A Christmas Carol tells the story of Ebenezer Scrooge’s redemption. Our main character, Scrooge, starts as a cranky old man who hoards his wealth, treats his employees like garbage, and bums people out with his bad vibes and lack of generosity. Throughout the story, we bear witness to Scrooge’s transformation. He is visited by the ghosts of Christmas past, present, and what is yet to come. These spirit guides help Scrooge slowly gain clarity on who he has been and wants to become.

Through these visions, Scrooge recognizes the error of his ways, and by the end, old Ebenezer finds the willingness to change. If you haven’t read Charles Dickens's novella, I’m sure you’ve seen some version of it. Some old 90’s sitcoms have used this same framework to help the hero of a story emerge on the other side a better, more aware version of themselves.

Weirdly, the work we do at Hell Yeah Bookkeeping is a bit like this story. Thankfully, our clients aren’t cranky old misers. Instead, they tend to be insightful, creative business owners. And they need our help to become better, more aware captains of their company. In perfect conditions, we take our clients through a similar, but less dire, Scoorge-like journey where the ghost of business-past, business-present, and business-future all help our heroes have clarity and inspire a change to be better business owners.

This article will outline how our business and services help our clients and their companies improve and transform.

Our bookkeepers: the ghost of business-past 

By its very nature, bookkeeping involves looking back at what happened in your business through past transactions and historical reports. Looking back gives you context, understanding, and a framework to move forward. Like how Scrooge’s journey began by looking to the past, our engagements start with building a solid base of regular, monthly bookkeeping. Understanding the past is foundational.

Imagine your business finances operate out of an opaque piggy bank. When customers pay you, money goes in, and you can pull money out of the bank to pay for expenses. While you might have a general idea of how much money is in there, without proper bookkeeping, it’s hard to ask more critical questions about your business’s finances like:

• How much did the business make last month? How about last quarter? How about last year?

• How much did the business spend? What does it cost to run the company each month?

• Which jobs or lines of business earned the most profit last month, last quarter, and last year?

• Do any customers have any outstanding payments?

But wait, there are more questions! Great bookkeeping can allow you to ask questions like this:

• Can the business afford to invest in growth and expansion? How much can it afford?

• How can the business reduce expenses and increase profit?

• Do you need to raise prices, and by how much?

• How much are you going to owe in taxes?

Bookkeeping may not be the sexiest aspect of running a business, but it’s necessary and foundational. By keeping these records within a database like QuickBooks, you can create and view reports at the push of a button that can help answer all those questions and more!

The biggest lesson our clients learn when looking back is the importance of knowing where they’ve been. What was the story of your business last week, last month, and last year, all told in numbers.

Our operations support: the ghost of business-present

While some of our clients hire us to handle just the bookkeeping, others need more help with the day-to-day management and operations. This is where our operations support (which is often another that your bookkeeper may hear) steps in to help. 

Being able to hand off accounting tasks to our team frees up business owners so they can have the clarity they need to focus on the more vital aspects of running their business, like landing new jobs and servicing current clients. Just like how Scrooge learned the true meaning of Christmas, once you, as a business owner, feel a lot less bogged down by the day-to-day financial tasks, you’ll be able to take a step back and focus on the big picture. You can keep your eye on the north star and the greater purpose of why you’re running your business.

Here are the most common ways we help our clients run and manage their business: 

• We make sure you’re getting paid by handling your invoicing. From creating and sending your invoices to providing you with outstanding invoice reports and following up on them to make sure you’re getting paid. We can handle the entire invoicing process or just the aspects you need help with, like sending and collecting invoices.

• We ensure your team gets paid, from setting up and managing contractor payments and payroll to handling the bureaucratic filing of 1099s. If you need help with other aspects of bill pay, we can certainly take that off your hands too.

• We manage and file sales tax, which only applies to some businesses. If you sell a product and need to collect, file, and pay sales taxes, we can do it for you. Whether you have a local furniture shop with one location or an online e-commerce store that sells all around the country, we’ve got you covered so you won’t lose sleep worrying about paying too little or too much on your sales tax filings.

• Of course, we also help clients with special projects too. For example, we help our agency clients who represent artists manage their artist payments. We can also consult and create workflows for clients who need help figuring out better ways to manage their financial operations. For example, if you need help setting up a system to get all your contractors to submit their expenses or code company credit cards, we can help set that up and run it.

Managing your business's operational aspects can be overwhelming, but it doesn’t have to be. You can leverage our team’s experience and expertise, which has helped hundreds of small businesses run smoother and more efficiently.

Our consultants and fractional-CFOs: the ghosts of business-future 

A solid, growing business can happen by accident, but more often, it happens strategically. Forward-looking growth requires accurate historical information (which we provide through great bookkeeping), solid workflows that can support growth (handled by our operations support), and tools to help you project into the future. Here is where our consultants and fractional-CFOs (which stands for Chief Financial Officer) can help. 

Our consultants and fractional CFOs help business owners see into the future, from possibility to risk, like how the ghost of Christmas Future helped Scrooge see his future if he doesn’t make a change.

Here are some ways we help business owners see into the future:

• Projected budgets help you understand how much your business requires to operate. Knowing these figures will inform how much business you’ll need to land. For example, if you know you must sign five clients monthly, how does that inform your prospecting process? How many potential clients do you have to target, considering the likelihood that they’ll convert to customers? 

• Cash flow models, also known as cash burns, can help you understand your business's runway. You can also use the cash burn to run various scenarios to help you see how certain business and financial decisions will impact your business in the short and long term. For example, if you make a strategic hire, how will that new salary figure impact cash flow over the next year?

Forward-looking financial projections allow you to understand your business from an outsider’s perspective. Lenders, like banks, investors, and even potential buyers, may like to see a company from this vantage point: where it’s projected to go. They want to understand what the future of your business looks like so they can know if you’ll be able to pay back debt obligations or grow enough to give the investor a return on their investment. Forward-looking data gives a business owner insight into how much money the company will earn, how much it will cost to run, and how much they can expect to profit.

We try to understand what is on the horizon when we look forward. We can see the risks or opportunities in our path and how to avoid or capitalize on them. 

The three services described above correspond to the three service packages we offer. Whether you’re a creative business owner looking for help with bookkeeping or a partner in a growing creative agency looking to be poised for growth opportunities, we’d love to be part of your organization’s story. Contact us (or bookkeeping at thehellyeahgroup dot come) today to schedule a call to learn more about how we can help.