Saving with style: Fashion entrepreneur Sara Fernandez shares her experience with QuickBooks Money

At 23 years old, Sara Fernandez doesn’t just have confidence in her own unique look—she’s also a fully booked personal stylist and co-owner of Peach Tree Revival, a brick-and-mortar vintage fashion boutique in Miami, Florida. 

“Every day I learn something new. It all started with just being creative and fun,” she says, “But when money comes into the picture, you have to learn how to manage it all.” 

Her journey toward entrepreneurship began in 2019. Fernandez, who has always had an eye for beautiful garments, began selling clothes on her own and documenting her look on social media. “People were like, ‘Wow, I really like your style. All the pieces you have are amazing. Do you create personal styling bundles?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, I do now.’”

Realizing that she had an opportunity to combine passion with business, Fernandez decided to monetize her styling. “I thought, I’m really good at this, and I enjoy it, so I'm going to figure out a way to make this a whole business, rather than just spontaneously doing it when someone asks me. I started advertising my work, and that's how it all came to be.”

One of the people Fernandez never tired of styling was her friend Dani Klaric. And soon, their shared passion for fashion ignited a new idea. “Our closets were overflowing. We thought, ‘Why don't we open up a store and just share our love, where we grew up, about clothing?’” The pair launched Peach Tree Revival in March 2023 and haven’t looked back. 

From fashion to financials, Fernandez does it all

Like most stylists, Fernandez has her own unique look. “I'm very much about mixing funky patterns,” she says, showing off a black patterned jacket over a brightly patterned top. “You really can do anything with clothing.” 

For her clients, she offers a variety of styling options, from shopping for a single event to creating a whole new wardrobe. She even visits clients in person to curate new outfit combinations from their existing closets.

“It inspires me to study and get creative,” she says. “It's honestly the reason I do what I do. Some people think you're just putting an outfit together, but it's more than that. It's like, Where [is this client] from? What type of clothes do they like to wear?”

One of the biggest challenges for Fernandez is shopping for seasonal attire. “Where I live, there are no seasons. I live in Miami,” she says, laughing. By contrast, Fernandez’s clients live all around the world. “I think, ‘Okay, it's fall and they want [their clothes] a month from now. They don't live where I live. They need clothes that will keep them warm.” It’s a learning curve Fernandez embraces wholeheartedly.

Another challenge Fernanzes has learned to embrace is managing her business’s finances. “The stress I had before I [started using] QuickBooks was bizarre,” she says. “There are a lot of categories in my business. There's the traveling aspect, there's what I'm spending on food while traveling, what my clients want, and even, specifically, whether that’s pants or shirts.”

It might sound strange to those who’ve never used a personal stylist, but Fernandez says it’s common for her clients to break down their budgets by item. “It gets really specific, like, ‘Oh, I want 50% of my budget to be spent on shirts, and 50% on pants’ or ‘I want 75% of my budget to just be shirts, and the remaining amount to be for pants’,” she says. “All of that is categorized with QuickBooks, but before that, it was a never-ending mathematical equation.”

Naturally, solving those kinds of mathematical equations took time—time Fernandez didn’t have. “I was spending about two hours every single day managing my budget,” she explains. “I needed to know what I’d just spent and what I had left remaining, so at the end of the day, I was always going back to that budget sheet.” 

Now, Fernanzes uses Quickbooks. “With QuickBooks, it takes me probably about five minutes every day, maybe even less—that's just me double-checking. But I'm talking, like, three to five minutes.” That’s a major time-saver for an activity that once took Fernandez twenty-four times that amount. And it’s time Fernandez can put back into growing and developing her work.

When it comes to business, ‘QuickBooks Money is my best friend’

At Peach Tree Revival, Fernandez and her partner have a team of employees to help run the business. “I wanted the store to be functional even when I wasn’t around,” she says. “I travel a lot for work, so I made sure I had a good team while opening the store, and we started it together.”

By contrast, Styled by Sara is a solo-preneur venture. “It's just me with my styling business,” she explains. “I don't have an accountant. I don't have a bookkeeper. And that's where QuickBooks comes in handy.”

Like many entrepreneurs, Fernandez’s strengths lie in ingenuity and independence. “I'm someone who wants to do it all herself, but that's not realistic. You need help. Which is why QuickBooks Money is my best friend.”

From the start, Fernandez was wowed by how simple it was to get started. “It was honestly very easy. I made the account, I added all my cards, and I waited to get approved. I believe it took 24 hours,” she recalls. “The whole thing was very smooth. It's pretty crazy how smooth it is, considering everything you get in return.”

The first return she experienced? Increased transparency and organization. “With my styling business, I have money coming in, money coming out, and it gets so messy,” Fernandez explains. “Then I got QuickBooks Money. I’m able to see what's coming in, what's coming out, and I can categorize it all. My job is easier, creative-wise, because the finances are so well-organized with QuickBooks Money.”

For Fernandez, that organization has also led to a better understanding of her business’s cash flow over time. “I'm a numbers person, so I like to see how I did the last three months or how I did the last six months. [In QuickBooks Money], you can choose the increments of time to view how much money you've made or how much money has been going in and out. And that, for me, allows me to set goals. Like, ‘Well, I did this in three months, so six months from now, this is what I want to do.’”

Another benefit for Fernandez has been the ease of accepting payments. “I use it for all my invoicing,” she says. “I invoice people through QuickBooks Money, and I get notified when they pay me.” Payments are deposited directly into Fernandez’s business account and made available same-day, regardless of weekends or holidays. 

On top of that, Fernandez says she loves that her clients now have more options than ever for submitting payment. “They get to choose how they want to pay me, which solves a big problem that I had before QuickBooks Money. [Back then], it was harder for me to accept payments, because it had to be actual cash, rather than with a credit card.”

With QuickBooks Money, Fernandez’s clients can submit payments using PayPal, Apple Pay, Venmo, debit cards, credit cards, and more. “QuickBooks Money broadened my clientele because it allows me to accept payments through credit card, rather than just actual cash,” says Fernandez. In this way, she’s better able to serve the personal payment preferences of each individual she works with, including overseas clients. 

But accepting digital payments isn’t just a plus for Fernandez’s clients or her own organization—it also makes taxes a breeze. “Before QuickBooks Money, I was calculating it all myself, so I'd have to go in and actually do the math. If I messed up, the only one who would pay for that was me,” she says. “QuickBooks is like my partner. Where I have Dani with Peach Tree, I have QuickBooks with my styling. It always has my back, and it's doing the math for me, which is wonderful.”

For Fernandez, the future is bold and bright

When Fernandez looks back on the work she’s done as both a stylist and a small business owner, she says she’s most proud of the confidence she’s given people, simply by introducing them to beautiful clothes. 

“People thank me, even months after I've created their whole wardrobe, and it's just such a fulfilling feeling to know that I was able to help someone wake up every day and be happier to go and dress themselves, because they love absolutely everything in their closet.” 

But Fernandez isn’t content with looking back. As a young entrepreneur, she has many ideas for what the future might hold and how she can grow both her businesses. 

“I'm excited to have a [styling] team, so that I can impact an even larger amount of people,” she says. “And as for Peach Tree, I really, really am excited to make it even bigger and open more stores and maybe even categorize the stores differently.” Peach Tree, remember, is a secondhand vintage boutique. “My next goal is to focus on rental stylings in LA,” she says. “I'm dying for a store in LA and, honestly, in all the big cities. The one after that would probably be New York, then Austin. It's never too big of a dream. I want it all.”

Like the fashion she loves, Fernandez’s future is bold and bright. “It's never-ending, the ideas I come up with,” she says. “I'm just excited to execute them.”



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