A Good Bookkeeper Is Better Than Valium

I ran my own business for 12 years before I hired a bookkeeper. For the first seven years I was a lone freelancer and so didn't really need that much help with my accounting. I was bringing in enough graphic design work to keep me busy but not so much that I needed employees. On the occasion that I had too much work I'd just stay up for days and get the work done. I was single and had no children at the time.

In 1995 all that changed when my husband and I started doing web development. Initially there were so few people using the web that it really didn't make business sense to have a web presence. But then, together with a lifetime friend of my husband, we registered the Cigar.com domain name. At the time cigars were very trendy. Jim, the friend of my husband's, is a cigar aficionado. Together with Jim doing sales, myself doing graphic design and Barry doing web development we constructed many a web page for cigar retailers, wholesalers and manufactures. We charged for the development of their pages and we linked to these pages from Cigar.com. It was very effective in selling cigars for our clients. They suddenly reported calls to their 800 numbers from all over the world. They were very happy. Our business grew. We hired help. We got a real office. I did the accounting as well as a whole lot of other stuff and less and less graphic design.

Gradually, during the first week of every month, right around the time I did the bill paying, invoicing, payroll, collections and account balancing, I was in such a gut wrenching bad mood that I thought there was something physically wrong with me. My husband and I decided it must be severe PMS. I made a visit to my gynecologist. After a thorough exam she suggested I hire a bookkeeper. And no, she couldn't write me a prescription for Valium.

Finding a good bookkeeper wasn't easy. I had no problem finding, evaluating and hiring good graphic designers or web developers. But because bookkeeping seems like such a fun-sucking, dreadful duty to me I couldn't imagine there was anybody out there that wanted to do this job. The CPA I was using to do my yearly taxes was no help. He kept telling me that he was too expensive to do my books. Oh, thanks a lot. I asked around, I hoped, I visualized a competent, happy bookkeeper. I'm not suggesting you use my methods. But they worked. She showed up. Actually, she was the bookkeeper for two unrelated businesses that both told me about her on the same day. I called her up and she's been working with me ever since. Her rates of $60 an hour seem extremely reasonable considering the anguish she saves me. She recently started using netledger.com a web-based accounting service, which she loves. Through this service my accounting data will be stored on a remote server allowing her easier access. I'm guessing we won't see each other as much but our business relationship will be much more efficient.

In retrospect she would have been one of the first people I hired when our business started growing. My inclination was to find help with the work I enjoyed, leaving the work I didn't enjoy for myself - why is that? From now on I'm going to keep the stuff I enjoy doing for me. I'll hire help for things I don't like to do. That seems simple. It is hard to learn.

My bookkeeper is Julie Mayfield. She can be contacted at (512) 423-2908.