The perfect bookkeeping relationship… a myth?
Well, probably. But here are the best practices we’ve tested to take your bookkeeping relationship from irregular, sporadic, and disjunct, to streamlined, meaningful, and empowering. Our bookkeepers want to increase the transparency and tranquility of your books, and here’s how to do it:
1) Comprehensive view-only access: The best bookkeeping relationships require the bookkeeper has view-only access to everything touching the books. Even if it’s “just” a loan, or it’s the POS the employees use, the more data your bookkeeper can view, the better they can understand your business and maintain timeliness in our workflow. The more items we are waiting on you to send us (read: to-do items on our task list dependent on to-do items on your task list), the more likely we all are to fall behind schedule. Set up view-only access for your bookkeeping team and simplify both our life and your life!
2) Weekly meetings: It might seem excessive if you’ve never incorporated the bookkeepers into your work week, but weekly meetings do the most good for shortening wait times, increasing communication, and shifting teams from reactive to proactive. These touch-ins keep our team and your team headed in the same direction and up to speed on all major topics. You won’t regret a half hour once a week for all your bookkeeping and QBO questions.
3) Metrics & reports: Tell us what you care about. We can tailor reports to what you need to see, if you communicate with us your favorite reports are. Reports on your business can be broad or narrow, detailed or collapsed, cash or accrual, simple or with prior year comparison. What are you measuring in your business this year? Tell your bookkeeper.
We love developing rich and deep relationships with our clients and these three elements are hallmarks of great communication. If you have a bookkeeping relationship with us but it doesn’t look like the description above, it might be time to upgrade our relationship. Give us a call. If you don’t have a bookkeeping relationship with us but these things sound awesome, give us a call.