Absolutely not, and we don’t expect you to be. There are some things that you’ll need to do to help us such as approve timesheets or submit your bills to Hubdoc, but we’ll do all the setup for you, and give you detailed instructions on what you need to do, when it should be done, and how you do it. You could choose to never log into Xero, and that’s okay because we’ll manage everything for you. If you do log in, we’ll show you how to get around, where to pull your reports from, how to raise invoices if that’s something you’re going to be doing, etc. It’s nothing you need to be apprehensive about and we’re here to help you on your journey of learning. Once you know what you’re doing we’re sure you’ll have no problem getting your head around it. You never know – you may become as tech savvy as your teenager!

Sure, if you know what you’re doing, and you have the time and energy to do it after being “on the tools” all day. But let’s put the beer down for a minute and think about this with a little more clarity. If you’re a mechanic, you’ll find servicing a car easy – our car would probably never drive the same again if we got busy under the hood. If you’re a hairdresser, you’ll find a colour and cut a piece of cake – we’d need to not leave the house for a good couple of weeks if we tried it on ourselves. If you’re an electrician, you’ll find wiring a new power point a breeze – we’d probably burn the house down. You get the idea. We’re professional BAS Agents – we know how to make things run smoothly, how to make things look good, how to keep things compliant. Next time you’re at the pub with your mate, stick to the beer and the footy and leave the bookkeeping to us.

You’re right, there are lots of bookkeepers available. There are some distinctions you should consider though. There are lots of “bookkeepers” who have put out their Welcome mat and are taking on clients. They’re not qualified, experienced, insured, or registered with the Tax Practitioners Board (TPB). Therefore, they’re providing the service illegally – you don’t want to get caught up in that. We’re registered, qualified and insured BAS Agents. Why should that matter to you? It’s work from the unregistered and unqualified “bookkeepers” that we end up taking over as rescue jobs – that means files that are messy, behind, out of balance, non-compliant. We actually love this work, like the satisfaction of finishing a complicated 1000-piece puzzle. But it costs our clients a lot of unnecessary time, money, and stress.

Look at the watch on your wrist or the phone in your pocket. Back in the day the watch used to just tell the time, and the phone was used to call mum to let her know what time you’d be home for dinner. Your watch is now a mini-computer that tells you way more than the time, and your phone is more powerful than many computers were back in the days of the Commodore 64. In that same era, the days of carbonised invoice books and fax machines, a large part of the bookkeeping role was data entry. With the advances in technology there is still some data entry required, but we’re way more than that now. Legislation changes come in at lightning speed and we need to be across the changes and the impact they have on our clients businesses; we need to be on top of all the intricacies of payroll (well actually, Australia has one of the most complicated industrial relations systems in the world so it’s impossible to be across everything, but we’re pretty clued up on what we need to know); our systems and processes allow us to provide you up to date and relevant information that allows you to make quick and informed decisions about the direction of your business; we help you track, analyse, and interpret information that can sometimes be quite complex and overwhelming; we’re there when you need to bounce ideas off somebody outside the business who still has an intimate understanding of what’s going on. So no, bookkeeping is not just data entry!

Yes, this will cost you money. But it’s going to save you more than it costs you. We save you money and time (your time is valuable too, remember), through the streamlined systems and processes we’ll implement, our compliant approach that will keep you off the ATO radar, the additional time and insight you’ll have to invest back into your business and growing your profits. Not to mention the invaluable time you’ll get back to do the things you love, and spending with those people who matter the most.

Working from home is pretty normal these days and our team is fully remote – we’re actually across a number of states in Australia. Although we’re all disconnected in location, the systems we’ve put in place mean we’re all very connected. So, unless we’re making it a road trip, coming to the office may prove to be difficult! Whether you’re across the country, or across town, technology means we don’t need to physically be there. But in the world of paperless offices, there is still a lot of paper, and the applications we use help us deal with that. For those times where it’s helpful to have a face-to-face, we can do that just as effectively over an online meeting. Working remotely also means you don’t have to commit to be in the office to meet us on our usual day – we can often get the work done while you’re out on the tools and we’re not taking up valuable office space that could be used by one of your team members.

Our core purpose is to eradicate financial stress, so the last thing we want is to be the cause of it! We charge a fixed weekly fee which covers all the services we’ve agreed to. So you’re not paying for an hour, you’re paying for an outcome. Weekly direct debit payments mean you don’t need to worry about remembering to pay us (and we don’t have to have that awkward conversation chasing payment), smaller amounts come out of your account each week which are more manageable from a cash flow perspective than larger monthly amounts, you know exactly what your financial commitment is going to be, and you don’t need to worry about larger bills during busy times such as BAS and EOFY because the payments have effectively been smoothed out over the course of the year.