CAS Clarity in 5 with Kellie Parks on Eliminating the Overwhelm in Your Accounting Firm
Kelly, welcome to the, CAS Clarity in five. Thanks for, taking time to join us, where we dive in quickly to learn more about what you have going on in your firm. First, if you could just give us a quick overview of your firm, team size, services, and revenue range if you care to share.
Luke Templin:Yeah, and thanks for having me on, Luke. Always great to see you. So, I have a small, we could call it boutique if we want to be fun or bespoke bookkeeping firm, so it's myself with two part timers, one admin and one bookkeeper. I am under the $200,000 annual range, but I am growing that again. I'm getting out of some of the periphery stuff that I do like educating or firm consulting, and especially at partner consulting really to build back up the bookkeeping business.
Luke Templin:And our specialty is we do the internal books for accounting firms, so their QBO files, so that they either have more control of their internal controls, or their books are kept up in real time. We also do cleanups of their client files, but we don't take on accounting firms monthly recurring work, just the internal books and the cleanups. No inventory, I suck at it, and no payroll, because payroll is a lifestyle killer and my firm is all about lifestyle.
Kellie Parks:Yeah, payroll and bill pay are definitely lifestyle killer.
Luke Templin:Well, know what? I love bill pay. Some of the bill pay tech, I can schedule it out ahead. Doesn't If get in my you set up real tight processes with the vendors themselves, you got to go downstream. Once you have that rolling, that has actually been good and profitable and not a lifestyle killer.
Luke Templin:AR probably is though. Because that's gotta be done in the moment. Right?
Kellie Parks:Yeah. Yeah. Well, awesome. Before we dive into the five questions since this series is powered by Fendaily, a tool that's designed automate financial digest of your numbers. How often do you check your firm's numbers?
Luke Templin:Every single weekday morning. You know how much I love FinDaily. I And appreciate so we have we have a number of businesses and we also have our personal books on QBO general ledger. So I have all of our business stuff coming in for our various entities, personal stuff and my wise account. I have a US wise business account is not can't connect to a Canadian QBO file, so I have that on FinDaily coming in through Plaid.
Luke Templin:So I could go on and on about FinDaily. I love having that drop into my inbox. It comes in every morning at night.
Kellie Parks:Awesome. Awesome. Me as well.
Luke Templin:And it's also because I'm competitive with myself, it's also year to date income and month income and how far ahead of I am of last month and last year.
Kellie Parks:I do the same with my firm and with my clients, definitely as a little motivator. Alright, let's get into the five questions. So kind of to set the stage, what's the overarching goal or mission that's driving your firm?
Luke Templin:Well, right now it is that we, we, we take away the overwhelm of running an accounting firm for accounting firm owners. That's that's what we really want to do. We want them
Kellie Parks:Eliminate to have the, cobbler's kid problem.
Luke Templin:Exactly. Thank you. Yes.
Kellie Parks:What's your favorite tech tool that saves you the most time? Either something internal, external?
Luke Templin:So I'm going to go with two and they relate to the, just the accounting. So financial sense for running our firm 100% and right tool for using QBO.
Kellie Parks:Big
Luke Templin:fan If you of took away my right tool, I would not be happy with QBO.
Kellie Parks:They're trying to. So what's your favorite KPI and why?
Luke Templin:So my favorite key. I know I love that I have a favorite KPI. This one was super easy is that we have less than five year end adjusting journal entries, whether it's for accounting firms and they better not be things that we know about. They're going to be corporate tax burden is always going to be one. I don't do the corporate tax burden, so they're but they better less than five, and this is a tough one, and really important to us because we clean up hot mess files.
Luke Templin:So we love those hot mess files, but you know, sometimes they can be a challenge to get to the five.
Kellie Parks:Yeah. Alright, when you're stuck on either a client decision, growth challenge, or just having a rough day, how do you get unstuck?
Luke Templin:I walk away or I call a friend. I have a couple of chats with friends or I will actually just walk away going outside solves almost everything for me. But I have to finish things. I'm a completer. So I'll come back to it.
Luke Templin:I'll finish it no matter what. But sometimes you just can't keep going in that moment. You're an outside guy. I'm guessing your answer is also go outside, right?
Kellie Parks:Nature heals for sure. Definitely. Yeah. Then I'm a firm believer in iron sharpens iron. Talking to others definitely helps.
Kellie Parks:What's one thing you wish you did in your firm sooner?
Luke Templin:Can I tell you a few things that I'm glad I did though? Can we put a positive spin on?
Kellie Parks:Yeah, that'd be awesome.
Luke Templin:Okay, so I will say I'm going to say right out of the gate. I already had a marketing business going when I started my bookkeeping firm. So I had income coming in and I realized some people don't. So that allowed me to only take on great fit clients. I didn't have to take on everybody from the beginning.
Luke Templin:I got a mentor. I joined an association and I started to go to live events where I got to build a community and I got to know my tech partners. Industry relationships are everything. I adopted cloud technology early, even though it was ugly, and I had that mindset because in the marketing world we already were way ahead of accounting on cloud technology. And then I build with fixed fee.
Luke Templin:You could call it value pricing, but it was the value to me, to the client. And so fixed fee was great. I've never carried AR. And that's been great. And then fixed fee.
Luke Templin:The scary part is what if there's more work? Well, and it can be hard to scope it, so I actually have menu pricing for extra things, and I'll do hourly work for out of scope too. I think we're all a little afraid of like, okay, can't figure this out, here's my hourly rate, I'm just going to add that on too. But I have menu items, that really helps, they know going in.
Kellie Parks:That's awesome, yeah, fixed fee is a big one for me, it saves a lot of pain.
Luke Templin:Yeah, it just goes out the door and it comes in the bank.
Kellie Parks:Mhmm, so this is your space to either share an additional tip, a story, some other experience or something you're working on that you want to share with the audience.
Luke Templin:Yeah, I'm gonna come back to community. You know how much it means to me, but this is such a great example of, so I had a file, a Canadian file that has a US entity come in to me from friends because I built up this community. It came in and it's a super interesting cleanup because it's got research tax credits and class tracking and all the in the weeds fun stuff that I love. The client is awesome and I'm enjoying that project right now and it's going to turn into monthly recurring revenue. It's not an accounting firm.
Luke Templin:I will take on professional services or SaaS companies in a desk in addition to accounting firms. And I think it just, again, it shows the power of community. So I know this isn't really about like what I'm doing, but I really wanted to come back to that part. It's it's it's been a game changer for me.
Kellie Parks:Yeah. Community is huge. It's it definitely helps you get places quicker. Speaking of communities, I know you have one. Who's a good fit for your community?
Luke Templin:Yeah. So anybody who loves cloud technology and processes and workflows, either they're struggling with it, or they just straight up love it and want to have geeky conversations, and it's a free Facebook group, so it's called the Workflow Watering Hole. And the app partners are in there, but no selling or anything. Some of our app partners are accountants and bookkeepers like us. They're joining in the conversation as well, but may have a different spin on it being in the SaaS world.
Kellie Parks:We'll, link that in the notes. Kelly, what's the best place for people if they want to connect or follow you
Luke Templin:to Kelly: It's easycalmwaters.ca Otherwise I'm really feeling LinkedIn these days.
Kellie Parks:You? Yeah. LinkedIn's a good one.
Luke Templin:Yeah. My Twitter, my ex feed, whatever you want call it is a hot mess it does not make me happy at all. Some days it's just like, what is going on in here? I miss my Twitter friends, tax miss Twitter
Kellie Parks:Twitter. I mean, I still use it, but it's just not as good as what it, what it used to be, unfortunately.
Luke Templin:Right. LinkedIn, I, I am finding has become really engaging.
Kellie Parks:Well, awesome Kelly. Thanks for joining and, sharing with us today.
Luke Templin:Well, thanks for having me on, Luke. Yeah. I look forward to seeing you. I guess I'm gonna see you at Intuit Connect in
Kellie Parks:Las We'll see you there.
Luke Templin:Yeah. For sure.
Kellie Parks:Awesome.
