Step-By-Step Guide: How To Do Month End Close As A Bookkeeper

Welcome everybody. In this video, I'm going to talk about a step-by-step guide on how to do a month-end close as a bookkeeper. This is our whole job. This is what I tell people I do. I categorize transactions, reconcile accounts, and generate financial reports. So, let's go over what it looks like to go through that entire process as a month-end close for a bookkeeper.

This is basically delivering customer service. So, there's really two parts about starting a bookkeeping business. Marketing and sales. You've got to get clients. But then number two, delivering high-quality customer service. You have to actually do what you say you're going to do. And what we say we're going to do, our whole job is to create financial reports. That's the handoff between a bookkeeper and a tax accountant. The handoff is creating financial reports and then you give those to the tax accountant and then they take that information and then they enter it into their tax software.

So, if you have any questions, this is going to be a live Q&A. So, I'm going to talk for about 10 minutes. I'm going to go over a month-end close step-by-step guide, but then you can ask questions about anything. So, you can ask clarifying, more specific questions about how to do month-end close as a bookkeeper, but then also I'm going to do a live Q&A. So, you can ask questions about anything: bookkeeping, QuickBooks Online, sales, marketing, customer service, onboarding, clients, cleanup projects, quoting, sales consultations, whatever you might have questions about. So, let's get started. So, if you have questions, go ahead and drop questions in the chat, and then I will do my best to answer everybody's questions.

So, a super simple checklist that you can just go through each month is literally just those three things that I tell people that I do. Number one, categorize transactions. Did you record all of their bank and credit card transactions from the previous month? Number two, reconcile accounts. Have you reconciled all of their accounts? Number three, P&L, financial reports. Did you send them their previous month P&L? So, that's a super simple checklist.

Now, inside of that checklist, of course, each step has kind of its own mini checklist. So, whenever you're categorizing transactions, you want to look at each bank account, each credit card account, and then you also want to remember journal entries. Do you have unearned revenue, prepaid expenses, depreciation? Do you have other journal entries that are not necessarily cash or credit card transactions that you need to record?

So, categorizing transactions, reconciling accounts. Make sure you have a list of all of the bank accounts, credit card accounts, loan accounts that you need to reconcile every month. Fun fact, pro tip: if you go to the reconcile section in QuickBooks Online, there's a summary. You can click on the summary and then you can see all of the accounts that have been reconciled and, more importantly, you can see when those accounts were reconciled. So, it's super helpful during month-end close to just keep track of everything. So, you can just keep track of everything in the actual reconcile tab.

The other thing is sending financial reports. That's like the last product, but that's so super simple. You literally just go to QuickBooks and you click reports, custom reports, and I like to send the profit and loss by month. So, I like to send my clients a month-by-month comparison of each profit and loss for each month. That way they can see how their business is growing or maybe if they're spending more money or where maybe they need to cut back.

So, how to reconcile accounts quickly and accurately? It all starts with the bank statements and the credit card statements. Here's a good analogy. Think about a test and an answer key. Same thing. Bookkeeping, bank statements. So, bookkeeping is the test and the bank statement is the answer key. So, basically, when you reconcile accounts, you're basically just checking to make sure that your test has all the right answers. So, imagine you're grading a multiple-choice test. You're literally just going to go down each question and just double-check, compare test to the answer key. Do they have the right answer? Yes. Do they have the wrong answer? No. And you're just going to go down line by line, question by question, or in bookkeeping, transaction by transaction.

QuickBooks makes it pretty simple to reconcile. You're basically just going to take the beginning balance and then the ending balance and then all the withdrawals and all the deposits and you're going to make sure that the ending balance in QuickBooks matches the ending balance on the bank statement. And you can do the same thing with credit cards. Keep in mind, credit cards typically close out in the middle of the month, sometimes the 7th or the 14th or the 24th. It's not usually bank statements are the last day of the month, but credit cards can typically be in the middle of the month. So, that is a little unusual. You just want to make sure when you reconcile accounts that the ending balance and the ending date in QuickBooks match the ending balance and the ending date on the bank statement.

So, common errors to look out for. You want to make sure that the QuickBooks bank feed is pulling in transactions correctly because that's your data. So, it's going to pull in the date, the amount, and the bank detail. And sometimes these bank connections can get interrupted or disconnected, especially with credit cards that have multiple cards. I see this so often with Chase. Chase credit cards, for whatever reason, each individual card on the Chase account gets pulled into the QuickBooks bank feed as an individual account. So, it can be pretty difficult. If you're having problems keeping the bank accounts and the credit cards connected in the QuickBooks bank feed, you can simply manually import the transactions. I do that with a lot of Chase credit card accounts. I just manually download the transactions from the online website and then I manually import them using a CSV file.

So, I see a few other people are joining the live. So, if you have any questions or any comments, feel free to go ahead and drop a comment in the chat and then once I get done talking about my step-by-step guide, I'm going to go through and answer everybody's questions. I will say that this video is sponsored by my investment fund, Zip Capital. If you are a US citizen and an accredited investor, consider registering on my website and you might be able to join Zip Capital and I'll pay you 8% up to 12% fixed returns.

Okay. Another common error whenever you're reconciling, you want to make sure that you actually get the ending balance correct and you want to make sure that no other transactions had been changed or deleted or removed from the last time that you did your reconciliation. It's really important that once you reconcile an account, you don't want to change or edit or add any transactions after you've reconciled an account for that period. If you do, it could potentially mess up the reconciliation in the future.

And then also, when you reconcile accounts in QuickBooks, you want to look for uncleared transactions. This is one of the most common issues that I see, uncleared transactions. Typically, sales receipts, invoices that are closed, or checks or expenses that are manually recorded in QuickBooks, not through the bank feed, but manually recorded. These are uncleared transactions and they still—here's the thing—even if they're not reconciled, they still affect your financial reports. They still show up in your general ledger, trial balance, profit and loss, balance sheet, statement of cash flows, they show up everywhere. So, you want to make sure that even the uncleared transactions, you want to make sure that they are correct. You want to make sure that they are truly still pending. For example, let's say I mail a check to my attorney for $200 and I mail it to him August 15th and I'm doing the August 31st reconciliation and it still hasn't cleared yet. That's unusual. It's been 15 days. The mail probably should have arrived, but who knows? Maybe it got lost. Maybe there's a delay. So, that's okay. I'll leave it there. But when I do the September reconciliation, if I still see an August 15th check that never cleared the bank account and I'm reconciling as of September 30th, that's 45 days. That's pretty unusual. I'm probably going to call the attorney or maybe I'll void the check or maybe I'll issue a stop payment and I'll reissue the check. These are really important things that as a bookkeeper you can figure out during the reconciliation. You can see duplicate transactions. You can see uncleared transactions. You can see, "Hey, wait a minute. There was a $5,000 invoice closed out on September 23rd, but there was also a $5,000 bank deposit on September 23rd." So, I see a bank deposit that was cleared, but I see an invoice that is uncleared, but still showing as deposited into the bank account. I see a mistake. There's two $5,000 transactions. This doesn't look right. Let me double-check the bank account. Let me double-check the bank statement. I'm going to go to September 23rd. I see only one $5,000 bank deposit. That tells me that this bank deposit was not correctly matched to the invoice that was marked as paid. So, if you have any experience doing bookkeeping, you probably know exactly what I'm talking about. If you're brand new, don't worry. Just keep in mind when you do the reconciliation, you want to keep an eye out for uncleared transactions. Super, super important.

And then another common error is whenever you're issuing your financial reports, your P&L, your balance sheet, you want to make sure that you're in the proper either cash basis or accrual basis. So, you want to double-check with your client, see, "Do you file your taxes cash basis or accrual basis?" Or maybe they want their P&L both ways. Maybe they want cash basis and accrual basis. Just check with your client, see how they want their profit and loss to be reported. Because if they're operating on an accrual basis and you send them a cash basis, they might be curious and be confused and wondering why sales is totally way off, expenses are way understated because they're not actually in accrual basis. So, keep an eye out for cash basis or accrual basis when you're generating the financial reports.

Last thing, common errors: check the balance sheet. Check the balance sheet. I could say this a thousand times. Check the balance sheet. And I know this because I made the mistake when I was just getting started. I wasn't checking the balance sheet. So, things like prepaid expenses, undeposited funds, payroll liabilities, old bank accounts that shouldn't be there. Check the balance sheet. Every single line item on the balance sheet should have something that makes sense. If you're checking the balance sheet and thinking, "What is this? I have no idea what this is." You need to look into it. You need to reach out to your client, ask questions, let them know, "Hey, here's some payroll liabilities. Not sure why they're on there. Looks like they're on there from 2024. Do these need to be voided or corrected or changed? What's going on here?" So, check the balance sheet before you send the profit and loss. Most common thing I see, undeposited funds. You always want to make sure undeposited funds is clear and accurate.

Reporting that clients actually read. I'll be honest with you, a lot of your clients might not actually check the profit and loss, but that's okay. Your job is to send them their profit and loss. If they have any questions, let them know. If you want to schedule a meeting, we can. If you want to talk about it once a month, we can. Probably not in the first 10 days of the month because I'm super busy, but after the 10th, after you've had a chance to review your profit and loss, if you want to meet about it, we can. Don't be surprised. Don't be shocked if your clients don't even check their profit and loss. It happens. I know it's crazy, but a lot of these clients are so busy, they're so stressed out, they don't even check their P&L. So, all you can do is send it to them and hope that they look at it. If they have questions, that's great. If they don't, that's just the nature of business.

I have seen some people say, "Should I send them a Loom video kind of explaining their profit or loss?" I think that's an okay idea, but you just want to make sure that you charge extra for that. Ask the client if they actually want that because there's a lot of clients who could not care less. So, before you do it for all your clients thinking you're going above and beyond and you're delivering exceptional customer service, you are. But I just want to make sure you're not wasting your time. So, genuinely, truthfully, just ask your clients like, "Hey, do you actually want me to send a two-minute explanation of your P&L?" If you do, that's great. Extra $100 per month, extra $50 per month. I'd be happy to do it if you want.

Okay. So, if you have any questions about all this stuff, so I just went over kind of 15 minutes, kind of quick, but that was a step-by-step guide, really kind of the essentials, what you need to know, how to do a month-end close. Now, I'm going to get to the live Q&A portion where I'm going to answer everybody's questions. So, if you haven't had a chance yet, go ahead and drop a comment in the chat and I'll get to your questions here soon. But also, I have to mention I have a course. It teaches you all this stuff and it teaches you nice and slow in order, everything for you: bookkeeping fundamentals, QuickBooks Online tutorials, month-end close, sales, and marketing. It's linked in the description of this video if you want to check it out. I also have a free course. It's a free mini-course. It kind of gives you an idea of what to expect. So, that's linked down below. If you want the whole explanation from start to finish, go ahead and check that out. Now, let's get to the questions. Let's get to the comments.

Mocha Latte, good morning everyone. Brent, what is the largest percentage of revenue sharing you would do? Also, does your bookkeeping contractor contract the client for things like obtaining bank statements, questions, or certain transactions? So, right now, my independent contractor is operating at 20% of revenue for the first six months. And then the next six months, we're going to move up to 30% of revenue. And then after that, we'll move up to 40% of revenue. So, after a client has stuck around for a whole year, I'll move him up to 40% of revenue. And he handles everything. So, I onboard the client. I quote the client. I send the client agreement. I set up payment. After that, I introduce him to the client. I say, "Hey, here's Chris. He's going to be your main point of contact. If you have any questions, I will still be here to support, but Chris will be your main point of contact." So, he handles all the client communications. He handles collecting bank statements and doing the actual bookkeeping. I review his work and I onboard the client and he does everything else for 20% with the expectation that that revenue split will increase as the client sticks around. Brent, also thank you for your service. Brent, appreciate you.

Carla, good morning. Thank you for these videos. Daniel, what percent of your clients are on the accrual system? About 30% of my clients file their taxes on accrual basis. How many manual journal entries do you process to book revenue and accrue expenses for those clients? Very rarely. Probably once per month. If I have a client on accrual basis who has long projects, I'll do one journal entry per month to book their unearned revenue. And then prepaid expenses, same thing. I just book those transactions one time per month. What type? So, keep in mind though with the prepaid expenses. So, my client, your client needs to give you a lot of this information. So, my clients are the one who tells me, "Hey, this $10,000 expense, I want that to go towards prepaid expenses." So, my clients really telling me what to do. I and then I just do it. So, I see a $10,000 transaction on September 23rd. I add it to prepaid expenses in QuickBooks and then I add it to my prepaid expenses Excel spreadsheet. And then at the end of the month, I take that prepaid expense, divide it by 12, I get a monthly expense. And so every month for the next 12 months, I'm going to expense that large expense over the next 12 months. And I'm going to keep track of it in the Excel spreadsheet.

What type of industry and revenue per year are your typical bookkeeping clients? A lot of real estate investors, trucking companies, restaurants, advertising agencies, general, a lot of general contractors, a lot of home remodeling companies, construction companies, landscapers, roofers, plumbers, electricians, a lot of things like that. Revenue, $100,000 per year is like on the low end. Anything less than 100 grand, it's kind of hard to justify hiring a bookkeeper. Maybe 50 or 60 grand is probably the absolute lowest. And then all the way up to three to five million. I've got a couple real estate investors who do three to five million in annual revenue.

How do you handle documentation of receipts? So, that's actually a good question that I forgot to mention for documentation for the month-end close as a bookkeeper for the step-by-step guide. You have to get bank statements and credit card statements. And so, on the first day of every month, I have a recurring email that goes out to all my clients and it just says "Documents Needed" as the subject. Then the body says, "Hey, please send me last month's bank statements and credit card statements." If they have a lot going on, I might even be more specific. I might say, "Hey, please send me last month's statements." And then I might have a list: Wells Fargo bank account, Chase credit card account, Orstown Bank loan account, this and that vehicle loan loan statement. So, I send on the first day of every month, I have a recurring email that goes out to all my clients asking for bank statements.

Now, when it comes to receipts, I do not require that my clients upload their receipts to the QuickBooks app. As a matter of fact, I prefer clients don't do that. I actually recommend use Google Drive or Dropbox to keep track of your receipts. I don't need your receipts, but I recommend that you, as the client, you should stay digitally organized. So, definitely keep track of your receipts, but I don't need to see them because I see the bank detail. I see the bank transactions pulled into the QuickBooks bank feed on a daily, weekly basis. So, I can see all the transactional data. So, I can record people's transactions without actually seeing their receipt because I see, "Okay, they went to Home Depot on September 23rd and spent $100." So, I'll just say "Home Depot job supplies," and then you click add, and then that transaction gets booked to their profit and loss. Yeah, I don't accept paper in my office. I work from home right now. Now I'm in the comfort of my own home. I have my home office. Client I don't let clients come to my home. I don't want clients dropping shoe boxes of receipts or mailing me bank statements. Everything is digital. I operate a digital-only business. Everything's virtual. Everything's remote. I don't go to my client's office. They don't come to my office. I don't meet with clients ever. If somebody wants to meet like face-to-face, I'll do a Google Meet or a Zoom call. There's no need to meet with people face-to-face in real life at a coffee shop or at an office. It's just it takes so much time for me. I'm busy. I'm managing Zip Capital. I've got $3 million that I've lent out in Zip Capital. So, I'm managing that and I've got 70-75ish bookkeeping clients. I unfortunately at this point I just don't have time to meet people in person. Now, if you're brand new, maybe you operate a little bit differently. Maybe you do meet people. I, I did. I'll just be honest. I did meet with people in the beginning whenever I was brand new and I was trying to get clients. Yes, I met with people. But now that I'm busier, I don't meet with people. So, maybe if you're just getting started, if you're brand new, you have a little bit more time. You don't have quite the online reputation. You don't have 200 Google reviews like I do, then yes, maybe you do need to spend a little bit more time and energy meeting with clients in person. But hopefully eventually you get to a point where you're just so busy, you just don't have enough time to meet with people.

Okay, Param, other than bookkeeping knowledge, what other things must be aware of? Does your state give you any guidance? Do you have an LLC? Honestly, from a legal perspective, it's pretty straightforward to set up a business. Yes, you I registered my LLC with my Department of State, Pennsylvania. Wherever you live in, you're going to register your LLC. I have a federal EIN. And then after that, you get a bank account and then you get a QuickBooks account. You can process payment using your QuickBooks account. And that's really it. That's literally all you need: bank account, EIN, QuickBooks account, payment processor. If you if you're an S corporation or if you have employees, you need to have payroll. But if you're just an LLC, not taxed as an S corp, you don't need to run payroll. You can just pay yourself with checks or an ACH withdrawal. So, it's really super super simple. It takes about two weeks to get everything set up, just because you have to wait for the state to approve your LLC, but it's really, really simple to set up your business.

Erica, how can you reconcile bank transactions, but you want to reconcile as far back as two years and the company has never reconciled ever? You have to reconcile chronologically. So, if you're going to reconcile the bank accounts, you have to do so chronologically. So, if I were to do a 2023 cleanup, then I can't do 2024 until 2023 is complete. So, I'm going to literally go month by month. I'm going to record all the transactions and then I'm going to take January 2023 bank statement and I'm going to reconcile 2023, January, and then I'll take February, so on and so forth. You have to do it chronologically. You can't reconcile August 2025 and then go back and reconcile January 2023. You have to move chronologically.

Coastal Pink, are payments like payment apps like Venmo and Zelle able to be integrated into QuickBooks to record payments through these or do you have to manually enter them? So, um, so PayPal does have like an app integration. They QuickBooks actually just changed the setup of PayPal and how it integrates its app transactions. When it comes to Venmo and Cash App, I just simply take the bank trans—the bank transfer as and I record that as the transaction. So, if you—it's going to show up as a $100 Cash App transaction and I'm just going to ask the client, "Who did you pay for this this $100 Cash App transaction? Who did you pay?" And I'm going to record that as the expense to the actual vendor. I'm not going to record the Cash App transfer from the bank to the Cash App and then duplicate and record the expense from Cash App to the vendor. I'm going to skip that middle transaction and I'm just going to go straight from bank to vendor. I'm going to skip the transfer from bank to Cash App, Cash App to vendor. I just think that's just easier, cleaner, simpler. So, yeah, I I skip—I don't I don't necessarily like connecting third-party apps, integrating them into QuickBooks.

Let's see. Amanda, I'm confused on how to send the financial statements to my clients. How do I send them? I like to keep things super simple. So, I literally just export them as a PDF and then I email it to my client. If you use things like Keeper or if you have some other CRM or some other software, maybe you could upload them into the other app, but clients, they're busy enough. I don't think my clients would necessarily want to have another separate login just for their bookkeeper. So, I literally just export the PDF, save it to my computer, and then I send it as an attachment to my clients. I've never had any clients have any issues with me doing it that way. There's no sensitive information on a P&L or a balance sheet. I just send it to them. Send it to their email. And if they do, if they don't want it via email, maybe you could upload it to a Google Drive or a Microsoft or a Dropbox or Microsoft OneDrive. I know some people use Keeper to upload their documents, but I just email it to the client. You can also send reports directly from QuickBooks Online. So, you can create a custom report and you can email it directly from QuickBooks so that it never goes through your email. It just goes straight from QuickBooks to the client.

Brett, good morning, Zach. I love these Q&As. I understand that each client is unique, but how long does it take for you on average per client each month? Total 30 minutes per week per client. Pretty simple, right? 30 minutes per week per client. On average, two hours per month per client. So, I have 80 clients. So, it takes me about 40 hours per week.

Is bookkeeping oversaturated? Is it still a good business to start? Jordan, that's a good question. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen in the future, but here's what I do know. Bookkeeping, you're going to learn so much phenomenal business knowledge. Bookkeeping was the gateway business that allowed me to get into private money lending, that allowed me to start my investment fund. I never would have been able to start Zip Capital without bookkeeping for two reasons: because I was able to cash flow as a bookkeeper and I was able to learn really valuable finance, accounting, business knowledge as a bookkeeping business owner. So, I don't know what's going to happen in the next two years, but I do know right now there are still people right now who need a bookkeeper. So, I would I would recommend everybody if you want to become a bookkeeper, if you want to start a bookkeeping business, become a certified QuickBooks Online Pro Advisor, take my course, watch some YouTube videos, maybe take intro to accounting at a local community college, learn accounting concepts, learn bookkeeping fundamentals, learn how to use QuickBooks Online, become a bookkeeper. Absolute worst-case scenario, you do it for the next two years, and then robots take over and we're obsolete. And then you have learned incredible knowledge about marketing, sales, business, accounting, finance. You have learned so many incredible things over these past two years that you'll be able to take and start a new business. So, business is never going to go out of style. There's always going to be entrepreneurs. There's always going to be small business owners, whether it's traditional bookkeeping as we've known it for the past 20 years. I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen with artificial intelligence and robots taking over. But I do know that the skills you learn, nobody can ever take away the skills that you learn as an entrepreneur, as a bookkeeper. So, I definitely recommend, yes, start bookkeeping today. Worst-case scenario, we're obsolete in two years. You pivot and start something new.

I currently have, let's see, Luca Vioto, I currently have one client who is cash basis. If I ever get a client that is accrual, what's the best way to learn accrual accounting? It's really these are small small businesses. So, we're not doing accounting for Fortune 500 companies that have a ton of accruals. So, it's really pretty simple, honestly. We've got accounts receivable, accounts payable, unearned revenue, and prepaid expenses, maybe accrued payables. It's really really pretty simple. If a client does switch to accrual basis, maybe here's the thing. If you ever don't know what to do, ask the client. And then if the client doesn't know, say, "Hey, client, maybe we should meet with your CPA because I'm not sure how to handle this." That's the beauty of just being a bookkeeper. We're not CPAs. We're not expected to know every single thing when it comes to accounting. We're we're just bookkeepers. That's great because we're just bookkeepers, but it's also okay because we make good money. We can charge a premium for our services if we know how to do bookkeeping. So, we're not expected to be master-level accountants and CPAs and tax experts. We just need to know bookkeeping. So, if you ever don't know something, no shame. Tell the client, "Hey, I'm not sure what to do with these prepaid expenses. Can we meet with your CPA and maybe they can explain it?" That's always the best route to just be transparent. Just be honest. Never be afraid to admit that you need help.

Daniel, for Square or other payment app transactions, do you book overall revenue and record the card fee as a business expense? If so, how is this easily done? Yes. So, if anybody's using Square or Stripe or any other payment processor, if you're just receiving bank deposits, so for example, let's say somebody—let's say somebody purchases my course for $12.95 and then I get a bank deposit from Stripe. So, I'm going to get a bank deposit for $1,260. But in reality, I just earned revenue for $1,295. So, I'm going to record the bank deposit as income, but then at the end of the month, I'm going to do a credit for $35 for income and then a debit for $35 of Stripe fees. So, that way I recognize the Stripe fees corresponding income. So, I truly have $1,295 of income and then $35 of Stripe fees and then $1,260 in my bank account. So, that's just a very simple example. Obviously, if you have multiple sales, multiple transactions, you're going to have to add it all up, but you could just do one simple journal entry. Log into Stripe, log into Square, look at the previous month, see what the fees were, and then just do one journal entry: credit revenue, debit Stripe or Square fees for whatever that number is.

Jordan, how often do you have virtual meetings with clients or phone calls? Almost never. It blows my mind. It's crazy. I don't know what it is. These I think it's a combination. I think these people are super busy, but then I also think that I communicate clearly and effectively. So, I respond to emails quickly. I send financial reports on time. I ask questions. I take care of things. When I say I'm going to take care of things, my clients really don't call too often. They really, very rarely do. I don't have any recurring monthly or weekly meetings with any of my clients. So, it's all just one-off like, "Hey, I'm having this quick issue. Would you be able to help me?" Very, very rarely do my clients ever want to meet with me. I was actually really worried whenever I got started. I was working night shift at Amazon. I was an area manager, night shift, and I was super scared, super worried. I was thinking, "There's no way I'm going to be able to start this bookkeeping business because I'm sleeping during the day and working at night. What if all these people call me during the day?" Like, how will I ever do this? The truth is, business owners are working 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. They don't they don't do their bookkeeping during the day. They're busy. They're running their own business. If anything, business owners tend to do bookkeeping on the weekend or in the evening. They do their administrative tasks in the evening or on the weekend. So, if you're still running your your full-time job, if you're still working at your your full-time job, that's okay. Don't be worried. You're not going to your phone's not going to be ringing off the hook. You're not going to have a million people reaching out to you. If anything, it's going to be a couple emails on the weekend, a couple emails during the day that you can easily respond to within 24 hours. So, phone calls, virtual meetings, really doesn't happen that often.

All right, Amanda, what do you use for clients to send sensitive documents, bank statements? Is that what you use Panda do for? So, I usually just defer to my client. I say, "Hey, you can just email me your bank statements if you want. If not, how do you digitally store your documents on the cloud?" Google Drive, Microsoft OneDrive, Dropbox, these are all secured platforms. Like Google Drive has all the security in place. So, if they—and then you can also password-protect PDFs. So, if you want to upload your bank statements to your Google Drive, great. I'll access—you can share your Google Drive with me and then I'll access it that way. Or you can send me an email with a tax return or a bank statement and you can password-protect the PDF so that I can only open it with the password, just in case you're afraid of sensitive documents getting out.

Param, if you don't need to see the receipts, how do you handle VAT? I'm in the United States. There is no VAT. Um, I think VAT is kind of like sales tax for anybody for all my American friends who don't know what VAT is. I think that's like sales tax for other countries. So, yeah, we are super fortunate in the United States. It might be easier to do bookkeeping because we don't have to worry about VAT.

Param, also if you don't need to see the receipts, how do you categorize each transaction? Transactions sometimes it's split. So, I look at the vendor. Who did they pay? If they're using a debit card or a credit card, I can see who they paid and then I'll just look them up and I'll see, "Oh, that's a utility company. That's a hardware store. That's advertising and marketing. I can see by looking up the vendor." That's an insurance company. Now, if it's a check or a wire or an ACH or a Cash App payment, I have to ask the client. I typically just say, "Hey, who did you pay?" And if it's a vendor who they've already paid, then it's super simple. I just look to see how that was recorded previously. They'll say, "Oh, I paid John Smith." And I'll say, "Okay, let me look up John Smith. Oh, here's John Smith. We've recorded that as rent or contractor or cost of labor or fuel reimbursement." So, I'll just look up to see how did we categorize transactions to John Smith previously. If it's a brand new vendor and I have no idea and I still can't figure it out, I might just say like, "Hey, I see that you paid John Smith $500 on September 23rd. Could you just clarify what did you pay him for?" Super simple. And it's usually contractor labor or rent or employee reimbursement. Super super simple.

All right, Ricky, I was in here a few days ago thanking you for pushing me to get my first consult. I closed at $27.50 a month. I went down to $2 a transaction but stood of Ricky. That's what I'm talking about. Congratulations. Good for you, Ricky. You just got your first client. $750 per month. That is life-changing, Ricky. I promise you, it only gets easier from here. Now you have proof. Now you have confidence. Now you know it's legit. It's going to work. So, keep that in mind. Keep pushing. You're going to experience something that we have all experienced. You're about to experience the adrenaline rush of sales. So, you just booked—you just made your first sale. Now, you're going to get addicted. So, congratulations. Welcome to entrepreneurship. And now, I hope that you just take this and crush it and get 20 more clients before the end of the year. Congratulations, Ricky. I'm proud of you.

Daniel, how many clients ask for class tracking? So, it all comes down to real estate investors, restaurants, trucking companies, and general contractors. Those are the people who typically ask for class tracking, location tracking. And I charge extra. I charge $4 per transaction if they want class tracking for projects. But I, I also try, I also try to be very straightforward with my clients. I will generally say, "Are you already tracking this somewhere else?" And so if they're already tracking this, this happens a lot with home remodeling companies and contractors. If they're already tracking this stuff in Job Tread, I'll say, "Okay, so if you're already tracking all your projects in Job Tread, why do you want to track this in QuickBooks?" Just so we can have an open, honest conversation. Because sometimes they're like, "You know what? You're right. My office administrator is already tracking this in Job Tread. I guess you're right. I guess I don't need to track this in QuickBooks." Or they might say, "I don't love Job Tread. I just want everything to be done in QuickBooks." Which that's fine. That's no problem. I just want to make sure we're not redundantly doing the same thing in two different software for no reason because it's going to cost extra. It's going to require more time for me, more money for the client.

So, the best way to handle identifying random check deposits into the bank account. I just send a question. I send a list of questions to the client. If there's a deposit or a wire or an ACH or a check that I don't know what it is, I just send an email to the client. That's why I do people's bookkeeping every week so that I'm sending a small list of questions every week. I don't want to wait until the end of the month to where I'm sending a long list of 50 transactions from the entire month. I don't want to do that. I want to do people's bookkeeping weekly and send them questions weekly. Hopefully, they get me the answer also weekly so that I can keep things up to date on a weekly basis. I don't want to wait until the end of the month to where I'm sending way too many questions way too far in the past. Weekly. So, if I have questions, if I don't understand, I'll send them a list of questions.

Brett, if you're doing a cleanup and the client has some transactions in their personal bank, how are you putting those expenses into QuickBooks without uploading their personal account? You've got two options. You can do a journal entry and you can very simply debit the expense account, credit owner's equity. Or, if it's a long list of transactions that flowed through their personal account, you can add them to an Excel spreadsheet, import that Excel spreadsheet into QuickBooks under a like a dummy credit card account. Just name it "Personal Credit Card," and then you can categorize each of those individual credit card transactions in the QuickBooks bank feed. And then once you're done, you can close out the personal credit card off of the balance sheet with an owner's equity journal entry. So, let's say, just to keep it simple, you've got five transactions all for $100, all to different companies and different vendors. And so you import those five $100 transactions into QuickBooks into the QuickBooks bank feed using an Excel spreadsheet and it's put under a personal credit card dummy account. Record all five of those transactions, but now you have $500 sitting on your balance sheet as a liability under credit cards. So, now you need to do a journal entry to basically cancel out that personal credit card. So, you're going to debit the credit card for $500 and credit owner's investment for $500. This is the same thing as you taking a $500 check of your personal money and putting it into your business bank account. It's a $500 owner's investment, but instead of actually moving $500, we're just simply paying off this dummy personal credit card account that we use to record personal business transactions that were used on the personal credit card.

Manuel, hello, Zach. How do I register 2024 credit card payments to my client's personal credit card used in 2023 for different business purposes? I think I just answered your question. Um, do the QuickBooks bank feed thing or just do a journal entry. You can just do a simple journal entry. If it's just a couple transactions, you just debit the expense account and credit owner's investment.

Brett, thanks, Zach. Have you noticed your speed per client increases with the new AI agents added to QBO this last summer? Honestly, QBO changed their platform so much that it actually slowed me down. It made it harder for me to do bookkeeping. I like QuickBooks Online, but they are going through—I think they're trying to keep up with artificial intelligence and they're trying to be cutting edge in the industry and it's making a lot of bookkeepers and accountants very unhappy. I know a lot of people are very unhappy with all the changes they made this summer. But to answer your question, no, it did not make things faster. It made things slower for me. But here's my advice: technology is always going to change. Us as bookkeepers, it's up to us to keep up with the technology. We have to stay up-to-date with all the latest software, all the latest technology. Just keep up with it. It's not going to stop changing. It's always going to change.

Uh, Nuno Sully, I purchased your marketing course and posted every day for about six, seven months. I had a mix of tips, business, personal types of posts. Zero hits. I'm terrible at marketing. What else can you do? So, here's what you have to do. You can't just do the same thing over and over again and expect to get different results. So, you have to create content, but you also have to find prospective clients. You have to send friend requests, send LinkedIn connections, you have to follow people on Instagram. You have to grow your audience manually daily. So, it's not enough to just create content. You have to create content, but then you also have to look at what's doing well and what's not doing well. And you have to do more of what's doing well and do less of what's not doing well. If your content, if for 30 days your content got the same number of views every day for 30 days, you have to change something. You have to make something more exciting, more engaging, more interesting. You have to improve your content. You can't just keep—it's not enough to just create a boring post and post it and be done. You have to create interesting, engaging, improving content. Find prospective clients, connect with them, send 20, 30, 40, 50 friend requests every single day if you can. Just be careful you don't get dinged for spam. And then you have to engage with your community. You have to set—you have to comment on your new friends' posts. You have to reply to people's comments on your post. You have to be active on social media. You can't just post, sign off, and forget about it. You have to post, send some friend requests, engage with some people. You have to constantly try to improve.

Uh, Luca Vioto, thanks Zach. I appreciate the help. Um, Amanda, is there a way for clients to pay without a fee? Yes, ACH. So, I have ACH origination set up with my bank account so I can pull people's payment and there is a small fee. I think it costs like seven cents per month per transaction. Super cheap. So, there's two options. You can do ACH origination on your end. You can pull your payment. Or your client can pay you via ACH. All you have to do is say, "Hey, can you do you have treasury management set up so that you can make ACH payments? If so, let me give you my bank account and routing number so that you can send a payment to me."

Um, let's see. The Mental Chewing Gum Podcast, just got my ProAdvisor badge. Wonder if I can get my first client through QuickBooks. I'm out of the country. Wondering if I should put my hometown. I'm so excited but overwhelmed with impostor syndrome. Impostor syndrome is real. Here's what you got to do. Continue to do research every day. Spend 15, 20 minutes every day researching bookkeeping tips, watching QuickBooks videos. Just continue to learn. The more you do it, the more comfortable you're going to do it. Just continue posting here. Here's the cool thing. You can accomplish two things at the same time. You can simultaneously learn bookkeeping and QuickBooks and then also come up with social media marketing strategy tips, content ideas. So, if you're trying to figure out what to post or if you're trying to learn about bookkeeping, read a bookkeeping blog, read a QuickBooks tutorial blog, and then post about it. Be like, "Hey, just learned this cool bookkeeping tip." Or, "Hey, I'm learning about 1099s right now. Did you know that 1099s are due January 31st? Did you know that 1099s are typically filed on a cash basis? Did you know that if you pay somebody with Zelle or PayPal, you still have to give them a 1099?" Those are content ideas, but then you can also learn about QuickBooks and bookkeeping. So, you can accomplish two things at the same time. It'll help you get over impostor syndrome internally, but it'll also help you establish yourself as a bookkeeping expert externally to your social media audience.

Aaron, currently

Using your marketing strategy of graphics and captions, but what was the daily process outreach process when you you were only doing graphic content in order to get your first few clients?

Create content every day. One one piece of content per day. If you're feeling ambitious, do two per day on Facebook and Instagram. And then send 20 to 50ish friend requests per day. Be careful. Start slow. I don't want your account to get hit with spam. So maybe space it out. Maybe do 10 in the morning, 15 at lunch, 10 in the afternoon, and 15 before bed. Space it out. Send friend requests. And then engage with people. Engage with 10 posts per day. Just scroll through your newsfeed and just in and comment on people's post. I believe you're doing a couple things. You're spreading awareness. You're just getting you're getting your name and your picture out there more often. So, other people are going to see your comment. The the the owner of the post is going to see your comment and so you're just getting your name out there. But I also think it's good for your account to be active. I think it's good for the algorithm. I think it'll help promote your own posts the more active you are. And then after that, send a message 30 days after somebody accepts your friend request. 30 days after somebody becomes your friend, send them a DM on social media. Say, "Hey, I'm a bookkeeper. Let me know if you ever need help with your QuickBooks." And the idea is is that after 30 days, hopefully they've seen your content. Hopefully, you've engaged with them. And then you send them a message and they say, "Yep, I know who you are. I've seen your stuff. I know what you're all about. Yes, I want to work with you." or no, I'm not ready, but I like your stuff. If I know anybody who needs a bookkeeper, you'll be the first person who I recommend.

Um, let's see. How do you handle clients who mix personal and business, like using their company credit card to buy personal items? Do you encourage them to stop? Yes, absolutely. That's my number one tip. You have to keep business and personal transactions separate. And then I tell my client, "This is your business credit card. I'm going to assume that everything that you spend on the business credit card is a business transaction unless you specifically tell me otherwise. From now on, starting today, here's my advice. You need to stop using your business card for personal transactions. If I see it on the business card, I'm going to assume it's a business transaction unless you tell me otherwise. I put the responsibility back on the client. I'm telling you, everything's business unless you tell me otherwise. Why did you record that as business? Because you used your business credit card and you never told me it was a personal transaction. And the reason is I can't ask you every single week are all of these business or all of these personal. That's going to be unrealistic, not manageable for me. And it's going to frustrate your client. So just be upfront with them. Tell them, "Hey, you have to tell me. If you're using your business card for personal transactions, you have to tell me specifically which transaction because I don't know. I don't know if you went to Home Depot and bought stuff for your basement or for your home office. I just there's it's impossible for me to know."

Uh, Luca, do you think it's a good idea to advertise on social media when you work in corporate America? I feel like employers don't like their staff owning a business. Luca, that's going to totally depend on what you're doing. So, for me, I I was not Facebook friends with anybody who I worked with at Amazon. So, I I was very actively promoting my stuff on Facebook because I wasn't friends with any of my co-workers from Amazon. Also, I was working in a totally different field. So, I was a warehouse manager and then I was also growing my bookkeeping business. Now, if you're a staff accountant at a local accounting firm, that's totally different. That would probably be considered a conflict of interest. So, you just it just all depends on what you're currently doing.

Um, Levi, do you think bookkeeping is still needed? Yes, absolutely. I think bookkeeping is still needed. CFO advisory. Bookkeeping totally different, but still both very necessary. So, if you It all comes down to what you want to do. Here's don't do CFO advisory just because you want to make a lot of money. You can get 80 bookkeeping clients and you can make $40,000 per month. Or you can have 20 CFO advisory clients and charge them $2,000 per month and still maybe make $40,000 per month. Don't choose CFO just because you want to make more money. I would actually recommend if you don't know what to do, start with bookkeeping because it's it's more simple. It's more basic. It's more introductory. And also more companies hire a bookkeeper. CFO services are later. Only only advanced companies only growing companies hire a CFO. And if a company is cutting cost, they need bookkeeping because they need to file their taxes. They're not they are probably more likely to fire their CFO than they are to fire their bookkeeper whenever things are going really badly and they need to cut cost. So I think bookkeeping is great. I think CFO services are great, but my only caution, don't start CFO just because you think you're going to make a lot more money because you can make a ton of money doing both.

Let's see. Where am I? Where am I? I think I just got lost, but that's okay. I have ad let's see, Erica, I have ADHD. My biggest struggle is keeping track where I left off and following up, corresponding with clients. How can I improve my level of communication with clients? As you mentioned, Erica, my memory is terrible. I need to keep notes. I have Excel spreadsheets of people who I need to follow up with. I send I literally send emails to myself. So, on Saturday, if I get a text message or a phone call from an interested client and we talk on the phone, I'm going to schedule an email to myself for Monday morning like, "Hey, just spoke with Erica about bookkeeping. Here's a couple notes." Boom. Schedule the email to myself Monday morning so that I can follow up with Erica and so that I can add Erica to my my leads list. I have a terrible memory. So, you can still do it. You just need to be organized. You need to take notes. You need to write things down, send yourself emails, have Excel spreadsheets. You just need to keep track of things. You just need to spend a little bit more time keeping track of things.

Um, let's see. Daniel, do you have a partnership with a CPA? Yes, I have a partnership with a CPA. I we don't do revenue share. I refer all my clients over to him and then theoretically he refers all of his clients over to me. So, he's just a solo entrepreneur, owner operator, just a tax accountant, and I just do bookkeeping. So, the idea is, hey, I'll do the bookkeeping, you do the taxes, and we can share clients. But the problem is is I'm really good at marketing and so I referred him a ton of extra clients and he didn't really refer any clients over to me. So there was it's there's always in every business relationship it's always going to be it's never going to be 50/50 perfectly fair. So you just have to find somebody the key here find somebody who doesn't do bookkeeping. That's obviously the most important part. Find somebody who's not a local accounting firm. Find somebody who doesn't have two or three people on staff doing bookkeeping. Find a solo entrepreneur, owner, operator, CPA, who has no interest in doing bookkeeping. But understand that no business relationship is perfect. There's going to be a point where you probably give them more clients and potentially vice versa. Figure out ways that it can still be beneficial for you. So, something that I did is I asked a ton of questions. He didn't really refer me too many clients, but I he was always willing to talk to me on the phone. And we we talked about it like, "Hey, I hope this isn't too much for you because like I've sent you a lot of clients, so I'm hoping that you'd be able to help me out with a few of these higher level accounting and tax questions." So, it's really nice to have a CPA kind of owe you one, right? These CPAs aren't typically great at advertising and marketing, but they do know a lot about bookkeeping, taxes, and accounting. So, if you have questions, it's always nice to kind of have a CPA in your back pocket who you can ask questions for.

Um, so yeah. So, Heath, these live streams typically start at 10:00 a.m. 10:00 a.m. I'm going to try to come up with more of a schedule, but 10 a.m. It's kind of random. It's kind of whenever I have time. I'm super busy right now.

Um, turmoil. Hi, Zach. If a client doesn't work in QuickBooks, do you make a brand new chart of accounts for them in QuickBooks? So, all my clients have to use QuickBooks online. If you don't already have QuickBooks Online, that's okay. I'll start you a new QuickBooks account. When it comes to chart of accounts, I don't just create a ton of chart of accounts in the beginning, but instead I will create chart of accounts as needed. So, if if they never spend money on advertising and marketing, I'm not just going to create an advertising and marketing expense account. I'm going to create expense accounts and asset accounts as needed because every business is different. I don't have a blank template, a standard list of chart of accounts that all my clients get. So, I I don't import a chart of accounts, but if I create a new QuickBooks account, I would just create chart of accounts as needed.

Um, Aaron, currently on Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, am I supposed to send 20 requests for each platform? Yes. Send 20 to 30 connection requests every day on LinkedIn. Send 20 to 30 friend requests every day on Facebook. Send 20 to 30 follow 20 to 30 new pages on Instagram every day and then do all the engagement on each platform. So engage with 10 posts on every single platform. Post your content on every single platform.

Um, Marshall, do you still do one-on-one consulting? Yes, kind of. I have very limited availability. The the one-on-one consulting link is linked in the description of this video. I also have weekly group calls, private group calls every Monday at 3 PM. So, if you want to join that, you can. The really cool thing about that is it's not just me answering questions, but there's about 40 other bookkeepers in the group and so other people can answer your questions and other people ask questions and it's like, "Oh, I didn't think about that. That's kind of an interesting question." And it's not set up like this where it's just a chat, but it's like actually people live on camera. So you can talk, you can interact with people. It's been super super helpful for a lot of people. And I also have a full course for sale from A to Z teaching you everything you need to know how to start a bookkeeping business. That's all linked down in the description. I'll get to these last few couple questions, but last thing, this video is sponsored by my investment fund, Zip Capital. So I'm offering 8% up to 12% fixed returns. And there's a link in the description of this video. If you're a US citizen and an accredited investor, you can register on my website and you can invest in Zip Capital.

Um, Roa Marshall, how do people find you to hire you? I have a website, Google My Business. Google My Business is really important for getting bookkeeping clients because it's it's a way that you can show up through local search on Google, but it's also a way that you can get Google reviews. I have almost 200 five-star Google reviews, so it instantly adds legitimacy and credibility to my bookkeeping business. Did you make phone calls to businesses when you started? No. I really don't like cold calling. I think it's a huge waste of time. I think your time is much better spent creating marketing content and connecting with people on social media. How do you see AI taking over? I feel like business owners barely understand bookkeeping, much less AI. Jordan, I don't think artificial intelligence is going to take over bookkeeping, but I think bookkeepers who know how to use artificial intelligence are going to take over and out compete other bookkeepers. So, don't worry about AI taking over. Just learn how to leverage and use AI. You have to do 1099s for Task Rabbit employees who set up office cleaners. Everyone, anybody who pays, anyone who offers services to your business gets a 1099. So, if you have a landscaper, an office cleaner, if you have a driver, an independent contractor, a social media manager, an attorney, a bookkeeper, a tax preparer, anybody gets a anybody who provides services to your business gets a 1099.

Aaron, eventually want to go on to YouTube, but feel it will be quite a task with a job. When and how did you transition to YouTube? I started creating YouTube videos after I quit my full-time job. And I just started creating QuickBooks online tutorials. And honestly, people hired me because they saw my QuickBooks tutorials. It's super super simple. All you have to do is share your screen and just talk about what you're doing. People go to YouTube. I mean, look at everybody here. People go to YouTube to learn. Absolutely. Business owners go to YouTube to watch tutorials.

Uh, Daniel, do you offer your services free for a local nonprofit you are passionate about, such as a local sports league? I do bookkeeping free as a treasurer for a local Cal Ripken League. Daniel, I don't do that, but it could be a great way to get experience. It could be a great way to give back to your local community. If you want to do bookkeeping for your church or a local nonprofit or a local sports league, I think that's fine. I think that's a great way to get some good experience. And also typically people who are on the board of these nonprofits or these local sports league typically they're well-connected people in your local community. So a good could be a great networking opportunity and above all it could just be a great way to give back to your community.

All right, I think I actually got through all the questions. So I'm going to stay on for 30 more seconds. If anybody else has a last minute question, go ahead and drop your question in the chat. But I got through all the questions today. So thank you all so much. It's been an hour. Hopefully, these are helpful. I'm going to try to keep going live at 10:00 a.m. I don't know which day. I want to do it every day, but I don't know if I have enough time. So, if you like these lives, let me know. If you haven't already, subscribe to my YouTube channel so that you get alerts and notifications. Check out all the links in the description of the video. I have a Facebook page. I have a ton of digital downloads for free on my my website, harrisburgbookkeeping.com/store. I've got a ton of digital downloads right there that you can download. I've got a course. I've got an investment fund. I've got a Facebook group, weekly meetings every Monday.

Um, let's see. How last question. Best way to learn and start bookkeeping business while working full-time. Best way to learn is to become a certified QuickBooks provider and to learn QuickBooks. Watch QuickBooks tutorials and learn bookkeeping fundamentals. Take Intro to accounting at a local community college. Take intro to accounting. Learn debits, credits, assets, liabilities, equity, income, expenses, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and learn how they all interact with each other. How do you book customer sales? Either invoices or bank deposits. It's all done in QuickBooks. It's super super simple. Typically, the most clients that I get already have some type of bookkeeping in QuickBooks. So, I usually just continue doing things the way they were being done before if they already have QuickBooks. How do you deal with clients not paying on time? If a client doesn't pay on time, then I fire them after 60 days. So, I send my invoices on September 1st. And if you on the first day of every month, and that's going to cover the upcoming month of services. Come October 1st, if you haven't paid your bookkeeping fee from September 1st, I'm going to send you an email. I'm going to say, "Hey, you have your your September 1st invoice is overdue. I'm going to suspend bookkeeping services until your September and October invoice are paid." I don't put up with late accounts receivable. I don't put up with people not paying bills. There's just there's no time for it. So, I appreciate you all watching. Thank you all so much. I hope these videos are helpful. My goal truthfully is to teach you how to start your own bookkeeping business so that you can learn from my mistakes and fast track to success. Have a great week everybody.