Working Together: Amy and her Bookkeeper

Amy was late to bed last night again. She was trying to catch up on her month end financial paperwork for her business. Midday Saturday now, and she’s already feeling tired. She has a coffee and movie date this afternoon whilst her two girls attend a school friend’s birthday event at Rainbow’s End.  Amy’s business is steadily growing. Two local stores now stock her Eco-friendly Skincare products and web online orders are increasing too. She has plans to add lip care balms to her natural skincare range, and later some natural beauty brushes.

As a mum to two energetic 7-year- old twin girls, it isn’t very easy finding more hours in the week. Amy is on the school’s Parent-Teacher Committee and often accompanies the girls on their school outings as a parent helper too. She isn’t keen to stop being involved in those activities.

Amy feels drained.  She doesn’t mind the book-work but the long hours in the evenings are getting too much. Evenings with a chilled wine and a Netflix movie are becoming a faint memory. She’s yet to find time to experiment with a recipe for natural lip balms. A close friend suggests Amy contract a bookkeeper to do her books. But Amy really wasn’t sure if she could budget for one.

The next day Amy contacts this friendly bookkeeper, Rebecca, who is happy to review options with bookkeeping support work, to suit Amy’s budget. She suggests Amy subscribe to Xero, to process her accounts. Xero will help save time, with its handy automated features for repetitive invoices. Plus with bank feeds set up, its easy bank reconciling process is a winner.

With training, Amy can continue doing the invoices and bank reconciliations herself. Her bookkeeper can log in as Xero is an online cloud application, check Amy’s accounting transactions and follow up on any issues. When Amy reaches the GST threshold for registration shortly, they are able to help with checking and filing her returns. Xero offers great online training videos on using its automated features plus Rebecca will be around to help Amy on any accounts queries.

Now knowing her books and business tax obligations are taken care of, Amy can focus more on the production side of her business. She will have time to experiment with creating lip balms and grow her skincare range. Her bookkeeper gave her useful advice on systems to improve cash-flow into her business, too as well as some other tax issues.

This story of Amy is fictional but she represents a blend of our lovely clients, who are busy growing their businesses.  Business owners who wanted to take opportunities to increase revenue but struggled to find more hours of the day.  So they opted to work smarter and outsourced their bookkeeping needs to us. Unsure of how much it will cost? Or maybe you’d like to hear more about Xero and how it may help you save time in your business. We offer special rates through our Xero Partner business to our clients. Contact us today and let’s talk….