Bookkeeping is easy…
But don’t tell anyone!
I lovingly dedicate this blog to the thousands of entrepreneurs I’ve spoken to over the past 8-years who’ve booked a call with my bookkeeping practice because their books were such a bloody mess that they didn’t know what to do, but after explaining to me all the dirty details of their bookkeeping horror stories along with how many highly stupid bookkeepers they’ve already burned through to get to me, in the very same breathe went on to kindly educate me with the words “bookkeeping is easy” at least five times on every call. I thank you all for gracing such a fool as I with thine own immense wisdom.
It’s amazing how I’ve been in this industry as long as I have and the bookkeeper gods never once revealed to me such an alarming truth. I’ll be the first to admit, I am an absolute idiot. I mean, to devote oneself to a practice that is ‘so easy’ and to never come to that realization on my own, it’s crazy that anyone would actually hire me. I must be the most unaware person on earth! I apologize to everyone everywhere as I obviously haven’t handled my due diligence.
After owning a bookkeeping practice for so long, I have to admit - I’m not certain how bookkeeping is the easiest job in the world. It’s not easy for me, but since it is now confirmed from so many entrepreneurs with messy books who are perplexed as to how us bookkeepers are making things so messy and complicated, perhaps there is an entrepreneur out there who would be willing to peel back the veil of secrecy and indulge a few of my ignorant questions? But I just want to frame this correctly - we agree that bookkeeping is easy, yes. It’s just that, and I apologize beforehand, I have some complicated issues that I haven’t figured out how to make easy just yet, and I need answers to these conundrums. Thank you in advance… Here goes (the following questions are by no means exhaustive):
My Ignorant Questions
1) A prospect recently told me, “AI can do all of the bookkeeping for my business now, so why do I need you?” What an amazing truth to wrap my head around. Actually, I think I saw that same ad! But last time I checked, AI wasn’t able to identify mis-reported working hours for hourly employees on payroll. Also, it didn’t know how to split deposit’s into different categories on the chart of accounts. In fact, whenever there is a human clerical error, AI doesn’t catch such things. Since AI can “do it all” these days, how can I harness such immense power to identify and correct all human error?
2) We use Quickbooks Online (QBO) to manage all of our client accounts. In theory, the software is supposed to work seamlessly but quite often, it doesn’t work and there are continual tech issues that we’re on the phone with their support about. Oftentimes, QBO support doesn’t know what’s wrong so we end up spending hours on the phone and getting passed around to different technicians before we figure out a workaround. How can I easily make QBO’s tech issues go away so we don’t have to sit on the phone with them for hours? I don’t think they’ve figured this out yet either.
3) One of our new clients hired us to migrate them over to QBO from QBD (Quickbooks Desktop). QB claims that migrations from QBD to QBO are very simple, it’s just the ‘click of a button’ and voila! The only problem is, that button doesn’t work when the client has purchased their software through a third-party vendor. My question here is, what happens when there are exceptions to rules in the QBO software? I mean, I know it’s super easy, so which AI should I use for this issue I’m having? Remember, I’ve already got a solid process down for this issue, but I’m really stupid and don’t know what I’m talking about, because there’s nothing easy about this process in my experience.
4) From time to time, a client will bounce their payroll. That just means they ain’t got no money in their bank account, and when this happens, QBO takes it extremely seriously by suspending their payroll account and charging the client daily fees. Now, again, I KNOW how easy bookkeeping is, but when this happens, the only way I know how to handle it is, we get on the phone with QBO for hours to get the client account reinstated. This requires lots of numbers, passcodes, amounts, being the middleman between the client and QBO, and clients never know what the process is, don’t have the necessary information, and essentially fall apart without our guidance. Since AI can handle it but never does, and since it’s so dang easy but none of our clients know how to do it, then what is the easy solution here?
5) Perhaps I’m even more of an idiot than I care to admit, even though I’ve already blatantly admitted it, but then again, being as unaware as I am of my own industry, it must run deep. So please, forgive my extreme benightedness, but I have one more question… How on earth can I keep my clients from fiddling with the software so they don’t mess up their own books?! I truly want to save them, but most of my clients think ‘this is so easy’, yet somehow they still boink it up. I know that they know that bookkeeping is easy, and since they already told me, now they know that I know that it’s super easy, but for some reason, all of the entrepreneur’s that know how easy it is have messy books and none of the bookkeepers they’ve hired/fired know the secret to making it easy. SOMEONE PLEASE HELP ME!
Thank you. I’m glad that you now you know how easy bookkeeping is. I’ll wait to hear from someone… Thanks for caring!