147 ⎸Another Q&A Episode!

In this live Q&A session we touch on insights from a recent podcast on CFO services. Additionally, the host shares expertise on developing CFO services, handling quality control manually without specific software, the nuances of various client services like AR/AP, and strategies for finding and integrating team members. Questions from participants lead to discussions on LLC taxation, the benefits and complexities of S Corp status, and maintaining clear financial boundaries between business and personal finances.

Thanks for listening. If this episode inspired you in some way, take a screenshot of you listening on your device and post it to your Instagram stories and tag me, @ambitiousbookkeeper

For more information about the Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast or interest in our programs or mentoring visit our resources below:

• Visit our website: ambitiousbookkeeper.com
• Follow the Blog: ambitiousbookkeeper.com/blog
• Connect on Instagram: instagram.com/ambitiousbookkeeper
• Connect on LinkedIn: Linkedin.com/in/SerenaShoup
• Connect on Facebook: Facebook.com/serenashoupcpa

Thank you for your support of our show. If you haven’t left a review yet it’s super simple. Please go to: https://www.ambitiousbookkeeper.com/podcast and leave your review.

Podcast Publishing Tools we use:

• Podcast Editing: Sabr Media LLC
• Descript (affiliate link)
• Buzzsprout (affiliate link)

Dubsado Decoded Summer Sale (20% off)  CLICK HERE

Wanna win a ticket to XeroCon August 14-15? *travel & accommodations not included
To enter:

1. Review the podcast on Apple >
2. Screenshot your review & email it to support@ambitiousbookkeeper.com by 11:59 PM Pacific August 1, 2024
3. Tune in to YouTube LIVE 9am Pacific Aug 2 to see who won! 

Transcript

2:37

Favorite place to post for finding team members? Ooh, , so I have gotten, I've had good luck on HireMyMom. com. I did a podcast with her recently. you do have to pay to post, but it's very affordable. It's like, I don't know, 35 bucks or something for a month. It's not bad at all. And then I've also posted on LinkedIn. I will caveat that, I follow the hiring process that Alyssa teaches in Breakthrough, and also, is inside of A book called Make Him Beg to Work for You, I think. I think that's the name of the book. So she outlines this whole process about like creating a job posting that's enticing. It's kind of like a sales page. And so even though I post on these other platforms, I always direct people back to my website to look at the actual job posting because there's instructions in there that they need to follow in order to ever even get on my radar. So even when I post a job on like LinkedIn or wherever else, if they just submit an application through that platform, I'm not going to look at it. Welcome to our monthly live Q& A So welcome, welcome. So where can I learn the skills to develop CFO services without going back to university? Yeah. So I cover the foundations of it inside of my program Elevate. so there's four modules basically. The first module we go over, how to review financial statements for accuracy and also to analyze them. So it's kind of like a two in one. If you're going to be providing CFO services, the, the first step is to be able to explain the financials. And then you also want to want to make sure they're accurate, whether your team is doing it or, Maybe you're partnering with a different firm and you're not the one actually doing the bookkeeping. You still want to validate all of that. so I go over how to analyze the financial statements and then key points to talk about how to present them to clients. And then I also, And the following modules cover cashflow forecasting, budgeting, and forecasting. And then we go over like how to package some of these offers and different ideas. I give you all of that information basically, where you can take what I've done and kind of mimic it, or you can like model it after whatever works for the businesses that you're working with. Because I think we covered this in the podcast with Charles. Some of the services he provides aren't going to be what you and I provide our clients, right, if we have a different client base. so it's very CFO services, very broad, but at the bare minimum, I would suggest at least understanding how to budget and analyze financial statements and explain them to clients and kind of dig into like why numbers are happening for them. Yeah, he does some really high level stuff. So like he helps them get funding. So that's one thing that like a corporate CFO would be working on, in a bigger company is getting funding, whether it's, raising money, with equity or, you going for debt or whatever. So he does a lot of that. And then he also does like a pricing analysis because he works with product based businesses. So depending on what your client base is, there's going to be something that's a major pain point for your type of client. and that's what you can build your CFO services around. Or you could just do like straight up budgeting and forecasting because that's also very valuable and that basically every business needs. So that's why I kind of start with that and elevate and then it's kind of like adding on whatever you see that your clients need. so I hope that's helpful. Can you talk about what you do for QC manually not using Zenit anymore? So I never actually really fully utilized Zenit. I tried to test it out, and I try not to be one of those like, my way's better, but like, my problem with implementing some tools, like a cash flow forecasting tool or a QC tool is, I feel like kind of, Everything's scattered because I had a process that I followed, even though it was a manual process. I have a process that I trust and I don't have to piece things together. And I feel like even using Zenit still requires the manual thought process that I was using. And so it just kind of added an extra layer that didn't need to be there. Because I will say the Zenit is helpful for identifying like duplicate vendors and duplicate transactions. However, with my client base, there was lots of duplicate transactions or appeared to be duplicate transactions. Transactions because their revenue, it's their courses. Everyone's buying the same exact thing. Their cart value is the same. So it was like, you got to sift through all that. We don't really have issues with duplicated vendors or missing vendor names because we use Xero and that's not possible. you can duplicate vendors, but my team is pretty good about staying on top of that. And that's something that you can kind of tackle like once a year or once a quarter of just going through the contacts. like merging vendors and stuff. So that was the only thing that really stood out for me. The finance, the financial statement analysis piece, I have a format that I already use and send to my clients. And it just it's more efficient for us to just follow the process we've been following. Because if you're analyzing the financial statements, with a keen eye, you're going to catch things that Zenit's not even gonna catch. You know what I mean? Like, because you learn your clients and you look at things month over month and it's like, oh, utilities jumped up two grand. Why is that? Dig into it. Oh, something got booked wrong or, oh, they, you know, they leased a new building. So now they have higher utilities or something like that. There should be a reason. So, , that's. My QC process is actually just an, financial statement analysis. And going through the balance sheet too, like making sure that everything on the balance sheet has support for those balances. and then analyzing the profit and loss month over month. I hope that's helpful. And yeah, so that's why I don't, I, I kind of was like, all right. And then I also was testing out Keeper for like the same type of thing, but I haven't really dug into that. so I can't really speak to how well Keeper does on that front either. But I will say if you're using QuickBooks for your clients, I would recommend some other reporting tool than QuickBooks because Like, you're just gonna have to manually create your financial statement package every month in QuickBooks, and it's kind of a pain. So, yeah. All right. I have been an accountant for 30 years and have just started a virtual bookkeeping practice. I'm new to QBO, and I'm still learning. Slow navigating through it. So am I, and I'm not even new to it. They've added a lot recently that makes it really hard to sift through in my brain. I have a prospective client who is a small law firm with four employees. I'm not sure how to provide AR and AP services. So if they're a law firm, likely they already use something else for billing and collecting payment, and so I would ask them. That question, make sure you're asking your prospective clients on your discovery call or in your questionnaires. How are they collecting money from customers and how are they invoicing customers because a lot of times they have like a third party system, especially for a law firm if they have to have like an escrow type situation. they might have a completely different system. So QuickBooks would only be being used for basically booking expenses and reconciling the bank account. so that would be a question I would ask them. How are they collecting money and how are they paying vendors as well? did they express that they wanted you to be handling AR and AP or are you just Kind of trying to come armed with solutions. it really does require, like, getting a feel for what the client needs. Regarding AR, I would ask them, okay, are you going to be entering your timesheets and then I create the bill or the, invoice for your clients from it you know, and ask them how often you're going to be doing this. Is it a once a month thing? that's the only thing with AR, the person who is tracking their time or whatever, doing the billing, like you're still going to need that information from him. So you've got to figure out a workflow around that, figure out how often he wants that done. And if he's going to be providing you timesheets and tell you who to bill, or it might end up being easier for the client to actually do that part if they're, the one keeping their own time or whatever. And then ask them, okay, well, do you want me to just be following up with people who owe you money? things like that. So that's how you would handle AR. And it's kind of up to you if you even want to offer that service, depending on, like, I have a couple clients that. We do handle the invoicing of their clients for them, but we just set them up in Xero and let Xero handle the follow up. And occasionally one of our clients will be like, this client still hasn't paid me, can you send them an actual email to bug them? And in that case, like, we will. We don't ever pick up the phone and bug, like, other people's clients, though. Like, that's where I draw the line. I'll do an email to just be like, hey, this is their accountant, like, we noticed you haven't paid, da da da, here's your statement. That's the deepest we go for AR, and we don't provide AP anymore for any clients. That requires, Yeah, you to kind of figure out how you want that workflow to go to if it's a manual process, like, well, let me back up. If you're going to be using QBO, there are solutions that are connected to QBO, like Melio, where you enter the bill in QBO and then you can just give your client an AP aging and say, okay, tell me which one of these you, want paid this week or whatever. Again, find out a rhythm. Do they want you to handle it monthly or weekly? And then you can just pay things through Melio. You could use a bill. com or something like that. I'm not really a fan of bill. com. I have one client on it and it's just, we don't do the AP through it for them, but I'm constantly having to reconcile what happened in bill. com with Xero. And it's not fun. so, yeah, some AP softwares that have dual approval and payments sending would be bill. com, um, I think Plooto, P L O O T O. I believe Relay has multiple approval levels. I'm not 100 percent sure on that, though. when I did AP for clients, it was a very manual process. I would enter the bills in QuickBooks. I would, um, export the AP aging to show them what was coming due. And I would say these, I would highlight the ones that are due. These have to be paid. They're due right now. These ones need to be paid next week. Let me know what needs to be paid, what you want to pay this week and approve it. And that process only works if the person on the other end improves things in time. And it ended up getting like, things would get paid late because I'm not going to pay something without approval from a client. And they had like a breakdown in communication on their end of things often and they were kind of disorganized so That is partly why I was like i'm never doing this again I also don't like being tied to something like on a weekly basis. I like doing monthly accounting and that's it , so kind of figure out like what you're actually okay with doing before you agree to it because that can be a a difficult thing to navigate it once you're already in it. So, depending on the type of business, Laura, I'm not sure if, it's like a high volume vendor, like product based business that, someone needs AP for. I like, okay, because if it's like a product based business and someone is like physically unpacking products and things need to be matched to a PAC slip and things like that, I always recommend clients like that actually have AP in house so that they can communicate with the team on the ground and get those physical PAC slips and understand like what should be paid and what shouldn't. Like I, I have no qualms about telling clients like this is actually something you should have in, in house. And have more control over it. so I would suggest something like Pluto or, or Bill. com. Pluto, I think, is way more affordable than Bill. com. a note on AP. You need to make sure the clients know your AP schedule. Make it clear you're not doing AP daily and will load bills weekly or bi weekly on Wednesday for payment on Friday. Like, if you want to help that client, but you don't want to do and AR on an ongoing basis, is to offer to set the process up for them. Like, tell them, okay, well, I can help you set this process up. We can create, SOPs, Standard Operating Procedures, little word document videos, whatever, and then you can hire someone in house to handle it. I've done that with clients too. I've said, like, okay, I'll help you develop, I will develop the PO and the AP process, but someone on, boots on the ground, needs to be the one managing it. So that's another option too, but make sure you charge for that. Don't do it for free. That's like controller level services, by the way. when you're developing internal processes for the client that are gonna have like checks and balances and approvals and things like that. Absolutely like valuable services there. Favorite place to post for finding team members? Ooh, , so I have gotten, I've had good luck on HireMyMom. com. I did a podcast with her recently. you do have to pay to post, but it's very affordable. It's like, I don't know, 35 bucks or something for a month. It's not bad at all. And then I've also posted on LinkedIn. I will caveat that, I follow the hiring process that Alyssa teaches in Breakthrough, and also, is inside of A book called Make Him Beg to Work for You, I think. I think that's the name of the book. So she outlines this whole process about like creating a job posting that's enticing. It's kind of like a sales page. And so even though I post on these other platforms, I always direct people back to my website to look at the actual job posting because there's instructions in there that they need to follow in order to ever even get on my radar. Like if you don't follow the instructions, like one of the biggest things is there's a secret subject line that they're supposed to email in their application. So even when I post a job on like LinkedIn or wherever else, if they just submit an application through that platform, I'm not going to look at it. I want them to follow the actual instructions of the job posting that requires them to email me. or my team directly with a certain subject line that's buried in the job posting like task list of like, these are the things that you'd be doing this job. One of the bullet points is like, this is your secret subject line so that I know they've, they have attention to detail. That's like one of the biggest important things working in an accounting firm is attention to detail. So if they don't take the time to thoroughly read a job description, I don't. have time to even interview them. So, it weeds people out. I will say like, especially if you've posted in like Indeed or anywhere like that and you get hundreds of applicants, it will still weed the heck out of people. Like, cause we posted on Indeed at 1. 2 and we did, we got hundreds of like these auto apply applicants and literally only five people followed the instructions and emailed. They're resumes. So, , it will feel a little bit scary. It's kind of like weeding out potential clients with a paid discovery call or a, an intake form. It does weed people out and you're not even going to know about it because they just don't have the energy or the, the care to fill out a form correctly or whatever. So it's like, which is, but it's in the, in the end, it's good because we don't want clients that aren't going to do that, the work, right? Same with employees. So, yeah, so that those two places I've had the best luck with the LinkedIn situation was, because was like, had a mutual connection and that person shared the job posting. And so it was like that sixth degree of separation situation where it was, then that person found me and applied and all that kind of stuff. So. that's why I say LinkedIn. I don't know if that's how it would always be., but we have two very rockstar employees. One of them came from LinkedIn and one of them came from HireMyMom. com. So, or just favorite way to find them even outside of posting. Hiring is kind of like marketing. Like you're, you've got to always be putting feelers out there. Like, and don't, don't discount the people that come to you out of the blue that are like, Hey, I've been watching you and I would love to work for you. Like those are, those are good too. Like if you get emails like that or direct messages like that, that's always, I have meetings with people frequently, well not frequently, but like every so often someone like that will reach out to me and if, it stands out. You know what I mean? If they did something to stand out, I'll hop on a call with them and be like, I'm not hiring right now, but I'd love to get to know you. And like, I obviously have this huge network of bookkeepers that sometimes need help. So, I've connected people that way as well. how do you match for company culture? So in that job description is where you'll find it's hefty. Like, it doesn't just go over the job, it goes over our company culture, and what we expect from people, and how, like, what our values are, basically. Like, we value independent, independent people. like self starters and problem solvers and and we put a lot of, we've, I put a lot of trust in the employees, but it's also like, I'm not, it's not like I'm not monitoring it. You know what I mean? So, I'll know if work isn't getting done. so yes, we do have a very flexible schedule. It's just a matter of like, just make sure the work gets done, like manage your time. And I also give like tools to my team to help manage their time too. Like we all use passion planners. We're all on board with that. and, we do track time even though I don't bill hourly, but that's mainly to just make sure that like we're profitable and we don't have capacity issues. Cause then when I start seeing, oh, this person's spending a lot of time on this client, I need to adjust the pricing, that kind of stuff. So. but yeah, in that job description is where I go over, like, our company values and, what's expected. Like, things like, we have a weekly team meeting, we expect you to be on it even though we have a flexible work schedule. So like, those types of things. how do you keep clients from messing with QuickBooks? Especially if they're doing the AR/AP. So I only have one client who actually goes in and touches their own QuickBooks. And that is actually my only QuickBooks client. And that's because they do their own invoicing in AR. And so they have someone on their team entering invoices and matching the payments from the bank feed to those invoices when they come in, but I handle everything else. They do their own bill pay too, but that's because it's just like paid from a credit card. and so then I just match things up when the charges come through. they are good at it. So if you have a client that is constantly like messing things up, I would offer them some training and say, Hey, kind of messing with my workflow. So let me show you how this is actually supposed to be done because I've had to like fix things every month or whatever. And I would just do a little loom video and say, save this. And before you touch anything next month. Please follow this process so that I'm not, like, cleaning things up. a lot of times, like, the clients that I work with, they don't want to be in their books. That's kind of why they hired us. So, I do have one client that will go in and look at things just to make sure, like, Things are categorized the way she wants them, but she still doesn't mess with them. She'll just tell us like, hey, this should be here instead of there. And so that's an expectation that you can set with your clients is like, I manage the books. I don't expect you to go in there, but I will show you how to run reports if that's something you want. Also Xero, you can limit people's access to only reporting if you want to. And that's typically what I end up doing with my business owners anyway, just in case. I don't know if QuickBooks has that feature and again, like, this is why I love Xero because it has more controls around things. There's different levels of user access that you can do that kind of stuff with. you can't delete transactions and there's just less room for problems in Xero because of all of those features. but yeah, I would just set the expectation with clients when you're in discovery even with them. Let them know, like, We prefer our clients stay out of the books because we end up having messes to clean up. but if you have to do your own invoicing, we'll make sure that you have a process to follow so that things stay clean. and that kind of stuff. So, yeah. That's the way that I would approach it if I worked with clients that were used to doing their own stuff. I even have clients that started out on DIY doing their own books and I trained them and then they got to the point where they're like, okay, I'm done doing this. Like, I don't have time. I'd rather just hand it over. And those clients, like, Don't go in there and touch things because they just, they relinquished responsibility because they wanted to. So those are my favorite. Maybe I should know this, but can you explain how we are not double taxed on income earned from business moved into personal accounts as owners draws? If you are an LLC, it's a flow through entity. So whether you take the money out or of the business to pay yourself or not, you're paying tax on the net income of your business. So, partnerships are the same, unless you have guaranteed payments and that's just a different ball game, but, it's a flow through entity. So think of it as You being one with the entity, whereas a C corporation is a separate entity, so the C corporation pays its own tax and then whatever you get paid from the C corporation would be on wages, so you're getting taxed there too. So that's where the double taxation comes in. S corporations are a mix of both. So, you have to be on salary, so you're paying Payroll tax through that avenue, but then you're also going to end up paying income tax on what's left in the business, and that's why it's so important to have a reasonable salary so that you don't end up, underpaying in taxes and getting flagged with the IRS. I hope I explained that okay. So yeah, with my LLC clients, I just let them know like, whether you take the money out of your business or not, you're gonna pay tax on it. So the best thing to do is to Save money off the top for taxes because you know you're going to owe them. Like, we're not going to get to the end of the year and not have money to pay your taxes. So that's one of the first things I do with all my clients is ask them, are you saving for quarterly taxes or income tax? And they're like, um, what? That's what we do is like, first things first, like we set up or have them set up a savings account to put their, tax savings in. And I, I always recommend clients take about 15 percent of their revenue and put it in a tax account. That usually ends up being too much. And so at the end of the year, they have extra leftover that they can invest in their retirement or put back in the business or whatever. and if they're an LLC, like a single member LLC, I recommend that that savings account actually be a personal savings account, not in the business, because, you're already going to be taxed on that income anyways. It's personal and you can get a high yield personal savings account with Amex and right now it's like at four and a half percent. So that's, those are the little nuggets that I give my clients and they love it. And they're like, wow, you've helped me so much. It doesn't seem like a lot for us, but it is a big deal to like, get to the end of the year and not have to like, worry about how you're going to pay your taxes. And, that peace of mind is really good for clients. So that's my recommendation on that. If you're a flow through entity, like an LLC or a partnership, whatever you're saving for taxes, put it in a personal account. That way it's also taken out of the business. If anything happens, That's why you have your separate LLC and whatnot. are you an S Corp, Sabrina? Sorry about that. I couldn't, my phone wouldn't respond to me trying to move my, get to speak. So, no, I'm not. I am just an LLC. And so that, I guess, is a question I have. Should I become an S Corp? Then it sounds like Well, it really depends on a few factors. I would do an analysis to see if it's at your income level, if it will save you money or not. So I personally, depending on who you talk to, I don't do taxes. I just know enough to get myself into a pickle with it. You know what I mean? Like, I know, it's like tech. I'm like, I know enough just to, enough to get in trouble, right? So, I would still, like, if that's you too, I would talk, I would have a CPA or a tax pro do an analysis for you based on your income of where you're at and if it makes sense to become an escort because The other piece of it too, there's a lot of tax pros that push S Corp status, but then they don't really explain to the client that now they have all these extra requirements, like annual board meeting minutes and, an accountable plan if you're going to be reimbursing yourself for home office expenses and things like that, because you lose different abilities and deductions when you become an S Corp, so then you have to do the accountable plan. So, like, all sorts of little things that add up, plus then now you're paying for a payroll software. Now you have to do a second tax return because it's a separate tax return from your personal return. All these fees also add up, so if you have an extra 5, 000 a year in fees, just to maintain your S Corp, the payroll, the extra tax return, all of that, it might negate the tax savings. And now you've just added a complication that you don't really want to mess around with. So that's my, that is my personal stance and why I'm not an S Corp, because I don't want to mess with the extra expenses and all of the things that come along with it at this point. It's not quite worth it for me. Okay, so, but I, but I am correct in saying that, so obviously we have income tax when, when we earn our money beyond our expenses. And then when we pull that over into our personal, anything that we use for personal, that again is taxed as income, like, right? Is that correct? No, you're only going to be taxed once on whatever the business makes, unless you have additional income, right? Like multiple businesses, then you have multiple businesses that are getting better. Coming together to tax you, but whether you, and it's correct that you're just taking owner's draws, you don't want to put yourself on a salary if you're not an S corp. so you're going to be taxed on that money, whether you take it out or not, but you're only going to be taxed once. That was okay. So then in our, in our personal book, so then, okay, I've taken the owner's draws. So now on the family book side, it's not income. How do I, how do I, Enter that so that it's not, I don't know. I mean, what do you call that? A transfer in, just call it a transfer? Or what do you call that? Are you talking like on a tax return? Or yeah, I'm talking about, you know, like at the end of the year when you pull your profit loss or whatever, and you have, okay, this is how much money we made. Obviously that's money coming in from your business. So, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, So then how do you, how is that, Your tax return, that's just going to be on your schedule C. You're not going to fill in anything on that wages line from your business income. Does that make sense? Okay. Okay. All right. It will, I can't remember what line it is. It might be like income from business or something. If there's any tax pros that just know off the top of your head what line it is on page one of your return, which it flows through to, but ultimately it's just going to be a Schedule C on your business, on your tax return that shows your gross business receipts, all your expenses, and then your net profit from the business, and then that carries over to your 1040, but it's not on the wages line because it's not a W 2 wage. Okay. All right. I just, yeah, I'm seeing, I, and I don't know enough about tags. Like I do bookkeeping and data entry and, and things like that. And I have been helping a CPA enter some things in, but it's not like, because I completely grasp it all. Right. If that makes sense. So, okay. Okay. It is like, yeah, I don't like taxes. So even though I am a CPA, I'm not a tax CPA. Right. I don't do taxes either. I do my own taxes and that's where I draw the line. Okay. And, and so maybe I'll ask, the CPA that I do some work for. I just hate to bother her because she's so busy. And sometimes I feel dumb when I ask her, even asking you because I feel dumb, I'm thinking maybe everybody knows this and I just don't. So it's not, I don't think it's something that it also doesn't, not all of it makes sense. Okay. Especially for accounting, because it's like for us, it's like everything has to balance, but then it's like. Tax is a little bit different. I don't know. It's a different, it's a totally different beast. So don't feel dumb at all. And there's other tax pros in our group too. So if you want to, post any questions or anything. Or because you're not in the Facebook group, are you? No. Okay. I was going to say post in the face. If you have another question, I can post a question in the Facebook group. Yeah, that'd be great. So then, then it could get some feedback there, but that was the one question I thought I thought, well, then are we going to, I thought I already paid, like, okay, so like the income tax. And then I pulled it into our family books. I thought, I'm going to be taxed on again. I thought, wait a minute. I don't know what I'm supposed to do here. Yeah. If you're not doing, I mean, I'm not thinking about it. Right. Are you keeping like family, like household books and like a Quicken type situation? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would not file your taxes based on those books. I would file them based on your business books, if that makes sense. And then just maybe call that like a transfer in. but like if you have multiple of income and you're trying to see where all your income is coming from for budgeting purposes, you can call it income. If that makes sense. Like I use, it used to be called, now I don't even remember it now it's Rocket something like a budgeting app. and, yeah. I categorize all the income that I pay myself as income for budgeting purposes so I can see like how much money I'm actually pulling out of the business to live off of. So I still call it income in that app, but I'm not filing my taxes based on that app. I'm filing my taxes based on my business bookkeeping. Does that make sense? Okay. Yes. And, but we, we actually do have to file on our family books because my husband is part of an LLC on the farm and we get the, and that income and income does come in from various, anyway, yeah, you've probably taken enough time with me, but that, so that is, we actually do have to do that. So flag your income from your bookkeeping business as maybe a transfer. Okay. Some way to delineate it so that it doesn't get, categorized as income again when you'd file the farm books. Does that make sense? Yes. Yes. Okay. All right. Thank you. You're welcome. Laura says, was that info to not have the profit first set up at Relay instead move the profit and taxes to personal savings if just an LLC? So the way that I have mine set up is I have a tax hold account in Relay that I have all my automatic Profit first transfers go into. And then about once a month, I'll take that whole balance and put it in my personal savings. So it sits in the business for like a few weeks. but that's how you can do that. Just create like a tax hold or a profit hold account that is in the business and then move it over to your personal Yeah, good info. I've been wondering if I was ready for an S Corp. Working with a CPA to go over after taxes are done, but I didn't consider those other factors. Yeah, those are definitely factors in my book, like, because time is money. Like, if I have to spend extra time on paperwork and then do another extra tax return, it's like, bleh. Do you typically interact directly with your client's tax pro or just with your client For most of my clients, just with my clients, and I just provide the stuff for the TaxPro, but we do provide our contact information at your end. We send all of our clients a tax package and there's a cover sheet of it where I list out all the important, like, what's in there, like, You'll find trial balance, balance sheet, income statement, gifts, expense, detail, charitable contributions, expense, detail, owner's draws, detail, all of the things that I know a tax pro would want to dig into for more information. And then I also put like how many 1099s were filed because that's a question on a tax return. if they have W 2s, I tell them. The W 2s are also enclosed and we put all of that in like a folder that we share with the client and they are supposed to then relay that over to their tax pro. But we also give our like contact information on that cover sheet if they have any questions they can contact us. Typically they don't because we've put everything in there that they need. And, for a couple clients, we have access to their TaxPros TaxDome portal. So I will upload all of that stuff myself, on behalf of the client. But for the most part, our clients handle it. yeah. Pack it with contact info is a great solution. Yeah, that way they have it if they need to contact you or have additional questions. And yeah, and then for the most part, like, I know occasionally you'll run into tax pros who are also as an accountant on your client's QuickBooks, and so they'll go in and pull reports. I am not really a fan of that, because, like, Unless they've communicated and you've let them know like, yes, the books are completely done. I've locked the period. It's good to go. That just introduces like, I don't know. So my preference is always to just like, export reports, but I can understand like, if that tax pro, has a program that is linked with QuickBooks that can pull everything in, then that kind of makes sense. You just want to make sure that the communication lines are solid on that to make sure that they understand when books are actually completely done. And then make sure you lock prior years, too. That's something that should be included in your year end workflow, if not monthly or quarterly, just to make sure that you're not posting things to prior year. on accident because it's really easy to do. And you could take it a step further too and like actually like PDF a final trial balance at the end of every year so that you know how you ended your year and then in the beginning of the new year you can compare. That's what we always did at the tax firm I worked in. We would look at The trial balance compared to like how it began last year, just to make sure that like nothing had changed because Generally, clients would like post things to prior years and then we'd have to make adjustments before we started the taxes. So it's always fun. All right, everyone, it's about time. alrighty, we will talk to you next month on the next live Q& A. See you guys soon!