Talk about your business

Steve - Thank you so much for the kind words.  I am happy to hear they are helpful to you since that is my goal, to help people, whether they are my clients, colleagues, family, friends or strangers for that matter. The ultimate goal we share, of helping new/small business owners with their accounting is important and can help so many people establish a secure financial future for their business to support their families.

As mentioned my work is a little bit different than most folks here where I believe the majority here are QB bookkeepers, accountants and/or business owners. Many have spent alot more time working on QB than I have for sure and I am clearly not here to compete or to try to steal clients or market share from anyone as I have more than plenty prospective clients contact me regularly and I refer 2 out of 3 to other consultants.

The clients I work with are all in my specific niche of Govt contractors who have a set of legal regulations to comply with in this industry and if they fail to meet those, they could be put out of business in a heartbeat. The bad part is many do not realize that until it happens or they choose to ignore the advice from others or think it does not apply to them so they are caught totally off-guard and end up in deep debt or even worse.

So when I come here I look for Govt contractors who might be on a bad path unknowingly so need help because I know with just a little knowledge they can increase their odds of survival and success so easily. Many have been totally misguided by CPA's or bookkeepers who may have good intentions but are also totally unfamiliar with the requirements for Govt contractors and can actually make things worse for them.

I can share dozens of stories of how this happens more often than not, since many of my clients are those companies who are in big trouble with DCAA audits and are trying to claw their way out to save their biz after taking a wrong turn and learning the hard way and then having to pay big bucks to get things right. Yes I make alot of money on "rescues," but I would rather help them avoid that bad path in the first place.

So in a general sense, the work I do is same as everyone else here, which is to help new business owners on their accounting/bookkeeping.  I train many business owners, accountants and bookkeepers on this so the majority of my clients are not ongoing, since I train them to be independent vs. ongoing work for me. This part is the opposite of most folks here who are seeking ongoing work from the clients they get here.

I have worked with over 70 Govt contractors and have about a dozen ongoing clients where I work as their CFO, Controller or Accountant and for many I just do periodic reviews, like monthly, quarterly, etc. until we are confident they do not need my help anymore and then they just contact me as needed on new events. My assistant does ongoing bookkeeeping for a few of them when that is their preference so I oversee that.

The majority of my clients I have "trained and released" as I jokingly call it, which is not the best business model in most people's eyes since I am training my clients to not need me as soon as possible, but that is also why they like me and refer me since I am not trying to get as much money as I can from them, which is the bad reputation of consultants in general.  I offer my assistance at whatever level of help they may need. 

Why am I here if I am busy with so many clients?  First, because every day they need less and less help but mostly because I stopped taking new clients several months ago to give me time to assist my mother with move to new state after her significant other passed away, so think I have not added many clients this year. We have now purchased new home so just need to sell old home and should be back on track by year end.

I actually came here to find answer to my own QB question since I use QBO for my own business, switched from QBDT, but still not sure I like it enough to stay yet.  My bookkeeper does my company accounting and I think her vote is still to return to QBDT even after 7 months on QBO.  Does anyone know if or when Intuit plans to pull the plug on QBDT and force us onto QBO, hopefully after they fix a few more of the bugs??