My name is Neil Crawford I am the owner of my own company called Lynwood Bookkeepers providing bookkeeping to small and medium sized companies where there is no need for a full time accounts dept. I can work at their premises or at my own home leaving the client to get on with running the rest of their business. 4 hours a week or a month in some cases is enough to keep the paperwork in some sort of order. I can keep Vat figures up to date and make reports on creditors and customers balances that are due or overdue. A lot of clients see bookkeeping as a chore , it has to be done by all companies in one form or another but it seems to be a job that gets put off till the last minute. I do appreciate it is not the most exciting way to spend your evenings and weekends but do you really want to wait till the end of the year to find out if your business is making a profit. This is a brief description of how some of my clients have benefited from using a bookkeeper. Case No1 I had an arrangement with a client whereby I visited him on a monthly basis, all was going well. All files were organised, up to date separate folders for Suppliers and Customers. Set him up a petty cash system on a spreadsheet that told him when the balance needed topping up. One month I get a phone call to say he thinks that every 3 months would be enough to keep up to date which seemed ok. When I next visited I was greeted by a young girl who had apparently been keeping my system going in my absence. She only had basic secretarial experience and told him she had dealt with accounts at her previous job. This was basically not true. The first thing that stood out was that cheque amounts had been entered into the accounts without saying who they were for, direct debits had not been entered at all which resulted in a big difference between his accounts and bank statements. The indexing system I had set up had not been kept up to. The outcome to his so called cost saving exercise was that I had to take nearly a week getting it back as it was when I left. It goes without saying that the new secretary is now causing havoc in somebody else’s office. I think the morale to this story is if it isn’t broke don’t fix it!! ………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. Case No2 A relatively new client of mine has set up a business in January this year whereby he has an interior decorating consultancy that bids for large contracts with local councils and hotel chains. Then sub contracts the work out. He ended up with so much work that he reached the VAT threshold after only 10 weeks and had to register with the Vat Man. This presented him with a problem. He was leaving the house at 7 and getting back at 8 five days a week. His wife was at home answering the phone and relaying messages and looking after a 2 year old. I was asked if I could help him out. I took away the paperwork away in 3 cardboard boxes, created the accounts from scratch on a spreadsheet filed everything in some labelled folders and gave him a back up disc for his pc and worked out his Vat in time for his first return. Now because I saved him the bother of doing the job himself I have been recommended for doing the books for 3 of his subcontractors. Hurray for the power of word of mouth advertising. ……………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… Case No 3 My final success story is of a property developer who used to employ his sister in law to do his books on a weekend. Not quite sure what qualifications she had if any but 10 months into the accounts disaster struck. A virus attacked the computer she was using and all data was destroyed. There was no back up of any kind. I took on the job at the request of another one of my clients and after a whole weeks work I got the accounts up and running again, as a present I even bought him a back up usb pen on a necktie, this alone got a reaction something like him winning the lottery, a basic requirement I think you will all agree. I now update this on a monthly basis. Morale BACK UP BACK UP BACK UP. …………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………… If these stories have reminded you of anybody you know please let me have a chat with them. Also if you or your contacts can think of something they would rather be doing than paperwork, let me make their dreams come true. Any questions??
Posted on: Wed, 20 Nov 2013 20:05:52 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015