Why Most Bookkeeping Systems Don’t Work
and what makes Heart Based Bookkeeping’s system different…

If you are reading this page, you have probably decided that you could use a bookkeeping system. But if you have had the experiences shared by many other business owners, your experience with bookkeepers (and possibly the entire accounting profession in general) hasn’t been very good.

From my own personal experience and from what I’ve learned working and speaking with other business owners, there are five reasons why most bookkeeping systems don’t deliver ideal results for small business owners:

Reason 1. Lack of help. You’re trying to do it all, by yourself.

You know the bookkeeping is important and you intend to get it done. But you know what it’s like to be in business for yourself: there are many hats to be worn and you’re the one wearing most – if not all – of them. Some days you actually get ahead. Some days you’re treading water. Other days, you’re falling behind.

Your instinct tells you that you need to make changes and improvements in your business. You’re not sure who owes you money and you think you might be falling behind in paying your bills. You keep promising yourself you’ll get caught up with the books tomorrow, but then tomorrow comes and a prospective client calls and you have a client project you must finish on time.

So the books are put on hold for another day. And the cycle repeats itself, over and over again. The bookkeeping seems to always fall to the bottom of your to do list because, let’s face it – you’re not a bookkeeper. Doing the books isn’t exactly the most exciting or highest priority item on your list today.

Reason 2. Lack of experience. You’ve tried trusting someone who turned out to know little more than you do.

You may have recognized that you do not want to or can’t keep up with doing the books yourself, so you hired a bookkeeper or perhaps someone – your parent, spouse, or sibling – volunteered to do the books for you.

This, at first, seemed like a great solution. You got it off your plate and onto someone else’s. It was no longer your concern. But then something happened. And you discovered that there were mistakes made – not out of any intentional harm – but due to a lack of experience.

So you were back to doing (or not doing) the books yourself.

Reason 3. Lack of understanding. No one is showing you the big picture.

So you have a bookkeeper and they provide you with financial reports each month (hopefully you get this much, at a minimum). But that’s it. You don’t know what the reports mean (or if they are even accurate) and you don’t feel any better about the money matters of your business. Your accounting isn’t helping you to grow your business or make changes to improve things.

Reason 4. Lack of accuracy. Garbage in, garbage out.

Relying on bookkeeping software is not foolproof. In actuality, it can be foolhardy and costly. Because software is only as reliable as the information that is input into the software, it takes working knowledge and an understanding of the actual accounting that’s taking place within the tool.

The software doesn’t know when someone’s made a mistake, so relying on reports that haven’t been reviewed by a professional, someone with the experience necessary to identify mistakes and inaccuracies, is oftentimes worse than having no bookkeeping system at all.

Reason 5. Lack of attention. You’re just a little fish in a big sea.

You wait for tax time. You rely upon your CPA to provide you with guidance in the accounting arena of your business but he or she isn’t saying much.

You know your business isn’t a huge business, but it’s your business and it’s very important to you. Unfortunately your CPA is overloaded taking care of his BIG business clients and you don’t get the personalized attention and service you deserve.

Why Do You Need a Bookkeeping System?

Here are just a few examples of the effect I’ve personally witnessed in businesses that chose to ignore their bookkeeping system.

• Lost income due to not knowing who has forgotten to pay you for your services.
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• Inability to obtain a business loan because the business cannot provide financial statements.
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• Spending nights and weekends trying to manage the books yourself, when you are not a bookkeeper, which means you lose valuable time with family.
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• Overpaying taxes due to overlooked expenses that would have qualified as tax write-offs.
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• Inability to sell your business because you have no measure of what the business is worth.
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• Lost sleep, anxiety attacks, and severe mental distress because the business is failing and you have no idea how to make it better, no idea how to fix what’s broken.
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• Setting prices at a rate you think is profitable, but really isn’t because the calculations you’re doing “in your head” aren’t accurate and you’ve overlooked extra costs like shipping.
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• Running into trouble with the state or IRS because of missed tax payments, inaccurate tax payments, or inability to provide documentation requested by the authority.
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• Making the decision to rent a larger office, signing the lease for the larger office, and ending up unable to pay the lease within three months due to inaccurate financial statements that were used to make the decision to rent the larger office.
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• Calling a client to request payment for a past due invoice only to be told that the client’s bookkeeping system indicates they already paid that invoice and they can provide the cancelled check to prove it.
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• Inability to focus on the work of the business and growing the business because there is no system in place to indicate how well or how poorly the business is doing today.
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• Legal troubles because you thought you could pay someone as a 1099 contractor but it turns out they are really an employee and you haven’t been paying them through payroll.
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• Lost opportunities for business growth and development because of missing or inaccurate information that was critical to the process.

I founded Heart Based Bookkeeping to address the deficiencies I saw in the bookkeeping industry. I have witnessed the devastating effects of a non-existent bookkeeping system and have been disappointed and discouraged by the stories I’ve heard, time and time again, about bad bookkeepers and CPAs who were too busy with their big business clients to stop and care about their small business ones. Based on the countless stories I have heard from other business owners, they too, are looking for a reliable and dependable solution to their bookkeeping headaches and challenges.

Over the past two decades (and then some) I have worked within small businesses. I have spent my entire career supporting small business owners and understand, first hand, how it becomes almost impossible to grow and develop a business without an effective bookkeeping system.

The reason I do what I do is to help entrepreneurs, just like you, because I know there is a better and easier way to have what you need in your business. I’ve personally worked with over a thousand business owners, assisting them with the implementation of the Heart Based Bookkeeping bookkeeping system, whether the done-for-you or the do-it-yourself version, and I have witnessed how effective it can be at turning problems into profits.

The last thing I want to do is to waste your time and money. I want your bookkeeping system, provided by Heart Based Bookkeeping, to change your view of bookkeeping. I want you to recognize that a bookkeeping system is an asset and not a liability, once and for all. So I welcome you to explore how you can get started (on our home page) and how I can help you.

Start here: the free assessment.

If you haven’t yet downloaded the free workbook, that’s another place to start.

Then, explore my services page. If you are ready to leverage your bookkeeping system
as a tool to grow and improve your business, Heart Based Bookkeeping is the answer
you have been searching for. Haven’t you waited long enough?