Do you have a hate-hate relationship with Quickbooks? Yeah, not love hate, just hate. This is all too familiar with many small business owners who have to be involved in their own accounting needs. In today’s episode, Madison Brown of Madison Dearly joins us to share why small business owners should consider making the switch to Xero for all of their accounting and bookkeeping needs! Listen in as she shares the benefits, ease of use, and integrations available!
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Guest Bio:
Madison Dearly is an accounting team serving brand and website designers and female business owners in the online space with friendly, hands-on financial tracking and analysis. With a ton of experience in small business bookkeeping and taxes, Madison Dearly understands how confidence in your business’s financial health fuels the growth you deserve. (And it also supports the lifestyle you work so hard to afford!) In short, these gals are not your dad’s stodgy accountant, okay? For more information (and to make new friends), visit www.madisondearly.com.
Today’s episode is brought to you by my Love Your Leads private audio training! Are you providing an experience for your leads that sets an expectation on when they’ll hear from you, provides them with tools that will help them easily say yes and book you, while also making them feel seen and heard? In my private audio training, you’ll learn how to love your leads and get more booked clients through an automated booking process.
Here are the highlights…
00:41 – Why Madison Brown Hates QuickBooks
01:43 – Exploring Xero as an Alternative
02:45 – The Benefits of Xero for Small Business Owners
05:10 – Comparing Dubsado and HoneyBook
09:00 – Integrating Dubsado with Xero
13:52 – Choosing the Right Payment Processor
17:38 – Stripe and Xero: The Perfect Match
18:53 – The Importance of Consulting Your Bookkeeper
20:04 – Client Preferences and Software Transition
21:27 – Handling Historical Data in Xero
22:08 – CRM and Financial Software Integration
24:37 – Bookkeeper vs. CPA: Understanding the Difference
26:22 – The Value of Categorizing Expenses
32:43 – Switching Financial Software: QuickBooks to Xero
Mentioned in this Episode
Dubsado – Get 30% off your first payment (month or year) with code coliejames
HoneyBook – Get 50% off your first year
Connect with Madison
Website: madisondearly.com
Blog: madisondearly.com/blog
Instagram: instagram.com/madisondearly
YouTube: youtube.com/@madisondearlybookkeeping
Review the Transcript:
Colie: Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Business First Creatives Podcast. Today, I am chatting with Madison Brown. She is the CEO and owner of Madison Deerly, which is an awesome and amazing bookkeeping service for creative entrepreneurs like us. And today we are going to get into a really hot topic. So please get ready.
This conversation is going to be fire. I am just going to let it roll. Madison, welcome to the podcast.
Madison: Yay! Thank you. I was doing a little drum roll with my hands because it is like such a spicy topic. Well, not such a spicy, but it is a hot topic and I’m like super stoked to talk about it with you.
Colie: So before we actually get into the topic, I’m going to ask a lead up question. Madison, why do you hate QuickBooks so much?
Madison: Oh my gosh. Let me count the ways. Let me just roll out my scroll of like all of the reasons why I hate QuickBooks. QuickBooks was made for accountants. So it’s made by accountants for accountants. And even for me, like I am certified in QuickBooks. I used to have all of my clients in QuickBooks and I know QuickBooks backwards and forwards, but there are so many functionality issues.
It is so expensive for small business owners. We do not need to be paying close to a hundred dollars a month for accounting software. Their customer service is really terrible, not super helpful. Gosh, I could literally go on and on, but yeah, QuickBooks is. Not great, sadly.
Colie: And so guys, one of the reasons that we’re here to talk to Madison is because I have been a QuickBooks user ever since I started my business. On my bookkeepers, I’ve had them for five years. We do QuickBooks. But I am getting like a little bit of the squirrel. My eyes are beginning to divert because I heard Madison on Instagram talking about how amazing Xero is for small business owners.
And I was like, Hey girl, do you want to come on my podcast and talk about this? Because I literally know nothing. And that makes me like, it makes me very uncomfortable when I am so like, when I lack the knowledge to have a good conversation with someone about software. Cause I love software. And when you started to say, you know, no zero is better for small business owners in so many ways.
I’m like, okay, no, no, I don’t want to hear it now. Come talk to me about it on the podcast, because I feel like everybody else needs to know. I feel like QuickBooks is industry standard, whether you are a small business owner or you’re a corporation. And for us small business owners, I just feel like it’s a lack of knowledge and a lack of conversation going around as to what the alternative might be.
And in this case, it’s zero and why it is better suited for people like us. So here’s the question for today. Why is zero good for small business owners?
Madison: Alright, let’s get into it. Small business owners, first and foremost, don’t even want to do their bookkeeping. Like, I get it. You are a creative entrepreneur. You like to do photography. You like to do brand and web design. You have so many talents. You are the talent of your business. It is hard to, once a month, get in there, do your bookkeeping, make sure you’re doing it right.
Sometimes you’re like, ah, I don’t even really know, I’m not a numbers person. So it’s hard enough to get into the software. What I really, really love about Xero, this is the number one thing that is my favorite, is that it makes it simple for you. It is easy to understand language. The design is very simple and intuitive.
There’s not a million ways to do one different function. And it is. So clean and clear. Even my designers, when they’re hanging out in zero or like, this feels like a breath out because it’s just really, intentionally designed for people who want a shorter learning curve. When you are opening up QuickBooks for the first time, you’re like, where do I look?
What do I click? There is so much, there’s so many functions, which is great again for an accountant. Who knows how to use all of those functions, but for someone who just wants to get in and out as fast as possible and really shorten that learning curve so that they’re not spending hours trying to figure out just how to use the software, it is a very, very good software alternative.
And I will say too, because you touched on this for a second, you called QuickBooks the industry standard. And I really just think it’s the one that everybody knows. It’s on Superbowl commercials. It is just, everybody talks about it that everyone just kind of equates it with bookkeeping, but ever since I have found zero and I put one client on the very beginning, I said, I’m going to try this software.
I’m going to put one client on it. I was hooked immediately and moved. Every single one of my clients from QuickBooks to Xero, also because they really genuinely care about their bookkeepers, accountants. They care about the small business owners that are on their software. I, I think of it a lot like Dubsado too.
Dubsado is that small business. Yeah, we’re totally going to go there. Dubsado is that small business. Like you can, See the faces of the people who are like in it and created it. And that’s our baby. And they love it. Zero very much feels that way too, because they genuinely care about the users of their software.
Colie: Yes. And see, when you’re talking about Dubsado, I immediately started thinking about Dubsado and HoneyBook because at the end of the day, they both do the same thing. They help small business owners manage the administration of their client work and the back end of their business. But the way that they look.
The UI, the simplicity in setting it up is so different between those two pieces of software. And one, when you get in there can feel very overwhelming. It’s like, Oh, there are all these features. Like, where do I start? The other is rather simplistic because there aren’t 50 million things for you to do.
It’s kind of like this pathway you go. But I will also say that. Like when it comes to setting up your CRM, I am imagining that is a lot like setting up your accounting software. Some people have absolutely no desire to learn how to set it up. They just want to know how it works and make it go. Like they’re not interested in learning every single piece.
And so what I hear from you is that if you have someone who does want to truly DIY or do it themselves mostly and get help from a bookkeeper, zero is probably an easy easier entry into making sure that you are doing your bookkeeping on a monthly basis. Because I personally remember the stress. Now, Madison, I’m definitely not who you described.
I love numbers. I have degrees in math. I have more accounting coursework than anyone who isn’t actually an accountant. Like seriously, I love my numbers. But five years ago, I hired bookkeepers, not because I wasn’t capable of doing it because I realized, Oh, I could be making so much more money. With the time that it’s taking me to go through and do all these things.
Also, I was not keeping up. Like there were three blocked off days every April where I would literally lock myself in my office and basically do a year’s worth of bookkeeping in three nonstop days. And then my husband would just be like, okay, so what do we owe? Like after you’ve now taken care of your business that you’ve ignored for like 363 days, like what do we owe?
I mean, and I, I love. I originally started doing my bookkeeping on my own, and then eventually, like, I was doing it in QuickBooks. I started with self employed, which no one should have self employed. I got self employed. I didn’t know that it didn’t integrate with anything. So, I mean, I paid for a year. I spent like two solid weeks setting it up.
And that’s when I realized I couldn’t make my own categories. I couldn’t do all these things. So, I mean, then I kind of dug myself a hole and then I switched to, you know, quick start, simple start, but I feel like I’m getting in the weeds and I apologize. I just kind of wanted to put out there that I started on QuickBooks.
I know how powerful it is, but you’ve still got my eye twinkling over here with Xero because you are talking about how much easier it is for small business owners. Like me, even those who love the numbers. So let’s go slightly back, Madison. You said that you tried one client and then you moved everyone over.
How long ago was that?
Madison: That was in 2022. So as of this podcast, we’re recording in mid 2024. So that was two and a half years ago where I had one client for about six months before that. I put them on in like halfway in 2021. And then January, 2022, I was like, New year, new start for everyone. We are putting everyone in zero. And honestly, it didn’t matter for my clients.
They’re not hanging out in the accounting software anyways. So it really doesn’t matter for them what software that they’re in. But for us, it allows us to be more efficient, to get those reports back faster, to have timely information, to, for our business owners to be able to see their numbers on a monthly basis, to make really good, solid decisions for their business based off of.
really, reliable information.
Colie: So I want to, we kind of touched on Dubsado. I do want to specifically talk about the CRMs, mostly because those both integrate with QuickBooks. But in particular, Dubsado integrates with Xero. And I had someone ask me on a call a few weeks ago about the integration between Dubsado and Xero. And I was like, I’m going to be honest, I have absolutely no idea.
But I am interviewing Madison Brown in a few weeks. And after that, we can have a different kind of conversation. So tell me what you like about the integration between Dubsado and Xero. And does it work really well? Like are most of your clients using Dubsado as their CRM and you’ve got that integration connected or are your, bookkeeping clients using something else in order to make their sales and manage their clients?
Madison: Sure. I would say it’s about almost an even split, maybe 50, maybe even 60, 40, like a couple more on Dubsado than Honeybook. And I love the Dubsado and Xero integration. It is. Fine. It works fine. but what I will say that is even better because Dubsado uses Stripe and you can obviously process PayPal through there as well, but mainly Stripe is the payment processor for Dubsado.
Stripe and Xero are better. best friends. Like they work so well together. QuickBooks does not even have a Stripe integration. It is a sad, sad place. If you are someone, especially if you’re like a lot of online business owners, a lot of creative entrepreneurs use Stripe as their payment processor to not have that as an integration at all in QuickBooks exponentially increases the amount of time that you are spending on your bookkeeping.
It is so much more difficult and so much more manual and clunky to do your bookkeeping in QuickBooks if you’re using Stripe. So PayPal, Stripe work really well with Xero and both of those are integrated with Dubsado as well. The category is a really great in Dubsado too. So for a lot of our done for you clients that we’re working with, they are, selecting the categories so we can clearly see what type of revenue that’s for for the invoices that you’re sending.
And we can see that on our end as a bookkeeper. And then we add that to your financials, which is really fun. I could totally geek out over this because when we can see exactly how your brain thinks of your revenue streams on your profit and loss, it is such valuable information. We’re not just looking at everything dumped into sales.
We want to see how much are you making from. Family sessions, mini sessions, weddings, branding. If you’re a photographer, like you might have all of that broken out and it’s broken out because that’s how you’re sending the invoices in Dubsado. so that just becomes really dynamic information from Dubsado to Xero.
Colie: Now, I know you know this, Madison, but I’m going to say it for the listening audience. Listening audience, I do everything that Madison said. I have different categories inside of both of my brands in Dubsado. I have a brand for photography. Yes, I still have photography clients and I have a brand for my system setups, but no matter what category I put on an invoice, it all comes into QuickBooks as services.
So, no matter how well I have organized myself inside of Dubsado, that is an extra step. That we, and by we, I mean my bookkeepers, an extra step that they have to take in order to go in there and re categorize, like, let’s say that someone’s hired me for a Dubsado VIP day, they have to go and re categorize that as a Dubsado VIP day based on the title or the product name or the service name that came in, because the services category is just, Services.
I would love it if they could fix that. But it’s also again, why I’ve got my eye on zero, because I just feel like in this day and age, why is it that it can’t bring it in with the category that it originally had in the CRM to make everybody’s life easier? Like I just, I don’t understand Madison.
Madison: Yes. And with Stripe and Xero too, when you have that information in Stripe, that one can clearly pull straight to Xero. You don’t even need to use Dubsado at that point. So like I said, the Dubsado Xero integration is super easy. It’s fine. It’s good. It’s not bad by any means, but the Stripe one in Xero, when you are sending that invoice and you can clearly see Dubsado VIP day, you see it in your Xero as well.
You slap a rule on that thing and you just click, click, click, click, click. Every time you have a Dubsado VIP day, automatically the AI is really getting so wonderful in Xero. We haven’t even touched on that yet, but Xero has amazing AI that makes your bookkeeping just So much faster and easier because it’s constantly looking for transactions that you consistently have recurring month over month to make it just that much easier for you.
Colie: So let me ask you a question that I often get asked, and I think this is going to be interesting what your answer is. Sometimes, not often, but sometimes I get someone who is literally coming into Dubsado or really HoneyBook brand new, but HoneyBook is their own payment processor. That’s a different story for another day.
But in Dubsado, you have your choice between Stripe, which is now called Dubsado Payments, Through Stripe. You have Square and you have PayPal. Now people are like, Hey, Colie, like I’ve never processed payments. Like I just have people z Me. Which once I’ve stopped rolling my eyes, I try to give them a serious answer.
But if you have someone coming to you who doesn’t currently have a payment processor, I’m assuming that your love of Stripe is like, you know, coming across the screen, is that the payment processor that you would recommend if someone doesn’t have one yet?
Madison: Definitely. I think that Stripe is so simple and easy to use. Again, it goes back to if you’re a creative entrepreneur, you want to spend as little time as possible trying to figure out what the heck you’re even doing with this. So Stripe is super simple, easy to use, easy to learn. PayPal is, again, fine.
It’s good. I have heard some stories where people have had funds tied up in PayPal for too long, and they’ve only been able to get like a certain amount of payouts per day. So that’s not fun, especially if you’re someone who has a great launch, and you’re seeing, you know, multiple tens of thousands of dollars in your PayPal, and then all of a sudden you’re having to wait.
like weeks to be able to get that money. That’s just not fun for anyone. But PayPal is fine if you only have a couple transactions coming through it, month over month or year over year, whatever. Um, so yeah, I would say Stripe is the one that I would go with. Zelle is really just be careful with it.
It’s fine. It’s fine, but you have to do extra tracking. So if someone is paying you through Zelle and you are a 1099 contractor, you need to make sure that you are getting. a 1099 from that person and you need to know exactly how much they paid you. If you’re doing that in Xero, if you’re doing it in Dubsado or in Stripe or even PayPal, they’re processing that 1099 for you.
So you don’t have to keep track of it. You don’t have to have them keep track of it. It’s all getting processed within the system. And a 1099 is just something that needs to go on your taxes if you are not sure what that is. So it’s just an extra thing that you don’t have to take care of because it’s already being taken care of for you.
Colie: Yes. And I love the fact that that happens. And as someone who solely collects payments in Stripe for a lot of my services, it just really gets me when people contact me after they’ve hired me and they’re like, I paid you more than 600. I really need you to fill out this. Yeah. So that I can send you a 1099.
And I’m like, okay. You don’t need to send me a 1099. I mean, you’ve asked me for the information. I am going to fill out the form and send it to you. But particularly if you are paying someone to create this 1099, you are not required to 1099 me. You did not pay me in cash. You did not pay me via check. You paid me in a software that is already tracking the fact that the government knows that you paid me this money.
Like you don’t need to 1099 me. I’m just saying. And now we’ve said it on a podcast. So I think my question now is, if you recommend Stripe and someone is coming into Dubsado brand new, would you actually recommend that they turn on the Dubsado to Xero integration? Or are you a bookkeeper that prefers that they just connect their Stripe and their Xero, and they just leave Dubsado completely out of it, as long as they are using Stripe to collect payments inside of Dubsado solely.
Yes.
Madison: it’s neither here nor there for me. I think Dubsado, Stripe, and Xero is like the holy grail of software for a bookkeeper. Like, if I got on a discovery call with someone and they were like, I’m a Dubsado, I use Stripe, and I’m open to using Xero, I’m like, Yay, I love you.
Colie: You’re like, how quickly can we work
Madison: Wonderful.
Here’s the, here’s the dotted line. so yeah, I think that’s a great combination of softwares. I think it’s neither here nor there. You, I personally, for my own books, I have the Dubsado and Xero integration turned on. It’s nice to quickly have the contact information. It’s all in there. I can see invoices if I really need to.
But the really, the bare minimum that you need and the most important one really is Stripe and Xero and then Stripes through Dubsado anyway. So if you have that Dubsado one turned on, cool. If you don’t, totally fine.
Colie: Awesome. And one of the things that I do as a setup specialist is when someone, when we talk about integrations, I’m like, do you have a bookkeeper? And if they tell me, yes, I say, I would like for you to ask your bookkeeper if they want either of those integrations turned on before we do it. I was like, because I, I, I am happy to help you turn it on and get it connected, but really your bookkeeper is the one that’s into your account and you want to make sure that you are not setting up this integration that messes with all of the other things that they already have set up in your bookkeeping.
If it’s going to be a change. Now, if you’re starting from scratch, I mean, you know, it’s neither here nor there, like you said, but if you have already been. In the process of working with a bookkeeper, please, for the love of Jesus, do not turn on integrations related to your financial software without asking their permission, because you don’t want to get in a situation where you end up with hundreds, if not thousands of duplicated transactions, and then that is going to require a lot of cleanup for which your bookkeeper will be like, Oh, here is an extra bill for this month.
Madison: Yes. Say it again for the people in the back.
Colie: just saying, I mean, if I cause you extra work, it’s, it’s very bad. So when you moved your, your batch of clients, you ended up saying that none of them really cared about the software that you guys were in. Did you have any clients whatsoever that were like, yeah, I want to stick with QuickBooks. Like I’m comfortable.
I’m not really a big fan of switching softwares. I’m going to stick with what I know.
Madison: did have one or two. One that I can think of specifically. I can see her face in my mind when she told me. She was like, the QuickBooks has all of my old data in there. I want to be able to compare data year over year. To which I pushed back and said, if you pull those reports from QuickBooks, you will always have them and you can always look at zero and compare the two.
So your QuickBooks data versus your zero data. Also, if you only have. Two or three years worth of data in QuickBooks. That might seem a lot to you right now, but if you start Xero now and you have it over the lifespan of your business, you’re going to have so much data, 20 to 30 years worth of data in Xero that is that much more dynamic and that much more attainable and accessible.
Those two to three years from the very beginning of your business, you can pull those reports, archive them, always have them if you need them. But in the grand scheme of things, if we’re really zooming out, having zero and having those reports from now moving forward is super helpful.
Colie: Madison, is there any way to pull in all of that historical data into Xero?
Madison: There is, but it is a heavy lift and you’ve got to go through like the service desk and different other like zipping and unzipping and files and downloads and all of the things. We just never do that. We say, let’s just turn off QuickBooks. Let’s turn on Xero. If someone starts working with us midway through the year and they have QuickBooks for six months of the year and then Xero for the second half of the year, we’ll just give their CPA two reports.
So that’s usually how we, how we work with that, but yeah, there’s never really been a like, Oh, I really need to have a QuickBooks still or move everything over. It just doesn’t make sense.
Colie: Well, and one of the reasons that I’m asking you this is from a CRM perspective. It’s kind of amusing because one of the things that people are always like, well, no, I mean, I’ve had 17 hats, for example, for like seven years. Like, like, do you move all of that over for me? I say no, absolutely not. I was like, number one, if you really want it done, we can hire it out to a VA because you don’t want to pay my rates to have me going into every single one of your projects and pulling those files for you and doing those kinds of things.
And then I say, but you know, I’m going to be honest with you. Really, all you need in your new CRM going forward is any project that is currently in progress. We want to make sure that we bring those people over. And then I say, you know, if it really makes you comfortable, we can go back one more year from that.
But really, you are not going to need very much past that in terms of your taxes. I mean, because we’re going to pull the reports. Like, you’re going to have the income data. And honestly, every penny that someone’s paid you, Is already, inside of your Stripe account or wherever it is that you’re processing your payments.
So it’s really not as hard as you think. I was just legitimately curious because I, I’ve never gone from one financial software to another. I didn’t know if it was as easy as downloading some kind of CSV file and then uploading it and being like, TA
Madison: wish, I wish we’ve looked into it too. And my lead bookkeeper, she is a puzzle girl. Like she is like, how can I make this happen? How can I make this work? And even she is like, it is just too much of a heavy lift for not that much valuable information. Like how much do you really need that historical information to be in your new accounting software?
Not that much really just to compare year over year. Right. Cause you really don’t need that unless you’re filing your taxes, but you can still pull that from QuickBooks. Right. You can always still have it there. Also, random side note too, once you turn off QuickBooks, you can’t make any more changes in there, like once you cancel your subscription.
But you can see the information for 365 days after you cancel QuickBooks. So if you’re like, oh my gosh, I need to have my ducks in a row, I need to have zero set up, I need to, you know, have everything ready to go turn this on and turn this one off. Um, that’s not the case. You still have 365 days to grab all of your information, pull all of your historical reports, file your taxes, whatever you need to do, and then you have zero moving forward.
So just wanted to put that little nugget there too.
Colie: So you said something and I want to make sure that we talk about this because you and I had both discussed before we hit record that this is a common question that people have. Madison girl, what is the difference between hiring a bookkeeper and hiring a CPA?
Madison: Yes, I actually just got this question in the DMs this morning too. They were like, um, can you do this thing for me? And I’m like, well, I could, if I was like your in house accountant, but a bookkeeper is someone who is in your transactions. on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis. We do it monthly. We’re in your Xero on a monthly basis, and we are just categorizing your transactions.
What type of revenue was this? What categories of expenses were these? How much did you have left over after what you brought in and what you spent? Did you have anything left over? So we’re really kind of putting those reports together for you to see a clear picture of the health of your business. Now, what bookkeepers give to a CPA and what a CPA does is they take that picture of health and they say, how much do you owe to the government based off of the current IRS rules and regulations?
And how much can we get for you to spend? Save in taxes and for you to be saving cash wise for your taxes. So they’re looking at those pictures, kind of like a doctor would assess like a x ray and say, okay, what is our plan of action here? How much do you owe? How much do you need to save? Um, and then looking at other parts of your life too, because.
Taxes are, are holistic. They’re outside of business as well. So do you have a partner or do they have a W 2? Do they have a business? Do you have any dependents? All of those things are taken into consideration as well. So a CPA really is kind of on the tax side, looking at things more holistically. A bookkeeper is with you in your business on a regular monthly basis throughout the year to really stay on the nose of your numbers to make sure it’s getting done.
That you’re not waiting until April to get your books done each year. Yeah.
Colie: of funny. Um, you know, ever since I’ve had my bookkeeping done in QuickBooks, you know, not by me on a monthly basis. My husband also, he always kids around. He’s like, well, did you file the extension? I said, I did, but I literally only need like 2 hours in order to, you know, do these few extra things.
Like, sometimes. Like I said, a lot of people try to 1099 me, even though it’s not necessary, but then I have to wait to see who’s going to actually send me a 1099 versus not. Because the worst thing is when you file your taxes and then you get a 1099 late, or you didn’t realize that you got one in the first place, and you’re like, okay, Well, the government received this, this note that said, I received this money from this person and yes, I’ve already told them that I made this money, but I didn’t indicate that it was from this person.
And so, I mean, that’s a, that’s a real easy way to get audited guys. If you have 1099s that are floating and they don’t have any, they don’t know for a fact that you’ve already taken the money that you’ve made from the 1099 and put it into your total revenue that you, you know, gave them at the end of tax season or whatever.
So. I mean, that’s the number one, but also it’s just fantastic. And I love categorizing everything because like you said, it’s very interesting for you. Like, I used to have a category that was just like people like specialists that I hired inside my business, like marketing specialists, podcasts. And then all of a sudden I was like, no, you know what, even though it has nothing to do with my taxes, I really need to see how much I’m spending on the podcast every month.
So now we have a specific podcast category. And in that category, it has You know, partial VA work because she works on that. It also has all of my subscriptions for hosting the podcast and creating the video content and all of those kinds of things. And then my podcast manager. Now those could easily be in different categories, but I wanted them consolidated in a podcast category so that at the end of the year, I could be like, okay, the podcast cost me how much, and did I actually make any sales?
Like what were the benefits of running this podcast? So. I love that in general, you can have yourself or your bookkeepers create categories that really help you make decisions about your business based on the financial information that you have. And it doesn’t necessarily mean that you will send it in your taxes laid out in the same way.
Maybe you’re going to combine them in some other fashion for the government, but for you, you should be able to look at the report that your bookkeeper gets, or hey, And Happen at zero since it’s so easy to, you know, look around and get the information that you need to make sure that not only do you have a profit at the end of every month or every year, but that you know that you are spending your money wisely and that you are not super shocked by, Oh my gosh, did I really spend 20, 000 on education last year?
Maybe I should reel that in for this next year.
Madison: That’s like one of the number one categories for all my clients is education. Contractors, actually contractors is number one. Education is usually number two. Courses, of course, graveyard of which I am also very guilty, but I love that you said that too. And as you were talking, I was thinking that Sometimes just looking at those reports really does dictate how we spend our time, because you are saying, how much am I spending on this podcast?
Is it worth my time? As a business owner and as an entrepreneur, you’re someone who are You’re standing out and you’re saying, I want flexibility in this life. I want freedom in this life. I want to spend my time how I want to spend it. Not clocking into a nine to five unless I want to. But this is the decision that I’m making for myself.
So if you are spending too much money on something that’s not bringing you enough money, or if it’s not bringing you enough money yet, we can at least have that information and say, is there a way that I can cut down costs? Is there a way that I can do this myself, or on the flip side of the coin, is there a way that I can make more money from this specific expense?
And if you just don’t, simply don’t know those numbers, you can’t make those decisions, which in turn affects how you spend your time. And if you’re making the money to cover those expenses. Or, like me, last year, I outsourced literally everything and my PNL was like, I didn’t have as much, nearly as much profit as I wanted to, but I was going through trauma.
I was going through my stepdad getting stage four lung cancer. I was going through depression. I had so much going on in my life and my team handled everything brilliantly and beautifully. And for me, I needed to buy my time and that was so intentional. I could not heal properly until something was taken care of for me.
And I was looking at my profit and loss report. I knew exactly how much I was spending on my team, my staff bookkeepers, my lead bookkeeper, my virtual assistant, my OBM. I had everything in place to handle everything for me, and I knew exactly how much I was spending, and I knew that I was spending it intentionally for my mental health to be able to heal properly, come back stronger in 2024, and just be really intentional with the money that I’m spending.
Colie: Yes. And then you will be able to decide like, okay, at the end of the day, I spent this much money and you’ve already said for yourself, it was a really good decision. It was the only way that you could, you know, heal and survive the year. But then for the next year, it’s like, okay, well, now that I’m better.
Do I want to continue paying those people to outsource all these things and maybe I can do some other revenue generating activities for the business or is it that it really is better for me to stop outsourcing this and go back to doing this because it is what brings me joy, but like part of that is like a happiness scale and the other part is a money.
thing. And if you don’t have all of your ducks in a row, if you don’t have your profits and your expenses and your revenue, all of that generated in a way to where you can look at it, not only for a specific amount of time, but as we’ve already said a couple of times, comparing it to previous periods, you are not going to be able to make like a decision that is grounded in fact, that is grounded in the data that comes from your own business.
Madison: Amen. Yes. I love it.
Colie: I’m going to ask you one final question, I think. So when it comes to, cause you said that, you know, you tested it with the one client and then you just moved everyone over. If someone is thinking of moving over from zero to, or from QuickBooks to zero, I mean, or I guess we could talk about doing the reverse, but that’s not the point of this podcast episode.
How much time and effort does it require to switch from one financial software to another?
Madison: Honestly, not much at all. It’s really turning off the lights on one and turning on the lights on another one. It’s kind of like moving a house. Actually, now that I use that analogy of turning the lights on and off, you’re really just switching where you’re Lights, where your light bill is going to. What house are you going to be in?
So QuickBooks, you want to make sure you have everything categorized up to date, for up to the previous month. So right now we’re recording this on June 13th. If we, if you were saying, okay, today’s the day I want to, you know, switch over. You would want everything from January to the end of May, from the month previous, all of those months to be categorized in Reconciled.
Google what Reconciled means. You need to be Reconciling, or just DM me. I’ll explain it to you. For those five months. And then as of June 1st, you want to get into Xero. Hook it up. Once you hook up zero, you can tell it like when you want it to pull back to. So if I was, you know, on today, June 13th, getting in zero, you would say pull back to June 1st.
That way you have everything in QuickBooks from Jan 1 to May 31st, and then June 1st zero moving forward for the rest of the year. Uh, so it’s really not that difficult to do. You just need to make sure that you have QuickBooks, all buttoned up and done.
And then Xero, you turn it on. I also want to say too, that I do have a membership, a monthly membership where we will set up your Xero for you. We will catch everything up for you. If that’s what you want us to do. If you don’t even want to lift a finger for the setup and catch up, and then we will record a Loom video to show you exactly how to do your books.
Month over month in Xero that will make it the most efficient, the most quick for you to be able to do your bookkeeping on a monthly basis all by yourself, you can stay in if you want the accountability. We have monthly study hall calls where we all just get on into our bookkeeping. You can ask questions as needed.
We have a slack that is popping. We have social media. So many questions in our Slack. Um, my whole team of bookkeepers is in there too. So they’re constantly answering questions and helping out. And we also have unlimited one to one calls. I say unlimited, but like most people book one a week where you can come on with me or someone on my team and say, I have this problem.
Something looks broken. I’m not really sure if this is working correctly. If you want to have that private conversation and not in like one of the Group co working calls. You can have those one to one calls as well. So it’s at madisondeerly. com slash membership if you want to check it out. But if that’s something that floats your boat is doing your own bookkeeping.
I made this membership for you because you can do your bookkeeping, especially in Xero. It’s easier than you think. We will teach you how to do it. We will help you stay accountable to maintaining it and we will be there if you have any questions.
Colie: I mean, guys, she had that sales pitch ready, but that was actually the next thing I was going to ask her. And so I’m still going to ask, because you kind of didn’t answer the exact question that I was going to ask you. I was going to say, I was on your website and I noticed that you had a membership. What prompted you to create the membership?
Like, was it something that you were dreaming of for a while? Or is it that you were coming across a lot of creative entrepreneurs that were like, well, I really want to do my own bookkeeping because I feel like it’s a skill that I need But also, I need help.
Madison: Yes. I just felt like there was a random group of people that’s not quite like, I’m not ready to pay 600 a month for full, you know, done for you bookkeeping. Like that sounds nice. I’m just not quite there
Colie: Not there yet.
Madison: I also, I don’t have that many transactions. Like if I think if you’re a photographer and you have four weddings a month, like one each weekend.
And you’re getting maybe eight payments in that month. You know, you have everything broken up between two different payments or something like that. You also have payments from previous weddings or future weddings. So let’s just say you’re collecting eight payments for that month. And then you have a handful of software transactions.
You’ve got either your HoneyBook or your Dubsado, Flodesk, Canva, all of the other things. So it’s not really adding up to that many transactions and you’re thinking in your head. I could do this, I think. I just want to know that I’m doing it correctly. I want to be able to ask questions as necessary without feeling like I’m bugging some random stranger in her DMs on Instagram.
Um, so it really was created out of like, you can do this yourself. I promise that it’s easier than you think. Especially with zero and with the right integrations, the right automation, the right short learning curve, the right price point too. We haven’t even talked about that. Zero is 15 a month compared to QuickBooks, which is like 80 some dollars or something.
I haven’t looked at their pricing lately, but that is another thing for small business owners. Like we do not need to be spending, you know, hundreds of dollars on accounting software, but it really was, I created it out of this need that I saw for a handful of people that are. Totally okay with doing their own bookkeeping.
Just need a little bit of help, a little bit of direction, and, somewhere to ask questions to.
Colie: Yeah, I mean, I thought it was brilliant. I had no idea that you had a membership. And when I looked at it, I was like, Oh, we are definitely going to talk about this. I mean, So Madison’s already told you where you can find her and her membership. And I will just say, she’s very active on Instagram and she means it when she says, just send me a DM.
So you got a question. Send her a DM.
Madison: Please do.
Colie: Madison, thank you so much for joining me for this episode. It was really insightful. And I feel like now I have someone to send people to when they’re like, yeah, I, I, I use Xero and I’m like, I don’t know anything about that. Now I know a little something, something, not a lot, but I know how to, I know how to integrate it.
And I know that I should tell people that Stripe is the bomb with Xero together.
Madison: gosh. It super is.
Colie: All right, everyone. That’s it for this episode. See you next time.
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