307 Tax Pros: What To Know About Working With Bookkeepers
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 12 ก.ย. 2024
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Love this conversation! As a bookkeeping firm owner - I feel the pain of tax pros getting messy books. We've cleaned up some massive dumpster fires that were handled by other "bookkeepers". It's embarrassing for all of us to see the work that others can put out there. That said, I come to the relationship with a tax pro with grace and understanding. They just don't know what they are going to get until they see our work, and I get that. Also - when I find that wonderful tax pro that communicates well with us and takes good care of our clients, I absolutely send them referrals. It can be a fabulous partnership.
Thank you for this series! As a high-quality bookkeeper, I thought all bookkeepers were as precise and thorough as I was until multiple tax pros started saying how rare it was to find the books in order and error-free like mine.
What you said about incompetent bookkeeping causing a rift is so true! There really isn't any governance on who can do bookkeeping, so it taints those who are qualified.
The good thing is that once a tax pro has seen my books, they often prefer to refer more clients to me because they know I'll get them the year-end financials early and error-free. So it makes their jobs easier!
So it's win-win when a got-it-together tax pro and a got-it-together bookkeeper can cross paths and work together 🙌
HA! I was gonna recommend RightTool and Accruer in response to Caleb's comment, and then you name-dropped them both. Niiiiiice.
I really appreciate this series. My take is that almost no 2 tax pros have expectations of the books being kept the same way. Just because it isn't done the way they expect it should be doesn't always mean that it is wrong. Yes, there are standards, but a lot of the way books are kept has to do with preferences and not standards.
Yes well said!
As a bookkeeper - yes we are capable and don’t want to feel undervalued. Quality Bookkeepers are MASSIVELY VALUABLE. I appreciate this video series tho 🤙🏽
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Interesting point about AJEs. If i give a bookkeeper a list of AJEs because of a tax return, my expectation is the entries are posted in the books the how you described - using the best method - not literally as an AJE.
So my question is what is the best way to describe the list of entries to post to overcome this hurdle?
Great question -- and I love to hear that you don't actually expect the AJE list to literally be handled as journal entries!
To me (as a tax CPA and a bookkeeper, and the 'Ask a CPA' membership gal that Jason mentioned in the pod), I like to see this be part of an actual, live, real human being conversation between the bookkeeper and tax pro; especially at the start of a relationship, finding out each other's preferences and expectations can be hugely helpful. A 30-45 min zoom can work wonders in building bonds and preventing a world of miscommunication later on. Simply tell the bookkeeper that you recognize the books are their area of expertise and unlike some tax pros, you don't want to get in their way by forcing a bunch of AJEs into their nice clean books, so you're deferring to them as to what approach they think makes the most sense given the client's workflow. I try to inject some humor in there and joke about how tax pros such as myself will force anything into a JE. For the record, this conversation is much better had well in advance of tax season, not in the heat of it all.
That said: I get that it's hard to have this convo with every single bookkeeper if your client base is quite broad; if this is your situation, then put together a bullet list of your ideal preferences and expectations when working together, save it as an email template, and send it their way. However, to Jason's point, collaborating with just a few key bookkeepers as partners and having all your clients work with them will make it so you've got way fewer of these conversations to have year after year.