As a bookkeeper, one of your primary responsibilities is to maintain accurate financial records for your clients. However, even the most meticulous bookkeepers can make mistakes, and these errors can have serious consequences if left undetected. Fortunately, there are several strategies you can employ to spot bookkeeping errors before your clients do, ensuring that their financial records remain accurate and up-to-date.
Here is the success story on how an accounting partner, his new bookkeeper and an app did just this:
You wrapped up the last quarter. You sit back in your chair. Later today you will head into a meeting with your top client. You sit there, scrolling through their numbers, satisfied you finally completed all the data entry from the files they finally sent over earlier this week.
Always the eleventh hour, but you’ve seen this client turn their business around in the last 3 years, double their profits and they’re willing to pay your rate for the last minute crunch they like to put you in.
A little pressed for time, you had the new bookkeeper, Kirk, help you with inputting the outstanding expenses. He came well recommended but still jumps a bit whenever anyone says his name out loud. Kirk wrapped up these files yesterday and let you know at the end of the day; you also worked through a good bundle.
Wait. What is this? You open the income statement, puzzled to see numbers scattered amongst the accounts, month over month, it’s as though they were ‘pushed through with little time’ - well, that’s about right. They were!
After the panic subsides, you quickly pull yourself together, you glance at the clock. 9am. The client is coming at 3:30pm. You have 6.5 hours to produce some semblance of financial results. But where do you start? Looking closer, maybe it’s not that bad.
You refill your coffee. Start there, you’re going to need it.
You’re just about to call over to Kirk, hoping to not startle him, but he shows up at your office door, laptop in hand.
A slight stammer. ‘Sir, if I may…’ he starts off. You’re usually jovial and calm with your staff, you realize he’s still settling in. ‘Kirk! Come on in’ you gesture him into your office. ‘We have a bit of work to do!’ - Kirk comes in, settles in across from you and pops open his laptop.
He begins, with a lot more confidence ‘I was on Instagram a couple months ago and had started following this tech company ‘Level Software Inc'. They recently introduced this cool app called the ‘Level Copilot’ it provides bookkeepers with notifications on the errors and other idiosyncrasies they may have made the day before. They were offering a trial, so I checked with the other accounting manager two weeks ago and signed us up’ - he continues ‘I’ve been monitoring what we posted for the client earlier this week and I went in and fixed up everything until yesterday.'
You realize you’re holding your breath and exhale. ‘This is great, I noted that the expenses seem to be a little over, I’m hoping we grabbed the job costs accurately’ you say with a bit of a smile. Ok, this is good, we only need to fix one day.
Your new bookkeeper turns the laptop around. ‘If you start here you can see the notifications begin here and there is a description of how to fix these and what triggered them’.
NO. All these errors have your name ‘Created or Modified by: Leonard Leopold’, bold, right above the alerts. You let out a slow breath.
Yesterday was a bit of a blur. You haven’t been on the books in years, you hopped in as this file was last minute and obviously your bookkeeping skills are rusty, to say the least.
‘I had some as well’ Kirk begins, back to his nervous self ‘they’re right here’ as he continues to scroll down.
You take a swig of coffee, ‘alright Kirk, what do you reckon we split these and you start at the top and I will hit the bottom’ you begin, ‘we should be able to get these done by lunch.’
That's where the Level Copilot comes in – this handy little assistant can guide you through the complexities of bookkeeping, notifying you when something seems a bit ‘off’ such as capturing an expense in the wrong account. Setting up a new vendor. Missing your customer or location if you track costs to that level of detail. With the Copilot by your side, you can focus on growing your business while knowing that your financial records are in tip-top shape. It's like having your own personal accounting superhero!
But what happened with Kirk and Leonard, did they get it done in time?
…the client rescheduled for next week.
Try it out today with the Level 30-day free trial (no credit card needed to sign up 😉) CLICK HERE FOR MORE