Bookkeeper Linda Rost Discusses PPP Loans for Small Businesses

Video Transcript

Linda Rost is a founder and owner of a large bookkeeping firm called Better Bookkeepers Hi Linda Hi Dave how are you doing today doing great thank you alright so my first question is is how is better bookkeepers coping with the COVID pandemic? We’re coping very well we have about most of our staff are working from home myself and one other employee comes into the office our business is such that it can largely be done remotely if clients do want to come into the office we make sure that we have followed the protocols such as sterilizing the table and the chairs on the doorknob etc things like that alright and so it’s been going all right for you there now you are are you an essential business there in California yes all right that’s very convenient I I person I’m here in Nevada and my main office and we’re an essential business to and it make me very happy that Governor Sissel Act actually lacks the authority to shut us down again I don’t know if he would or wouldn’t but I’d rather just keep everything safe which we do and not have to worry about that stuff so in coma with these very things going on have you had to cope with any new challenges well we had to quickly learn about the PPP loan and we’re helping many of our clients with those loans I help them by providing them with lists of banks that are you know making the loans available and providing whatever information I have about the requirements and specifications of the loans in addition we help them in order to apply for the loan you have to have certain financial reports for and through X date of this fiscal year and so we help them get those financial reports all together well that sounds very good I know that in my practice here I had to cope with the fact that a number of my clients want to delay their taxes because they don’t have to file them that early and because you know I’m here in Las Vegas and all the casinos are closed down so a lot of people there are really you know being very parsimonious oh they could not pay me they won’t so I’ve had to do some extra you know do some extra promoting but it sounds like you as a PPP load are actually able to you know a lot of people new people it need help with that so if some of your old client there are delayed or want to take a little time off you’re still covered is that right that is right for the most part yes and then even when they get the PPP loan we have customized a little feature in QuickBooks to make it so that we can properly tap keep track of the transactions that the PPP loan should be spent on so that when it comes time to ask the bank for forgiveness of the loan we can the client can have a report of where they spent the money well that’s a really valuable service because if you have a business and you maybe you get $, in PP pita to cover your payroll or whatever it’s nice that you don’t inadvertently make a mistake that results in not being able to be forgiven that is true and then the other thing that we do is we remind our clients when they get that loan that they’ve got eight weeks to spend the money within the guidelines yeah it’s really important because I know from the tax practice of that you know sometimes people can make small mistakes you know they’re not really you know following the ball really closely and in this case it could make a substantial financial difference I think you’re right well okay now what else are you doing – uh you know keep your practice going and expanding any other tip you can give our client our viewers well we have standard promotional lines our website I have a constant contact campaign I have a postcard campaign letters to CPAs campaigns well very good that’s also a very good point because one of the one of the most common reactions when income goes down that business people do is they save money by cutting their promotion but that is you know I highly recommend against that because you need to do the promotion so that you can make money and it seems like you’ve got that already under control for yourself yes alright and you know any anything else that comes to mind that you would like people to know about here well what I’d like people to know is that I’ve been in business for twenty years I have a staff of about ten people and they’re very well trained and no matter what condition your books are in even if it’s a shoebox full of receipts we can help you and you know a lot of small businesses and small business people they they start a business because they get excited about an idea and accounting is the last thing on their mind and a lot of them you know actually might not understand accounting or how to read their reports or anything like that and what they need to know is that the reports are like the score card of the game of business if you don’t keep track of how your money is being handled and where it’s going you won’t really know whether or not you’re winning the game of business and so not only will we track your transactions so that you can have proper financial reports one of the most fun things we can do is sit down with a small business owner and help them actually understand how to read those financial reports and that is just very rewarding to do that yeah I’m sure it is I also would like to make a comment here of the as a consumer of some of those reports in that it’s a lot easier doing a tax return if the figures on the bookkeeping make sense and if everything is orderly and so for many people it’s a great at the relief to do you know when I get a client from Linda it’s pretty easy to do the tax return because I have the data there the other thing is this is just sort of a humorous story that I have is uh many years ago I had a client come to me was uh was you know was all his bookkeeping on one of those little you know sticks that he put into the computer and this guy had a business that was grossing about two million dollars a year and he has spent two hours a day personally entering his invoices into QuickBooks which seems like okay that’s not a bad idea or whatever so but when we actually got went through his invoices his books made zero sense and we had to start at the beginning now here you have a guy who’s a driving force behind the business of making two million dollars a year and he’s spending one corner of his workday doing his bookkeeping working on the invoices and they’re utterly worthless if you just turned that stuff over to a bookkeeper he probably would have made another $, then correct me if I’m wrong Linda but not many of your clients charge $ but we tried trader Saladin for their bookkeeping is that right no I don’t in fact many of our clients are small businesses and don’t need a lot of bookkeeping that most of our clients will need somewhere between three hours a month to hours a month or foot keeping and so we specialize in and and they’re small businesses and they want to keep their bookkeeping costs down so we specialize in figuring out the fastest way to get the data in the books in the most in it you know correctly and will do whatever portion of the accounting cycle that the client needs we’re happy to do all of it or we’ll happy to share share the function with the client or their staff and anything that the client where the staff does will oversee it and make sure that it’s getting the financial statements properly well very good now no another question for Linda I know you’re located in Northern California if that is can you do that is that what your business that where you work with the businesses are you are also capable of working with business it’s further away ok when somebody calls and says hey I need your bookkeeping services the first thing that we’re going to do is I’m going to have a very detailed meeting with you and I do that free of charge and what I do is with you I look at your QuickBooks file if you have one if you don’t have one that I’ll just ask you questions but most people have something to start with so together we will look at your file and we can do that remotely and I’m going to look at every number on your balance sheet and determine the condition of your file then based on that I’m going to give you an estimate as to how long I think it’ll take me to bring it current and clean it all up if it’s messy and then then you just have to decide to accept that estimate we work off of a retainer I’ll send you a bookkeeping agreement and a retainer that you’ll agree with and then once that’s paid then we will start our onboarding process and onboarding includes what we will need is view only online access to your accounts bank credit card and loan accounts or payroll and it’s through that method that it makes it possible forget the forgetting the data that we need from you so that we can get it into QuickBooks it’s the view only aspect well that’s very good and also just from what you’re talking I just want to mention here that a lot of businesses when they’re running around and getting started and going forward there is they don’t know they don’t actually know how much money they’re making or where they’re making money from so it’s almost like a pilot flight into flying blind so by getting this data and doing the proper book form any business it can definitely increase their chances of success and they’re also from my viewpoint because I imagined that story earlier because there’s a lot of people in the field that if you’re not a good bookkeeper but you’re good at what you do then do what you do best generate more income and let the bookkeeper do the bookkeeping and you will you know you can write wide net with a very successful business would you agree with that Linda I would definitely agree and let me tell you an interesting story I have this one client who worries a lot and everyone’s no one she’s an expert worrier and every once in a while she would call me up and tell me how bad it all is and I would pull up her QuickBooks file and there’s this one particular report that I love it’s a net worth grasp and it’ll tell you whether or not you’re making the right decisions as a business owner and I would pull that graph out with her and I could easily say you know what yeah you might be a little underwater but look you’re all your numbers are going in the right direction and then we would look at her financial statement and you know figure out what she’s doing right I had another client call and you know with a little bit of angst about how her business was going and we sat down and looked at her profit and loss report maybe by a quarter or by year you know I split it out over a period of time and then I compared all the numbers horizontally and realized that she stopped spending money on marketing X months ago or exporters ago and no wonder her business was having a hard time so it was an interesting thing and I really loved doing that kind of thing for people you know the other thing I think people might appreciate is that I actually have been formally trained as a business consultant and I have some good basics on things that small businesses should be doing for success and I like to share those when it’s appropriate well that’s very good and for the record I have actually I talked to some several four client and they’re all very happy with how she services them and the advice that she gives them so that’s always a good that’s a good feather in your cap Linda thank you know there anything you know like to say before we close off your Linda what I’d like to say is that we’re always open to help anybody that needs help with their bookkeeping I said I have a great staff and we have capacity I pretty much never say no to helping somebody and it’s just what we love to do and we’re here for you when you’re ready all right well thank you very much Linda for being here on the torchlight network thank you all right and thank you for watching.