| Sandi Reed: | Nancy, what is the most common question you’re asked in your business?
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| Nancy: | How much do I charge.
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| Sandi Reed: | Is there a problem with that, or is there another question that they should be asking?
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| Nancy: | They should be asking are my books in order? How do I determine if this is right? Am I putting my expenses into the right account? Do I have my liability accounts set up right?
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| To start it all off, the profit loss and the balance sheet need to be set up right. The chart of accounts. If that’s set up right, everything should run smoothly. If it’s not set up right, everything’s going to be a disaster.
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| Sandi Reed: | For a person just starting out from the very beginning, should they be talking to you, I’m assuming, to make sure that you get them set up right?
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| Nancy: | Mm-hmm (affirmative). If it’s set up right, then it makes it easier for me to come in and help them out or train them on the software that need to use if they want to do it themselves. I can do the training versus doing the actual book keeping for them.
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| Sandi Reed: | Okay. Very good. By the way, what is the name of your company and tell me a little bit about what you do?
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| Nancy: | The name of my company is Where Your Money Went. I’m a certified QuickBooks Pro advisor. I do accounting and bookkeeping. I’ve been in business for 4 years now. I have a bachelor’s in accounting. I’ve been doing accounting work for over 20 years.
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| Sandi Reed: | When you say you’re a certified QuickBooks Pro advisor, what does that mean?
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| Nancy: | That means that I have gone through, and studied, and taken the tests that are required to become a QuickBooks Pro advisor.
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| Sandi Reed: | You are a guru then?
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| Nancy: | Basically, yes. I know more than what the average Joe knows about QuickBooks. You can go buy QuickBooks off the shelf, set it up yourself, but your not going to know all the little quirky things and other stuff that it does and that it can do.
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| Sandi Reed: | Okay. Okay. What would the perfect customer be for you?
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| Nancy: | The perfect customer would be the small business owner that is running his business all day long and taking care of his books all night long instead of spending time with his family.
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| Sandi Reed: | Okay. Okay. We talked a little bit about pitfalls of, because I would assume that somebody looking for somebody like that is going to interview more than one person. Is there some little thing that they should watch out for that somebody, over-promising, or anything like that?
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| Nancy: | A lot of people over-promise that they can get this done, or say, “Hey, I can get this done in x amount of time.” That doesn’t always work that way because you don’t know what you’re going to get into til you actually get into that person’s books.
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| Sandi Reed: | If they hand you this big box of receipts and say, “Can you have this done by the 15 when ordinary tax is due, that would be a red flag for you?
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| Nancy: | Big time because that means that they haven’t done anything. That would mean that they just need it done immediately and they have absolutely no clue what they’re doing.
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| I would look at them and say, “Probably not” depending on the size of the big box. It takes time to go in, and separate, and sort it, and figure out what’s what, and there’s always going to be questions on my end back to them as far as “What is this for? What is this for? What did you buy here? Is this truly an expense or is this a liability to the company,” and that sort of thing. If payroll’s involved, that’s a whole other thing in and of itself.
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| Sandi Reed: | Do you do payroll?
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| Nancy: | I do not do payroll, but I will help them get sourced to the right payroll provider for them. I have several contacts either through QuickBooks or through other resources. We will go and find the best one that’s for them.
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| Sandi Reed: | I’m assuming if they accept credit cards and things like that, you can help them with-
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| Nancy: | I can help them get that all set up. Depending on which service they use, get it inteverted into QuickBooks or whatever software that they’re using.
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| Sandi Reed: | Okay. What is the best thing a perspective customer could do before they meet with you or if they decide that they want to use your services? The best thing they can do to make it easier for both of you?
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| Nancy: | To have everything in order.
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| Sandi Reed: | But then they don’t need you.
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| Nancy: | No, yes, they do. Yes they do because it’s in order but then not necessarily together. They may not know that this needs to go into this expense book or to this expense book. There’s actually inside the expenses, different ways to do things. Meals and entertainment, the IRS keeps changing the rules. You can only write off certain amounts. That sort of thing. Not everybody realizes all of that stuff.
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| They’re sole proprietor or an LLC that’s not running as CRS corp, they need to make sure that they’re not co-mingling anything. Even essence of corps need to make sure they don’t co-mingle their business with their personal because that starts to become a nightmare-
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| Sandi Reed: | Yes it does.
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| Nancy: | … in any room of the deal because then you’ve got to start paying each other back. That’s a big red flag to the IRS when it comes to tax time.
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| Sandi Reed: | Okay. Is there anything else that you think somebody should know about what you do as we’re wrapping this whole interview up?
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| Nancy: | I cater to the small business center that needs that extra help to keep everything straight so that they know where they’re at and that they can actually look and see what their bottom line is. I can show them where their money went.
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| Sandi Reed: | Excellent. Well, if you think that you could use Nancy’s services, please call her at …
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| Nancy: | 816-729-5921
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| Sandi Reed: | And that’s Where Your Money Went.
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816-877-8732
[email protected]
