Episode 386: What You Should Know About the Bookkeeper, CPA, and CFO of your Pet Business

Are you building castles in the sand when it comes to your business finances? ? In this episode of "Bella In Your Business," we're diving deep into the world of financial management for pet business owners. Join me as I unravel the mysteries behind bookkeepers, CPAs, and CFOs, shedding light on their vital roles in steering your business toward financial success. Ever wondered how bookkeepers conjure order out of financial chaos? Or how CPAs work their magic to save you from tax nightmares? We're uncovering the secrets behind these financial wizards, empowering you to harness their expertise for your business's benefit. From the ancient days of manual bookkeeping to modern strategies for financial mastery, we explore the evolution of small business finance and unveil the game-changing insights that can revolutionize your approach. Whether you're a seasoned entrepreneur or just dipping your toes into the world of business ownership, this episode is your passport to financial enlightenment. Get ready to transform your business from a sandcastle into a fortress of financial prosperity! This episode is brought to you by JazzHr! Topics & Key Points: The importance of bookkeepers, CPAs, and CFOs for small businesses Financial management for small businesses Importance of understanding business numbers Timestamps: [4:54]Bookkeepers, CPAs, and CFOs for small businesses. [10:23] Financial management for small businesses. [13:59] Importance of understanding business numbers. Notable Quotes: [3:08] "But unfortunately, without a bookkeeper, many of us end up with that sand castle, that's just you know, a box with a stick sticking out of it." [6:33] " And then given your personal situation, whether you're married or single, you have dependents, you have other properties or assets or investments or insert here, the multitude of things, right. That's where a CPA comes in" [10:12] "Or you really want to get aggressive with your retirement and savings accounts or you want to get aggressive with saving, because maybe you want to do investment properties, who knows. But whatever it is, you know, you want to have a real intrinsic strategy with your money. And that would be a CFO." Resources: Podcast: Bella in Your Business: Pet Industry Business Podcast Join Mastermind Sign up for a 20 mins call  Better Marketing with Bella JazzHR Episode 215: Getting In Control of the Financial Numbers in Your Business with Jamie Trull Episode 90: Questions To Ask Your CPA & Tracking Expenses for Tax Time Episode 230: 10 Ways to Save Money on Your Taxes Episode 138: Profit First With Mike Michalowicz Did you love this episode? Make sure you never miss an episode! Head over to Apple Podcasts or Spotify to subscribe to Bella In Your Business. Remember when life gets down, Always Keep Jumping. Transcript: Welcome, everybody to another episode of Bella in your business. My name is Bella Vasta. Today we're going to talk all about what I feel like we need to have more of a conversation about. I have talked about taxes, CPAs, bookkeepers, and things and other episodes. And I'll I'll, I'll respond to them, or give you those episodes as we kind of go when they come up. But I kind of want to talk about this on a high level. It's currently April 2024. And a lot of people are posting and talking and chatting, and there's a lot of chatter, about people being upset because they have to do extensions, or their CPAs just not getting back to them or giving them the time of day. Or they're just really trying to figure out how they should file and they're upset because they have not been advised. And I just want to give you a little bit of oversight over the years and years and years that I have been an entrepreneur for 22. And you know, I've 22 years of experience doing this. And I think that sometimes we're like, plug and play like, oh yeah, I have a CPA, I gave him my stuff. We filed my taxes, and I'm fine. But I think there are a lot of things to know as an entrepreneur as a business owner as someone filing as an LLC and S Corp. or however else you might file as, and we don't know what we don't know. And so I just kind of want to plant some seeds in your head. That's my intention for this podcast episode. But before I get started, I would like to thank our sponsor. Before we get into it, I also want to do a personal invite if any of you listening own a franchise, I have opened up a community just for franchise owners that helps kind of create support, and advice around the unique position that you have of being a franchisee so if that's you shoot me a DM or email, Bella@jumpconsulting.net  and I will get you an invite into that special group. All right, well, let's get started. So I want to kind of talk about first bookkeepers, CPAs, and CFOs. And I invite you to listen with an open ear to think about whether is there anything that I'm about to kind of entice you that you haven't thought about or you don't know. So first of all bookkeepers the way I've always described bookkeepers are, they're literally, they're the people that help give you all of the toys to build a sandcastle. So let's pretend for a moment that we are on a beach. And we want to build one of those beautiful sand castles that have all the nooks and crannies and moats and layers and stories to them. Maybe they have multiple different structures, and they're all connected, you know, this big, beautiful thing. And they have beautiful architecture to them. You know, it's not just a box. And that's it was like a stick sticking up out of the top of it. But unfortunately, without a bookkeeper, many of us end up with that sand castle, that's just you know, a box with a stick sticking out of it. And what I mean by that is a bookkeeper that reconciles your books, which means that all of your credit cards, your bank statements, all go into let's say QuickBooks, or whatever it is that you choose to use, and they reconcile it every single month. So every single penny that has been spent or accumulated, they account for, and working with the bookkeeper would look like, every month or every quarter, depending on your volume and how you work with them. They're gonna send you a list and they're gonna say, hey, please tell me where to apply this expense to. This can help with sometimes you might use your business or personal on accident, or, like you're like me this weekend, and I took the wrong American Express cards, I took my business instead of my personal. So I'll get a nice little note about that from Christine, my bookkeeper. And she'll be like, I'm Bella. I'll be like, oh, yeah, we need to reimburse, you know, for that. It doesn't happen often anymore. It happened a lot when I first started, but pretty good about that now, but that is where you're going to keep control of that stuff. In the past. When I first started, maybe my first five years, I used to just be like, Oh, no problem. I'll just print out all my bank accounts. And I'll open up a bottle of wine. Many of you guys have heard this story before. And I'll sit there and I'll just go through it all and I'll enter it all. Oh my god, you guys, that is not a good way to do it. Not to mention that even if you could enter it all the hours that it takes away from you working on your business or let's be honest, taking a nap or just sleeping is ridiculous. The next thing that is also kind of mucky about that is you know just simple things like meals and entertainment. You know, were you entertaining a client were you at a networking meeting? Are you ordering lunch in the middle of the workday at your home office, or your office that you're out, maybe you have an office, you know, there's like lots of different subcategories of meals or food. And that's where a bookkeeper is going to be able to do that. The other cool thing too, about a bookkeeper and like what we do, and you might have different levels or circumstances in your company, where maybe you have in-home boarding, but then you also have pet sitting, right? And maybe in-home boarding is one revenue source. If you want to keep track of all your cleaning supplies, and everything that goes into that, and that might have more expenses, then you can track the profit of that one service. That's what we do with better marketing with Bella with the mastermind with the podcast, we kind of break them up into revenue streams, so that we know which one is the most profitable, given how much expenses we have. And a good bookkeeper will do this for you. And they also will most likely pay or if you have them do this, you know, just automatically pay your monthly or quarterly taxes. So that again, when you kind of come up to CPA time or you know tax season, April time, you're not hit with a major bill because you've already been paying into it right or saving for it, it kind of varies depending on where you're at. Now a bookkeeper can only go so much because they also don't know tax law, or not necessarily law, but you know, all those different tax things that happen every single year. There's so much that changes with that. And then given your situation, whether you're married or single, you have dependents, you have other properties or assets or investments, or insert here, the multitude of things, right? That's where a CPA comes in. And you guys a CPA, as we know, are completely slammed during April, it actually kind of always amazes me that, you know, yeah, it's their busy season, but they can plan for it. So that's a whole nother tangent, I'm not gonna go down. But what I'm trying to express to you is that having a good CPA on your team is vital. And what I mean by that is that you meet with them a couple of times a year, that they might like, look at your projections, or look at where your current revenue is, and they're like, Yep, you're on track with last year.