My husband and I work as writers, consultants, and professors. We have an LLC, a wee S-corp, 1099 income, and then there's all our adjunct teaching work at three
different universities, which is paid to us as W-2'ed individuals. Over 30 different entities and individual clients cut us checks every month, going into four separate bank accounts. After all that bookkeeping and accounting began growing more complicated (and expensive), our accountant told us to get QuickBooks. A friend set it up for us, then we struggled to learn it. We're writers; we don't know numbers. For months we were spending five hellish hours every week entering data and trying to keep it all organized, and were ready to kill each other. Then, a mutual friend referred us to Holly. When I say that Holly saved our financial lives (and probably our marriage as well), I do not exaggerate. She reorganized it, cleaned up all our account entries, and streamlined everything. We have her to our office for two hours every other week. She enters all the income, payroll deductions, business expenses, and works her QB magic; then, she backs everything up onto a thumb, just in case the computer should blow up or some other catastrophe occurs. She also does the monthly bank reconciliations, tracks our monthly credit-card statements to do the splits for what's deductible and what's personal; and and in February, after all the W-2s and 1099s have been received and ready for our accountant, she runs all the reports and uploads them to him, so that all our income and outgo is right there for him to organize for our tax filings. We truly could not get along without her. And on top of all that, she's funny, interesting, and a genuine pleasure to hang with. She's always incredibly patient when I don't understand arcane stuff, like journal entries, and she explains it in terms and contexts that I can actually comprehend. She also helps us organize our paper files as well, because our accountant insists that we retain our original paper tax-deductible receipts and records for 7 years. Put her to work; she's fantastic. read more
