The phrase “Chief, Cook & Bottle Washer” describes a lot of small business owners, YES or YES?!? Recently I met up with a mortgage broker friend I see a lot at various business functions and he mentioned to me, “Todd, have I got a referral for you!”.
The referral was a business owner in the El Dorado county area. Just a quick back drop to their situation, they have three businesses at the same location: a beautiful 19th century victorian home used for weddings and events, a commercial building that takes up a full city block with over 35 tenants, and an American bistro restaurant that seats 77.
Everything was going well with staff until their bookkeeper of 6 years went on maternity leave for the second time in 19 months. She promised she would be back after twelve short weeks for the, already overwhelmed, business owner.
Finally eleven months later and no sign of the ‘returning in twelve short weeks bookkeeper’, is when I was introduced.
The day I called Kevin, he said that he was waiting for me to call. He was tired of looking for a dependable bookkeeper, and was intrigued with our paperless and staff approach to keeping his accounting current every week, and that he was the ONLY one that could expense money from his accounts, no one else.
I mentioned to him it was really simple for us to get start and all he needed to do was fax or scan everything over to us. He said that is great, but you really need to take a look at the situation here. Because I really did not want to make the 45 minute drive, I said “go ahead and just put it all in a box and ship it to our office.” He still resisted and said, “Todd, I really think you should come on out and see what we have….” I finally agreed to make the 45 minute drive.
When I arrived onsite, I was greeted in the lobby of the commercial building by Kevin and he was super excited to see me. He said, “Todd, just a minute…let me get you a handtruck-dolly!”. Look, I have been doing this a long time and never have had a client greet me and get a handtruck-dolly. When we went into the other room he had 13 bankers’ boxes of documents for all three business heaping full of raw paper documents, statements, receipts, payroll statements, etc….
Needless to say, we filled the trunk, the back seat, and the front seat of my Honda. Just before I was ready to leave, I asked Kevin for a copy of their Quickbooks file. He said, “Yeah, about that…I could not figure out how to get that off the computer, just a minute.” When he came back, he brought me back the entire computer tower, whoah!
Months later my staff and I were able to get everything processed for all three of the companies, and Kevin was able to get what he needed over to his CPA to file his taxes for that previous year.
Running a business is stressful enough at times, and we all feel that we have to do everything. It doesn’t have to be that way…give me a call 916-520-8560, if you are not too busy and lets talk about your bookkeeping headache. I work with a lot of different types of businesses and I’m great at all of the technology-geek stuff too.
Hope to talk with you soon.