. I might try that as well because I just came up with that idea. I'm like, Hmm, that might actually be the solution.'cause I do the same thing. I put the cleanup and everything on the same proposal and I've had that same exact issue that you're talking about. And so in PA in the past, I've just gone into the engagement letter and actually edited, The price, but sometimes if you offer multiple packages and you don't know what they're gonna select, you can't edit it ahead of time. And so in those cases, I just remove it and just say, refer to the attached proposal. That's also the other option is to say like, refer to the attached proposal, monthly portion or whatever, like monthly engagement package. So, but I think if you add the price to the title of the package. That might be the workaround. So let me know if you try it. I will try to remember to try it next time. I'm in Devs Auto. we still have like 15 minutes. If anyone has more questions, please, please ask. I'm at your disposal right now. While y'all are thinking of questions to ask, I'll just fill the space with announcements. We just released our 200th episode on the podcast, so if you haven't listened to that, go listen. I talk about, how 2024 went some lessons. I learned some things that happened, like some numbers and things like that with my firm. it's kind of wild to think that, like I've recorded, I've actually recorded over 200 episodes at this point because some of them have been like many episodes that we didn't even add numbers to, but, yeah, it's crazy. I'm like you just in a blink of an eye. 200, 200 episodes. Awesome. You've been streaming all morning. Cool. so that's number one. And then in that podcast episode, I also share that we are going to open up the Bookkeeping Biz workshops in August. I'm shortening them. It used to be like four to five days. Now I'm going to shorten it to just three days. So, It's gonna be even better for busy people and I'm going to be doing them in the evenings so that if you do work a full-time job or you have kids at home during the day and you wanna like pop in after they're asleep, or I. You know, relaxing for the evening. When I very first started the Bookkeeping Biz Workshops, I did them in the evenings because that was what worked for me.'cause I have kids and like stuff going on during the day and that was when I had help. So, I decided to bring back that schedule. So we're gonna be doing the workshops in the evening. it's only gonna be, three days instead of the like whole entire week. So hopefully, that works out better for people. what is the B-B-A-V-I-P? Can I upgrade? Yeah. So B-B-A-V-I-P is, is the same. Program, so B, BA, which is all self-study material, but we do monthly hot seat calls, which are monthly coaching calls on Zoom as a group, and monthly coworking calls. And then, And then I send a gift in the mail, and then sometimes I will run it as a cohort. So there will be time periods. I don't know when, if I'm gonna, I don't know if I'm actually gonna run it as a cohort after this workshop series, but, to be determined. But when I do run it as a cohort, you get access to the, like each cohort. So once you're a VIP you get access to the calls, whether they're monthly or weekly. So. Yeah, you can pop in when you need support and yeah, so that's the VIP because you get more one-on-one attention and, face-to-face coaching. So we, it's kind of like this where it's like a zoom room, but in the coaching calls I like to have everybody with their camera on and people unmute and ask questions and we coach back and forth. So it is still in a group setting. But it's a lot more personal like advice and mentoring. and your other question. Can you upgrade? Yes, you can always upgrade to VIP once you're in BA, um, whenever you're ready. So, there should be a link in your portal, but you can also just email support@ambitiousbookkeeper.com for the link and we will send it over. Just got Hubdoc, Cheyenne says, and started using it with one client and sent invites to clients. Is there any process you use with your clients how they are supposed to use it or just give it to them and tell them to snap a picture? I'm also having issues with the email forwarding to get the invoice attachment, or if it is just a link to a bill. Okay. So number one, I always show them how to use it on their onboarding call with us. That way they have the opportunity to. Ask questions for clarification and I demonstrate like how to use it. and during that onboarding call I show them like, okay, this is your email address that you're going to email things in, you can forward things. This is probably the easiest way to get things in unless they have physical receipts. And that case the easiest way is to snap a photo and upload it into the app. And so I demonstrate all of that for them. and. That I would suggest doing that as well. There are, I think there are some like YouTube videos and stuff that you could share if you wanted to do that. but I always like to just show them on the onboarding call, even if I've already shared the like Hubdoc help videos or whatever, just so they can ask questions if they have 'em. And then on that onboarding call, I also take that opportunity to link it to their Google Drive or their Dropbox or whatever so that everything is also backed up there. That way there's like a secondary backup that they always have access to, even if we cancel or they cancel Hubdoc or whatever. and yeah. So then your other question. You're having issues with the email forwarding, if the invoice is just a link to a bill? Yeah, that you can't get around. You're gonna have to have them either download the bill and then upload it as a PDF or see if they're like whoever's emailing an invoice actually attach the bill to it. Sometimes that's a setting. So sorry. if the bill is actually like within the body of the email, that works too. But, yeah, either needs to be an attachment or within the body of the email. If it's a link to a bill, that's not gonna, not gonna work. Good news after Michael says, after joining BBA in 2023, I've built my business on the side enough to take the leap and leave my full-time job at the end of June. Oh my gosh. That's amazing. Everybody clap. That's so cool. I love hearing everybody's journeys and experience and yeah, that's, this is why I do what I do. That's awesome. Congratulations., Harry says please further explain DBAs and the purpose. Yeah, so A DBA is just doing business as, so in some states it's actually called, like a trademark. Like in Arizona they call it a trademark, which is weird. or no, it's trade name. So it's either like, some states call it a trade name. Some states call it A DBA. Basically what it is, is you have your main business. LLC or whatever, whether it's an LLC or a C corporation or whatever, you have your main business entity. And that would be like for me, mine, like for the ambitious bookkeeper, my entity name is actually Serena Shup, LLC, and the ambitious bookkeeper is the DBA under that. So. What a lot of brands will do is they'll have an overarching company and they'll have multiple brands under it. But they're all part of the same company, so it's like the same, EIN, all that. So, so yeah, that's, that's basically, I. It in a nutshell. I don't know if, if you need more clarification, let me know. but they're very simple and easy to get. You don't need to pay an attorney to do a DBA for you. If you already have your LLC, go to your Secretary of State and go in and create, either look for a trade name or DBA and you should be able to just simply file a piece of paper and it might even be free or like $10, like it's not very expensive. So. That is what I've done over the years as well with like, changing my business name. So my, my firm technically is of course bookkeeping, LLC, but we rebranded to of course, financial. So of course financial is the d, b, A under, of course bookkeeping, LLC. So yeah. Um, what does BBA stand for? sorry, I'm mute. That is Okay. BBA is the Bookkeeping Business Accelerator. That's my like main flagship program that takes you from. The dreaming stage is to starting and launching your business, and everything in between. So we cover marketing, pricing, operations, and workflows. Like everything that you need to know to get started onboarding, literally everything is in there. That you're gonna need. And when things come up that students are like, Hey, I can't find this one resource, or Can you like, point me in this direction if I haven't created it yet, like I will create it and put it in the program. I basically share everything that I've found successful in my firm with, my students in that program. All right, Holly says, I'm getting quite a few new leads or phone calls of newer, smaller companies wanting a bookkeeper. It seems, number one, it seems like many of them don't have the funds yet to pay for a bookkeeper, and two, they are not organized and it seems to take a long time to get them onboarded. How do I continue to contact them without feeling like I'm pushing or bugging them? Do you have any suggestions on next steps with these types of new clients? So we've had challenges with this also in the fu in the future, in the past. Probably will in the future as well. so number one. what has helped is during the sales process, this is your opportunity to really educate them and get them aware of what it's like to work with you and what is going to be required of them. And so I started being very, lot more. Upfront about the level of work involved for them and asking them, like, one of the biggest issues we found, and this is, I talk about this on the, the, this Week's podcast is a couple of the clients that we lost. Were a decision to disengage pretty much because they kept commingling and they wouldn't get us the information that we needed. And that tends to happen with those smaller businesses. So after that, we reevaluated, okay, how can we still help these clients? But make sure that like we're gonna be able to actually work on them because the onboarding takes forever or we finally get them onboarding and then they don't answer us for months and months and months. And then like everything's in suspense. Or ask my accountant. So I decided as part of the like intake form, before someone can get on a discovery call with me, they have to answer questions. I talk about this all the time. This weeds out a lot of people in that we cover. Like they have to check a box that acknowledges what our minimum fee is. So if they cannot afford our minimum fee, hopefully they don't even continue filling out the form. So that would be number one suggestion for you is to implement something like this. Either like as they're booking the call, a questionnaire or, something that you have them fill out before you invite them to a call. And then number two, I also have them check a box that acknowledges that. Or like select an option, either A, they're not commingling, personal and business, or B, they are, and they promise to stop immediately. And so in the engagement letter we also added a clause that says like if there's excessive commingling of business and personal transactions, meaning like greater than five per month. So you have to tell them what excessive means more than five transactions per month that are personal, that are coming through your business. We are going to search, review a hundred dollars a month because that's extra stuff that we have to sift through. Usually if it's five, it's not just five. It's way more than that. And so that's why we chose that number. It's like, it's never as little as five. If people are doing this, it's usually like 10, 20, 30, 40. so it is a lot for us to sift through and try to decide, is this business, is it personal? Should we be. Asking for a receipt should just code it to draws. It's like a lot of decision making that it requires of our bookkeepers and we're just not here for that anymore. Like it should be a lot more straightforward and it's only gonna help them to stop commingling. So I do a lot of that education on the call as well, on the sales call. If they did check that box of yes, I'm commingling on the sales call. I'm like, okay, what. What exactly are you doing? Do you have a separate business bank account and you're just using it as your personal checking as well, because you're not paying yourself? Or do you not even have a separate bank account and you're running everything through your personal account? Like, what's the deal here? And so that's when we dig in. On the sales call, and that's where I give them like the, the direction of if you work with us, we are going to require you, like one of the first things we're going to do, on day one is we're going to set up new bank accounts for you. If they didn't have a business bank account, and we will tell them like, we use Relay. This is our preference. Or if they already have a separate business bank account, we're gonna walk through and like basically hold their hand on onboarding to like change over all of their like recurring transactions or whatever to the business bank account and work on like stop the bleeding immediately. And what's usually the actual issue is that they don't know how much they can actually pay themselves. And so they're running everything through their business and like not taking a paycheck. And so what we'll have to do in that case is they have to do homework and they have to come back to us and say, okay, this is how much it costs for me to like, this is how much I need to pay myself personally. And then we start like categorizing all the transactions and figuring out. What's actually making in their business. And so that process does take like a month or whatever during onboarding, but that's the work that has to be done. Like they have to tell us how much they need to make with their personal budget. They have to do a personal budget and figure it out. And then as they're working on that, we're working on categorizing everything and we just try to get like. Really like get them committed on the sales call. Like when we are sifting through all of this, we're gonna need you to be available to answer things. We're gonna need a quick response because we don't want onboarding to trickle down further than a few weeks. So that would be my suggestion is getting really clear on. some pre-discovery things and then getting very communicative on the discovery call about your expectations with that. And that should help a lot. don't be afraid to be upfront and require them to make these changes like they're hiring you as a bookkeeper to. Get their shit together. You know what I mean? Like, they know what they're doing. They need us to lead them. That's why they hired us. So don't be afraid to actually take the reins and tell them what they need to do. And there are gonna be clients that are gonna push back and maybe they're not the right clients for you. So, I'd rather you figure that out in the discovery call process than after the fact because maybe we were too afraid to speak up and say, this is actually what we need. It's kind of the same with like. Being forthcoming about like the software you actually prefer to work in and being like, oh, I guess I'll work in Wave, or whatever the client wants. And then you end up presenting them'cause you're like, I hate this system. So, yeah, I hope that helps. I. any website host recommendations? I'm currently using GoDaddy and it's been okay, but it's not customizable as that I was would like. So Marcus, are you talking about like website hosting and like a website builder? or just website hosting? I would say if you just need a place to host your domain and you already have like a website builder, Bluehost is fine. we use Hover H-O-V-E-R. and then, but we, but that's because we have our websites on Kajabi, which is our builder and our website platform. So if you don't, if you're more asking on like, where to build your website, I would recommend Squarespace. That is the easiest system to, to build a website on. I actually, if you go to ambitious bookkeeper.com/store, there's a link to a program, Tia created. She's on my team, she's my designer. it's called Squarespace for Bookkeepers. And she walks you through how to set up your own website on Squarespace, what you like, what you need on your website, and like, it doesn't have to be complicated, but it's, a really great program to get started. If you wanna DIY, your website. my recommendation is still Squarespace. I use that in the beginning. Now we just use Kajabi 'cause that's where we host everything and I just wanted it under one roof. But real talk like Kajabi is kind of a learning curve and the way the functionality of it is not as nice as Squarespace and not as easy. So definitely recommend Squarespace. if you are already hosting on GoDaddy, you're gonna have to do some backend work on transferring your domain to, to Squarespace, but there's. Instructions online, it's not hard. you might have to pick up the phone, but, it's doable. Tang says. Hi, Serena client owns two companies. She used funds from company A to purchase Company B. How will company a account for this investment? How about company B? Will it be debit to asset based on credit to equity? So this actually really depends on the contract. So I would ask the client to provide the sales contract because if you look at that, The purchase contract for company B and it lists her personally as the owner. Then you're gonna handle it completely different. So it, it's only gonna be on the books of company A if company A is actually the purchaser of that company. A lot of times clients do this stuff and then it's like, that was not smart. Um, so ask for the contract. You can't book anything until you have that contract, that source document. so important to have source documents for this type of stuff. I know sometimes a lot of bookkeepers get like afraid to ask for it, but like. We need to make sure it's entered correctly and we are only gonna know how to enter it from the contract. So so that would be step one. if company, a actually was the, on the contract for purchasing company B, it will be investment. and company B it would be a, Company B, you're gonna be probably creating new books for company B. I'm not sure. It depends, again, depends on, it depends on the, the transaction. but the money coming into company B, that's gonna be a debit to cash and yeah, would be a credit to equity. So, that would be the case if. On the contract, like I said, company A actually is the owner. If it's the owner personally that owns the two companies. Then on company A, the money out is going to be an owner's draw, and on company B, the money in is going to be an owner's contribution. So it's a lot simpler that way, but but yeah, or stock or whatever, depends on, again, depends on the structure of the business as well. So yeah. Alright everyone, this is it for today. I try to keep these at 45 minutes, Thank you again. We'll talk to you soon.

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