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#everymonthisaGSTmonth

Bookkeepers in New Zealand often find that their workload has pesky peaks and troughs that correspond to our 2-monthly GST cycles.

This often results in a more stressful workload every second month, not to mention the negative effect that it has on cashflow.

This is also sometimes compounded with "those" clients who are notoriously difficult about getting information to you in a timely manner, resulting in last minute filing (more about managing client expectations in...

Hi there,

How are you coping?

It's been a mixed bag for bookkeepers, these past few months, right?

On one hand, as bookkeepers we've all been doing a wonderful job of supporting clients through Covid, many of us busier than ever with extra work bringing in increased revenue - which is gratefully received! We feel lucky to be in that situation in these times. 

On the other hand, some of us have lost clients, consequently leaving a financial hole. That's a hard pill to swallow....

I wrote in last week’s blog about how I tend to live my life in the space between “fake it ‘til you make it” and “don’t make a dick of yourself.” 

The gap between those two points is most definitely outside the comfort zone but that is where growth and learning occur.

It's saying yes to something before feeling completely ready and then having the fear of making a dick of yourself propel you to be ultra-prepared, to learn or practice or...

Last week, after inviting bookkeepers in my free Facebook group The Business of Bookkeeping to share their bookkeeping origin story, I talked about my own bookkeeping journey; from starting a bookkeeping business from scratch, to building it up and selling it 8 years later in order to move into business coaching. 

I promised at the end to share my thoughts on what it takes to build a successful bookkeeping business; on what I consider to be integral to the growth,...

I had huge resistance to starting my bookkeeping business back in 2007. I thought anyone could do bookkeeping, and did, from their dining room table, for low pay.

Our landlord was an accountant and I remember her saying that people were paying others to reconcile their bank accounts. I looked at her dumbfounded. Like, why?? It’s so easy to do. Why would you pay someone to do that?

I sold Tupperware when my kids were little, and I remembered meeting a bookkeeper at one of the Tupperware...

Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, all the times I talk about sales only to be met with a shudder and a look of horror. I’m not sure how and when the idea of sales people as disingenuous and pushy became so firmly entrenched, but if you find yourself feeling that you need to coerce or push a potential client into working with you then, either, you are doing sales very wrong, or they are not your target market.

I spent a good part of my earlier career in sales roles with limited training but with some...

I want to share with you an idea of mine that my clients have found quite useful to manage cashflow over the holiday period, and that is the Annual Leave account.

In New Zealand the end of year summer holidays can often be tricky because you may not be earning as much, and yet you still need to get paid, you still need to pay your staff, and you still need to pay your bills.

The simple solution is to set up a new bank account, I simply call it Annual Leave, and transfer regular weekly or...

There has been a lot of conversation in bookkeeping circles this year about niching, many advocating that it's the undisputed path to take. The result is that I'm having conversations with bookkeepers, both new and experienced, and they're talking like it's a given that everyone should niche. Cos, you know, everyone's saying that they should.

Well I'm not saying that you should. But you could.

There are certainly some gains to be had from niching. You leverage the business knowledge in that...

Last week one of my clients asked me a really good question about sales conversations, and just like I did with another client's question a week or so ago, I turned my answer into a blog and sent it to my email list. 

Blogging is great for marketing for lots of reasons - keywords and SEO, repurposing content into social posts, something to email your clients etc.. But if you're new to writing, or if you don't consider yourself much of a wordsmith, then you probably find that you don't...