June 23, 2025 • 36 mins
Dr. Amanda Thompson shares her experience with the monthly accounting membership program and how it has transformed her business finance management from chaotic Excel spreadsheets to organized QuickBooks mastery.
• Starting a business without business education background creates financial management challenges
• Excel spreadsheets work initially but become problematic as businesses grow
• Computer crashes can destroy financial records when not properly backed up
• QuickBooks provides powerful tools but requires guidance to use effectively
• Monthly accounting meetings create accountability for regular bookkeeping
• Regular reconciliation prevents year-end accounting nightmares
• Professional help managing issues like bank fraud can prevent accounting disasters
• Clean books throughout the year make tax season significantly less stressful
• Monthly accounting program often saves businesses more money than it costs
• Confidence in financial management allows business owners to focus on their expertise
• Tax projections help business owners prepare properly for quarterly estimated payments
• Type A business owners benefit from structured financial management systems
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
he's able to see what I need to do before the end of
the year or quarterly, and I canchange what I'm talking about
each time I'm making anappointment.
It doesn't have to be about thesame thing.
If we complete it, okay, let'smove on to the next one.
So I have a list.
Sometimes we hit it really fast, sometimes we take a little bit
longer, and it's definitelylike setting a sign time for me
to stay on top of the basics butthen being able to hit all the
(00:24):
other things that I actuallydidn't realize I needed help
with.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to what your CPA Wants you To Know.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Tax and accounting help can be expensive, so we've
created this podcast to helpguide you through it all and
make you feel like you have aCPA in your back pocket.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm Carson Sands.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And I'm Taryn Sands.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'm a CPA with over 10 years of experience helping
people start and grow theirbusinesses.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
And I'm an MBA with a specialization in marketing and
entrepreneurship.
Taxes suck and we want to makesure you don't pay more than
your fair share.
Taxes suck and we want to makesure you don't pay more than
your fair share.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
We're here to share everything your CPA wants you to
know in a fun and easy tounderstand way.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Let's get started, let's do it.
Today we have a excitingepisode because it's actually
been quite some time since we'vehad a guest on the podcast.
So today we have a guest on thepodcast to talk about the
monthly accounting membership.
So we just had a previousepisode all about that, but I
thought it would be a reallygood idea to talk to somebody
who's actually in the membership.
(01:39):
So I'm excited.
Today I have Dr Amanda Thompsonon the podcast with me.
She's a pelvic floor therapist.
She's been in the monthlyaccounting membership since we
started, so she's part of thebeta group and that's been about
nine months now and we havejust been like super excited
about how it's been going andabout the results and, like we
(02:02):
talked about on the previousepisode, there's been so many
benefits from us as their CPA.
But today we want to talk aboutwhat she's seen and how it's
been working for her from aclient view.
So I have Amanda here with meand if you want to just
introduce yourself and tell us alittle bit about your business
so we can kind of get a goodidea of how this monthly
(02:24):
membership works for you.
Hello, and thank you for havingme again, of course.
Thanks for being on the podcastand being willing to talk about
accounting.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And I always feel like we need to be filmed during
this process too, because it'sreally funny to watch our body
language.
So I'm Dr Amina Thompson.
I am a physical therapist, alocal business owner that I
started my business in Februaryof 2022.
And so I've been through kindof the beginning phases.
I followed their book, theirwhat your CPA Wants you To Know
(02:53):
About Starting A Business.
I was able to kind of go fromthe groundwork of the beginning
of starting a business into thismonthly program and I can't
wait to chat about the before,the during and the after and
expectations for the future.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So Amanda's been here since day one when we just
tried to.
We've just been trying to doour best to help people figure
out all this stuff when startinga business, because it's not
straightforward anywhere.
You can't find it on the IRSwebsite, you can't find it
anywhere.
So, like she said before, wehad a guide first and then
that's kind of where you gotstarted.
You were able to set everythingup from that guide, but then
(03:28):
it's like what's next?
How do I actually run abusiness and how do I get my CPA
, all the things that they needto do, and how do I have the
books that I need for, whetherit's banking purposes or for
management purposes?
All of those things is what yourun into once you get past that
first initial step.
So that's what the monthlyaccounting program is all about.
(03:51):
But I just wanted to ask youfirst, since you did start nine
months ago and you've been inbusiness for quite some time
like what were you doing beforeyou started and what did that
look like before you moved tothe monthly accounting program?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So from a business owner perspective and I know a
lot of business owners out theredon't necessarily go to school
to be a business owner I thinksometimes they do and they're
very intentional about going toschool for a business.
I did not.
I am a clinician by trade andbusiness and entrepreneurship
kind of fell in my lap and Itook an opportunity and jumped
(04:24):
and I had no idea what I wasdoing.
So from a financial standpoint,I used what I was basically
using at home, which was whatwas recommended early on, and so
you can either do something assimple as make an Excel document
.
I had an Excel document withall of my monthly expenses, my
ins and outs.
I had calculations at thebottom.
(04:44):
I basically took what I wasusing for my personal finances
and I made that into my businessfinances.
And about nine months intobusiness or so, that Excel
document was not, it was notsaved to a cloud.
And one day I opened mycomputer and it was a blue
(05:06):
screen.
Everybody knows the blue screenmeans and I panicked and
actually we were going on abusiness retreat when it
happened and I finally jumpedship and did I started
QuickBooks.
Now, if anybody's doingQuickBooks, it is life changing.
The trick is is, if you don'tknow anything about QuickBooks,
(05:26):
it's really, really challenging.
So I actually made anappointment with y'all and got
all spent a lot of time andeffort uploading all of my stuff
for that year Cause alleverything turned blue,
calculating everything,categorizing it, reconciling it
and going all the way back forthe whole year which it was
October at the time, whenever ithappened.
(05:47):
So I did QuickBooks but I reallydidn't know what I was doing
and so I was categorizing andthen I didn't know how to do the
reconciling.
I couldn't remember whichbuttons to push.
I could figure out how to getto profit, like my P&L, and I
could get my profit and loss,but I couldn't figure out the
(06:10):
details of it.
And, as a growing business, Iknew that I was going to be
doing payroll.
I knew I was going to need moreinformation.
The biggest fear as a businessowner for me is getting audited
and making sure my I's aredotted, my T's are crossed.
I know I'm not doing anythingillegal, but I don't know if the
IRS is going to think sootherwise and it's kind of like
you just want to stay out ofjail type thing.
And I took all the knowledgethat I had before and I just
(06:35):
tried to kind of run with it andI think the biggest impact was
when we did start the monthlymemberships and we'll kind of
dive into why that's beenbeneficial.
So that's like the shortversion of my whole.
First, I guess two and a halfyears of business was Excel
moved to QuickBooks with blind,blind blindness leading my
(06:55):
blindness to into QuickBooks.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I love it because we do stay in the book that if
you're going to start out andyou are overwhelmed by maybe
QuickBooks or maybe the price orwhatever it may be, that an
Excel spreadsheet is a great wayto go, and we have lots of
solopreneurs that use an Excelspreadsheet and a lot of times
that's fine.
They can continue going withthat spreadsheet or the Google
(07:20):
spreadsheet, whatever they wantto do to keep it.
But as your business grows andthings get more complex, like
you stated, you needed payroll.
It definitely isn't good forall of that, and so you did
start the way.
But your business grew soquickly that you did need to
upgrade.
So I mean, maybe it was ablessing in disguise, but once
her computer crashed, then thatmade a lot more work.
(07:43):
So converting to QuickBooks canbe a lot easier than that,
especially if you start January1st.
But I did want to point outthat if there is an ideal client
that starts a business like youdid, you know, quitting your
W-2 job, going out on your own,never thought you were going to
be a business owner, but foundyourself in that position.
You are like the ideal clientbecause you don't listening.
(08:07):
You don't know this.
Amanda is very type A and,though she doesn't know
everything and nobody knowseverything when starting a
business she was going to findout.
So she read the book, shelistened to the podcast, she did
all the things that she wassupposed to do.
If we said, open up a businessbank account, you opened up a
business bank account.
And if we said you need to fileyour LLC, you did it.
(08:27):
And if we told you a due date,you put it on your calendar.
Correct.
So you're doing all the stuffthat you needed to do.
And then ran into this roadbump which is kind of the beauty
of the monthly accounting plan,because you know what the thing
is that never stops.
You're never going to stoprunning into issues as a
business owner and maybe issuesisn't the right word, but maybe
(08:49):
you need X, Y, Z.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
You need help, whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
So then your thing was I'll book some QuickBooks
calls, which we, for our clients, do have a link where they can
book QuickBooks help.
And it was becoming where youare needing a lot of help, which
most people do need a lot ofhelp in the beginning, and then,
if you have a very complicatedbusiness, you need help at least
once a month.
So that's where you kind oflanded yourself was just paying
for each individual meeting.
(09:13):
Now we talk about in theaccounting plan.
It's like you can either chooseto pay for meetings, which is
fine, but if you're somebodythat is going to need help on an
ongoing basis, the plan justbasically lets you hold your
spot and it's at a reduced rate.
So then, once we got you set upand going I think that's when
we rolled out the monthlyaccounting plan.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That's exactly what happened and I feel like the
monthly accounting plan, I wouldsay, for me.
I never took time out of my dayor my month to set aside time
to categorize, to reconcile, tomake sure all the things that my
I's were dotted T's werecrossed.
From a personal perspective, myhusband is a farmer, so we are
(09:54):
also self-employed in there andhim and his brother both wait
until literally the last minuteto do anything, which our CPA
hates us for that.
But it's fine and I didn't wantto do that.
I like to know ahead of timehow much I'm going to owe the
IRS.
I like to know where am I at.
I know my monthly highs andlows and I want to know where my
(10:16):
minimums are, and I thinkthat's where the type A
personality came in.
But early on I used the.
We did a lot of QuickBooks workand I think early on that's
what my intention was.
I'm just going to have y'allhelp me with categorizing and
reconciling, but really, once Igot really good at that, there
was only a few things.
(10:37):
I would have a weird hiccup orweird fee or, for example.
Let me give you a really coolexample.
That happened in December andCarson literally saved my life.
My bank card, my business bankcard, was scanned by one of
those fancy scammers at like ashopping center and they copied
my card physically, made a newcard and they they completely
(10:59):
wiped out my bank account.
Oh my gosh.
Made a new card and they theycompletely wiped out my bank
account.
Um, but the bank gave me mymoney back.
But the categorizing all thisrandom items and cashing out
they the bank refunded me allthe money.
So I had all this money go outreally quickly, within about
three or four days, and then thebank put it back in, but from a
business.
It was my business account, andso I'm like I don't know what
(11:21):
to do.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
There was all these, like I didn't know what to where
to put them, yeah, what tocategorize them as, so that it's
not like you're paying taxes onthe money that came in and that
you're not making it look oneway when you're doing your tax
return.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And I only.
I honestly caught it because Iwas on top of my books A and I
went negative, but that's awhole other conversation.
But the bank, within 48 hours,had refunded my money.
It was a Friday and by Mondayat 12, my money was back in, but
I didn't know what to do withit.
So Carson on the back end wentthrough and really just made it
(11:57):
a wash and I would have neverbeen able to do that on my own
and that happened in December,which it was all messed up for
January too, and so he was ableto fix all of that stuff and I
was still able to prepeverything for my tax return for
2024.
And so that could have beenreally sour and south if I would
have just sent it in to my CPA,not realizing how ugly that
(12:21):
looked from the back end.
So that was like an extremeexample of how bad things could
get.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Yeah, that kind of stuff happens all the time and I
can think of a couple otherthings like that where people
didn't realize that their bankcard wasn't flowing into
QuickBooks anymore and then theydidn't do bookkeeping for six
months and then they had thiswhole mess or it double counted
transactions.
So you just being aware of itimmediately and then fixing it
(12:48):
means that you had very littleheadache for a very stressful
situation.
But when you don't, then you'releft with the option of
completely starting over becauseyou don't know how to fix it
right, or paying quick books andtheir help is absolutely
horrible.
The people that they have doingthat are, I think, they're scam
artists or something, becausethe work we've seen them and
(13:09):
people pay thousands to get itback and running the way they
want to.
It's just that's really youroptions is to spend a lot of
money just to get your booksright.
So there is a really other thanjust knowing where you are
financially every single monthand being able to use those
reports.
It's really really beneficialto stay on top of it, and that's
the problem is a lot of times,like you said, it's hard to set
(13:32):
aside that time every month whenyou're working in your business
.
I mean, you're busy, you'reseeing patients and you don't
have that time to set aside toreconcile your books, which,
let's be honest, isn't the mostfun thing in the whole world.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
No, but if I have an appointment on Monday, you
better believe that my books arereconciled by Sunday, because I
am a people pleaser and it'slike turning in your work
incomplete.
Your assignment is due, yes, andso I might not have very many
questions, and by now, like I'vegotten much better at the
(14:05):
reconciling and the basics,carson was able to walk me
through payroll, set up mypayroll.
At hiccup on my payroll, he wasable to go on the back end and
really just nail it out and thenteach me how to do it.
That's where the benefit comesin too, is it's not like he's
just doing it for me?
And then, since he alreadyknows all my questions, all my
(14:25):
big purchases or where my assetslie, he's able to see what I
need to do before the end of theyear or quarterly, and I can
change what I'm talking abouteach time I'm making an
appointment.
It doesn't have to be about thesame thing If we complete it,
okay, let's move on to the nextone.
So I have a list.
Sometimes we hit it really fast, sometimes we take a little bit
longer, and it's definitelylike setting a sign time for me
(14:48):
to stay on top of the basics,but then being able to hit all
the other things that I actuallydidn't realize I needed help
with.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I do love that you said that, because I was going
to ask you what are the thingsthat you normally talk about on
a monthly call, because a lot ofquestions have came in about.
What does it have to be and canI split between, like, business
and personal, and with taxesit's kind of all just together
because your business makes somemoney, but you pay it
personally.
So there's really a long list ofthings that you can talk about
(15:17):
during these calls, but I likethat you said you started off
with QuickBooks so you could getmore comfortable with it and
really you have the choice withQuickBooks of doing it yourself
or hiring month.
You know someone to do yourmonthly bookkeeping and with the
bookkeeper, or with us, that's.
You know at least $300 a month,if not more, and most people
want to do it themselves.
(15:37):
I recommend doing it yourselffor sure because you know what's
going on.
And the most successful and bestbusiness owners that we work
with are doing their QuickBooksthemselves for the most part,
and then they're getting helplike adding assets and stuff.
But now that you've kind oftaught yourself QuickBooks and
Carson's worked with you on howto run the payroll, how to know
something's off like making surethat you don't just put
(16:00):
something somewhere that it'snot supposed to be you know,
like put it in my ask myaccountant, like you, know very
well how to run QuickBooks andyou know what you shouldn't be
doing.
Ask my accountant is myfavorite category.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yeah, ask my accountant.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
So then when you have those meetings, you can tell
Carson like here are the thingsthat I didn't do this month
because I wasn't sure, insteadof plugging them somewhere,
which is what happens, and thenthat's when we get into a really
big predicament.
So then now you're able to talkmore about, like, the payroll
with the S-corp and then sometax strategies.
So you know, how much should Ibe saving?
Am I on track to be saving?
(16:34):
Because we're in the middle ofthe year, which is crazy.
And so we kind of have half ofthe year information we know how
much you're going to have intaxes for that and just
preparing for it.
And then some of the clientshave talked about retirement and
things like that.
But it's really up to you whatyou need during that time, and
every single month it'sdifferent.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And I feel like y'all are so savvy with the
categories.
I used to think that you had tohave literally a category for
every single thing, but thiscould also equal this, and so
it's all in one.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Which makes it simpler and easier to do your
tax return For sure.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
For sure, and then the questions like personal
finance and personal taxquestions.
He answers all of those duringmy calls as well, and I really
feel like it's just like an allfor one, one for all.
I don't think I could get ascomfortable with where I'm at in
a business if I wasn't doingthe monthly stuff.
And my husband's aself-employed employee too, so
(17:32):
we always owe taxes forsomething, and so he works.
We're in a rural area, so, yeah, he also knows farm and ranch,
and so he can give us a lot ofguidance on that kind of stuff
too, and we don't use y'all forour farm, so it's very
beneficial to help.
Even though he doesn't know allthe I's dotting T's cross, it's
very helpful to move forwardand know all the different
(17:55):
aspects of it.
We've talked about paying ourkids, which is also on some of
your episodes.
We've talked about retirementfor sure, savings, the savings
episode.
I don't remember which episodethat is, but y'all talk about
savings and the buckets of thatsavings account.
I automatically got one and Istarted doing the buckets as
(18:16):
well.
Isn't that the coolest thing?
Speaker 3 (18:17):
ever.
I think it's very for type Apeople.
That's like the coolest thing.
If you don't know what we'retalking about.
It's Ally Savings.
It's one savings account andyou can make little buckets
within that for each thing thatyou're saving for or you're
marking Like.
For me it's the kids' carsright now I have little car
funds and education and thingslike that, but I just I nerd out
(18:37):
on that.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I love that thing thing it's like putting my excel
document, which I like, into,like a very, very clean
perspective and knowing, knowingwhere your money is going.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
This is for taxes like I have to pay my taxes
later and Carson told me I owethis much in taxes so far, so
I'm going to put it in my littletax bucket.
So that you can't get spent ontravel or what you know,
whatever else.
So, yes, I love that thereality is.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
I remember my eighth grade history teacher said the
only two things you need to doin life is die and pay taxes,
and he's correct.
So it's not trying to get outof taxes, it's finding ways to
categorize and make everythingsituational so you're optimizing
your taxes and you're notpaying for taxes that you don't
necessarily need to be doingwhen you're already doing the
(19:24):
expenses.
A different direction.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Yes, absolutely, and we do try.
So I'm the person that sendsout the monthly reminders to all
of our monthly accountingclients and it'll say hey,
amanda, don't forget it's June1st.
Book your meeting and it givesthem a private link to book it
at a time to do their monthlycall.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Which I love, the links.
I mean I love the emailsbecause I do.
I get done with the call.
I'm like, oh yes, I'm going tobook the next one.
Then I forget and I get theemail.
I'm like, oh yes, I need tobook the other.
And so I just book it.
It automatically goes to myGoogle calendar, it
automatically is connected to mywork calendar and then I know
my due date and I do,strategically now do my meetings
not on a Monday?
Oh yeah, yes, right, mondayswere bad because then I had to
(20:06):
do it on Sunday.
But I usually try to do mycategories, categorizing every
week, and then I reconcile, liketowards, I move my appointments
to be at the end of the monthbecause my the way my
reconciling needs to be to getall of it clean is after, like
the 15th to 16th.
It needs to be after that, andI've just figured that out based
on how I learned to reconcile.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
And so would you say that this process keeps you
accountable and make sure you'redoing it, or do you think that
you would be able to do that onyour own?
Speaker 1 (20:35):
I definitely wouldn't do it on my own and I would say
I would do it on my own but,honestly, because I don't have
the willpower, I'd rather seeclients than book, than do my
books, and I'd rather seeclients instead of making a
meeting.
I would rather see clientsinstead of doing everything else
, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So it's an avoidance strategy.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
But when I know I have an appointment, I'm going
to follow through with thatappointment and I'm going to do
what's required prior to thatappointment and I'll push it out
.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I love that you said that you feel like you know you
have your homework, because youwant him to check it and make
sure your reconciliations lookgood, and that you can talk
about your books.
And if your books aren'treconciled, then there's no
point in talking about them.
So I like that you said that,because reconciliations that was
really our idea was to givesome accountability to business
owners just once a month, setaside that time, and some of
(21:24):
them are not like you.
They just wait and then on themeeting they will walk through
the reconciliation with Carson,which is fine too, right, but,
yeah, I love that you said thatyou're like okay, that means the
next day I need to be ready andit makes sure that you get
everything done that you need todo, because I usually have more
questions than just thereconciling.
Yeah, and they do too.
I mean, they're like next monthI'm actually going to reconcile
(21:46):
before I talk to you, but thegood thing is they are
completely up to date.
You know, they're alwaysreconciled, which they
definitely would not be if theydidn't talk to Carson.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
And if you're trying to reconcile in October for the
whole year or in January for theyear before to get it ready for
your CPA, you don't rememberwhy that $15 is off and you have
to go back.
And once you have a mess up youhave to backtrack, and so once
I have a hiccup, I just stopwhat I'm doing and I'm like you
(22:17):
know what.
He'll work on it on my nextappointment and then I'll be
able to move forward from there,absolutely.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
And also it shocks people how much money they made.
They're usually like, oh mygosh, did I really make that
much money?
Yeah, maybe if you would havedone some bookkeeping you
wouldn't have been so surprised.
That happens every single yearalso.
So, just to recap, everybodygets one call every single month
and it's actually at adiscounted rate, not our normal
(22:43):
hourly rate.
So you're kind of just goingahead and picking up one of
those spots and then the otherthing that we haven't talked
about on today's podcast is thatthey also get a tax projection,
which is free because there'sno additional charge.
It's basically just making surethey do a tax projection
because we want everybody toknow where they stand, and a lot
of people need tax projections,but they just choose not to do
(23:07):
them or they forget about doingthem.
So I was just interested toknow if you had ever done a tax
projection before the one youdid with us this last fall.
We did them all in like October, november, and then I wanted to
know what you thought about it.
Oh, and I also wanted to knowif you thought the tax
projection was helpful and if ithelped you like be more
(23:30):
prepared for filing in April andthe taxes that you actually
owed.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
So I'm going to recap that.
My husband's a farmer, sotypically we well we always owe
taxes because we're bothself-employed and you can't just
like not pay taxes.
I guess you could, but thatgets you in a lot of trouble,
but you weren't paying themquarterly.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
We were not paying them quarterly.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
We were paying them at the October deadline.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
And that's not April.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
No, yeah, the extension, because farmers are
like 80 year old men, that someare 80 year old men, some are 40
and act like they're 80 andthey don't want to give the
government money until the lastsecond.
So that's where I live, but itwould be a complete guess
because as a self-employedfarmer, your guess is as good as
mud Like there is and he wasn'tdoing like the bookkeeping.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
No, he wasn't doing like the bookkeeping every month
.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
He wasn't saying like , yeah, it was kind of a
surprise.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
It could be 5,000.
It could be 22,000.
It could just be.
It could be anything.
And then you don't know, Idon't have that kind of money in
my bank account.
So what we did this time wasbased on my last few years and
my goals for 2024 and 2025 andwhere I'm going with my business
was to really hone in on whatmy estimated taxes would be for
the following year, so that,even if my husband's business
(24:47):
does really bad or really good,at least we'll be sitting in a
different position, which, whenthe tax penalties changed, y'all
had recommended before.
Like it's, you know half adozen one way, it's, it doesn't,
it doesn't matter, you couldpick one way or the other.
And that's how we lived waslike the penalty wasn't so bad
that it really didn't make orbreak us deciding to do the
(25:10):
quarterly tax payments or justpaying it all in one lump sum in
October.
So you just always paid it allat once.
All at once, yep.
And so when we did the taxprojection in the fall, we had a
recommended amount and so nowI'm able to pay that quarterly,
so that even if my business doesway better or the same
hopefully it doesn't do worse,obviously then at least I've put
(25:32):
something into it because,again, it's your best guess
moving forward, and so if you doway better than anticipated,
that's going to show proof inyour books anyways, and if you
do about the same, then at leastyou know you're covered.
And with the tax break changesor the tax changes and the
penalty changes, now I do aquarterly payment.
But it was a really bigeye-opening thing that we
(25:52):
started doing this year.
This is the first year we'veever done quarterly payment.
Well, I'm so proud of you andyou gave me directions.
That was like I don't know whatto do.
So she sent an email with allthe things, exact directions,
who to send it to, what to writeon the envelope.
And that's what I need, becauseGoogle is not helpful when it
comes to the IRS and the IRSwebsite is not helpful either.
So she sent a pretty email thathad all the things on it,
(26:16):
including the vouchers.
So I printed them, filled themout, wrote a check and sent it
directly where it was.
And what surprised me actuallywith the quarterly payment is it
took forever for them todeposit it.
Yeah, they're not quick withanything which surprised me
because I figured if they wantmy money, they would deposit it
but, they didn't.
It took about a month for themto deposit it.
(26:36):
So you're waiting for thatcheck to clear, are?
Speaker 3 (26:38):
they going to take my money or no.
So you're waiting for thatcheck to clear Are they going to
take my money or no.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Did they forget about me.
Cross your fingers, no, but ifyou have a problem they will be
real quick to turn around and belike you didn't turn in this,
this and this.
So that was a huge change thatwe just started this year.
So I'll be kind of happy to seewhere we're at with the tax
projection from last year.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
And then really when I meet with y'all in like June,
july, where I'm at this yearcompared to last year Awesome,
well, I like that you are allset up on estimated tax payments
for sure.
And also I thought of somethingwhere you're talking was that
the I wouldn't say it's likeactually on paper what a benefit
of the accounting plan is, butit it happens Like Amanda was
like, hey, I need to make thisestimated tax payment.
Carson gave her the number,they had their chat and she's
like, but I don't know how to doit.
(27:27):
I see her name come up, I knowwho she is, I know what her
business is, I know what's goingon, I immediately help her and
I'm like the back end ofeverything, so helping all of
these if something comes up.
We've been able to help thesemonthly clients with things that
pop up, whether it's one ofthem had a mortgage and they had
like they needed somethingwithin like two hours, and
because we've we've talked tothem all the time, it's really
(27:49):
easy for us to do stuff likethat and get them like really
individual, quick help, whereasif it's somebody that we haven't
spoken to all year, we don'tknow what's going on with them,
we have no idea and we have alot of extra work to do so
because we're working with allthese people, they are getting
like preferential treatment andreally quick service.
(28:10):
Because we talk to them all thetime it's like oh well, my
friend needs this thing, so wegot to help them out.
So that is definitely one thingthat I hope that people feel
working with us like.
That is, that they are gettingmore than just the call.
But, like you had said, we hadalready talked about it and set
her up to do that.
And then she's like oh well, Idon't actually know how to make
(28:30):
an estimated tax payment, Ididn't even think about asking
it and that's, I get it Likethere's no thing.
And we were able just torespond right away and make sure
she knew how to do it becausewe had just talked about all of
that in her meeting.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
So I'm going to add one thing.
So I didn't realize how much myconstant, I would say, contact
with y'all was going to behelpful for me, and so let me
ask you a question now.
Okay, so I met with y'all earlyJanuary and because I, y'all,
we did all the reconciling,everything was good for the year
(29:04):
, we basically closed out booksfor 2024.
How easy and how or howcomplicated was it for y'all to
file my business tax return?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Oh my gosh, it was.
It was so easy.
It ideal client.
And I think it works both waysright.
You know you have clients.
You have people that are idealclients and you have people that
you're like, oh my gosh, thisis a mess.
That's how your CPA feels.
And the fact that all of thesepeople in the beta group had
their books reconciled.
They were ready in January.
(29:33):
We could get started on allthis work.
We have a huge, long list toget through before the filing
deadline and the fact thatyou're like serve us something
so easy, put together with thebow on it, like here is my tax
return ready to do early and mybooks are clean and we know
exactly what's going on.
(29:54):
And you did a tax projection sowe pretty much knew what the
results should be Right and if,for some reason, it wasn't, we
would know why.
So, yeah, it was.
Oh my gosh.
That's one of the biggestbenefits to this is that our
clients that we work with on amonthly basis it's so easy when
tax time comes around.
So I hope that you feel liketax time was easy and that
(30:16):
wasn't stressful.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
It was all I really had to do was reconcile my books
for December, becauseeverything else was already
ready, and then I run a reportand everything's good to go.
The only thing I had to do wasrun W-2s or 1099s for employees
and all the other things thatcome with January.
But in general it was reallyeasy to get everything to,
because everything was clean andeverything was done.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
And, like she mentioned getting getting 1099s
out, you have to get that out bythe end of january.
We were able to file the 1099sthat you had.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
oh yeah and so I wanted to know how to do 1099s
for my people.
So my january meeting part ofmy january meeting was carson
showed me how to do on quickbook, how to file my own 1099s,
because you never had to do that.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I never did it before because, because you didn't
have QuickBooks, I didn't haveQuickBooks.
Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
There was your January meeting.
It wasn't that hard and itsaved me money because I didn't
have to pay you to do it.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Right, exactly.
And you were like, okay, if Iget all the stuff in QuickBooks
correctly, then it actually doesa lot of the work for me.
But the problem is a lot ofpeople with QuickBooks can't
file 1099s because they don'thave anything in there.
Right, and it's a mess.
So you have all your stuff inthere and QuickBooks is like hey
, amanda, your contractors needthese 1099s.
And you're like, oh, I don'tknow what buttons to click, but
(31:33):
now I do, because Carson told mehow to do it, so awesome.
Well, yeah, it totally makesour job so much easier.
But I hope that everybody feelslike tax season in general is
not that stressful once we'vedone all this work all year long
.
Not at all, not even stressedabout it.
Perfect, perfect, okay, amanda.
So not to put you on the spot,but you did agree to come to
(31:53):
this podcast.
You kind of are on the spot.
I just want to know, to wrapthis episode up, like what would
you say to somebody?
There's a few people askingquestions about the membership
and want to know what would yousay to somebody who's on the
fence about joining themembership?
Speaker 1 (32:14):
There's literally hands down, no questions asked.
You just need to jump, jump anddo it.
It's going to save you time andmoney in the long run.
It's going to save you so muchless headache and your CPA is
going to love you foreverbecause everything is going to
be so clean.
There's literally no question.
It's worth every penny and morereally Carson.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Of course, numbers right.
You want numbers right.
He's like I have saved themonthly accounting people more
money than they've paid me, andthat's my goal.
For sure so whether it's settingup the Augusta rule in
QuickBooks for them or payingtheir kids, or telling them they
were doing something completelywrong and they're paying too
much, or we've converted a lotof the monthly members to S-Corp
(32:52):
.
He's like I've saved them somuch money and so for the
monthly fee to do it, you knowit's he feels so good being like
well they're.
Actually, if they hadn't cometo me, they still would be
paying more Correct, a hundredpercent.
So if you could describe thewhole membership in one word,
what would it be?
Awesome.
Don't you love questions likethis?
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I can never think of one, I never think of words, but
it's, it's awesome.
It's truly awesome.
I really feel like I'm actuallyon top of it.
I'm not a business guru.
I did not go to school forbusiness in any way, shape or
form.
That's not even my minor.
I am a people hands on personand I just feel so confident
(33:34):
about my back end business thatI never would have felt
confident for, even like a yearago business that I never would
have felt confident for, evenlike a year ago.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I love that because confidence is one of the number
one things.
People come to us and feel likethey're just not doing
everything right.
I should be doing somethingelse.
I don't know what it is.
I'm not confident in runningthe business and the books and
everything, and if all themonthly accounting members feel
like I've got this, I feel likewe did what we wanted to do For
sure.
Well, I think that sums upeverything.
Thank you so much for beingwilling to come on the podcast
(34:10):
yet again and just share aboutthis monthly accounting
membership with everybody.
Thank you so much for having meand I hope everybody joins, of
course.
Of course, I think we have fivemore spots left that we're
opening and we didn't talk inthis episode a lot about the
fine details because we just didepisode on that.
(34:30):
So if you want to know aboutall of the different things
we're talking about in here andactually more fine details about
it, if you're really interestedin it, you can check out the
previous episode.
Also, we do have some discoverycalls If you would like to talk
to us.
Those are just 15 minute callsIf you want to see if it's a
good fit, ask additionalquestions, all of that and I
will link that in the show notesso you can book a call.
(34:53):
And, amanda, if someone islooking for a pelvic floor
therapist, which is the best oneever, I would say, in the whole
world.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
It's definitely the best profession in the world.
But as far as physical therapy,a hundred percent, we are the
best all pelvic floor therapists.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And Amanda's the best .
So if you're looking for helpwith your pelvic floor, where
can people find you and whereare you on all of the things?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
So if you're local to Wise County, I am in Bridgeport
, texas.
My office is called RootedPhysical Therapy.
It's rootedphysicaltherapylccom.
My Instagram isrootedphysicaltherapy, as well
as my Facebook and my TikTok,and my YouTube channel is.
You can search either RootedPhysical Therap therapy or Dr
(35:40):
Amanda, and it's prettyentertaining.
I treat men, women and kidswith all pelvic floor
dysfunctions.
I consider myself an orthopelvic therapist, so I'm looking
at people from head to toeliterally with nothing left
uncovered, and trying to findthe root cause of everybody's
issues.
So even if it's just for somemild entertainment, it can be
pretty fun to watch.
Her content is awesome.
(36:01):
She's issues.
So even if it's just for somemild entertainment, it can be
pretty fun to watch.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Her content is awesome.
She's amazing If you get theopportunity to work with her.
If you're local or virtual,then she's amazing, so thank you
.
Thank you so much for comingagain and until next time.
Thank you so much for listeningto what your CPA Wants you to
Know.
Podcast.
Bye.
he's able to see what I need to do before the end of
the year or quarterly, and I canchange what I'm talking about
each time I'm making anappointment.
It doesn't have to be about thesame thing.
If we complete it, okay, let'smove on to the next one.
So I have a list.
Sometimes we hit it really fast, sometimes we take a little bit
longer, and it's definitelylike setting a sign time for me
to stay on top of the basics butthen being able to hit all the
(00:24):
other things that I actuallydidn't realize I needed help
with.
Speaker 2 (00:32):
Welcome to what your CPA Wants you To Know.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Tax and accounting help can be expensive, so we've
created this podcast to helpguide you through it all and
make you feel like you have aCPA in your back pocket.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
I'm Carson Sands.
Speaker 3 (00:47):
And I'm Taryn Sands.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
I'm a CPA with over 10 years of experience helping
people start and grow theirbusinesses.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
And I'm an MBA with a specialization in marketing and
entrepreneurship.
Taxes suck and we want to makesure you don't pay more than
your fair share.
Taxes suck and we want to makesure you don't pay more than
your fair share.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
We're here to share everything your CPA wants you to
know in a fun and easy tounderstand way.
Speaker 3 (01:19):
Let's get started, let's do it.
Today we have a excitingepisode because it's actually
been quite some time since we'vehad a guest on the podcast.
So today we have a guest on thepodcast to talk about the
monthly accounting membership.
So we just had a previousepisode all about that, but I
thought it would be a reallygood idea to talk to somebody
who's actually in the membership.
(01:39):
So I'm excited.
Today I have Dr Amanda Thompsonon the podcast with me.
She's a pelvic floor therapist.
She's been in the monthlyaccounting membership since we
started, so she's part of thebeta group and that's been about
nine months now and we havejust been like super excited
about how it's been going andabout the results and, like we
(02:02):
talked about on the previousepisode, there's been so many
benefits from us as their CPA.
But today we want to talk aboutwhat she's seen and how it's
been working for her from aclient view.
So I have Amanda here with meand if you want to just
introduce yourself and tell us alittle bit about your business
so we can kind of get a goodidea of how this monthly
(02:24):
membership works for you.
Hello, and thank you for havingme again, of course.
Thanks for being on the podcastand being willing to talk about
accounting.
Speaker 1 (02:32):
And I always feel like we need to be filmed during
this process too, because it'sreally funny to watch our body
language.
So I'm Dr Amina Thompson.
I am a physical therapist, alocal business owner that I
started my business in Februaryof 2022.
And so I've been through kindof the beginning phases.
I followed their book, theirwhat your CPA Wants you To Know
(02:53):
About Starting A Business.
I was able to kind of go fromthe groundwork of the beginning
of starting a business into thismonthly program and I can't
wait to chat about the before,the during and the after and
expectations for the future.
Speaker 3 (03:05):
So Amanda's been here since day one when we just
tried to.
We've just been trying to doour best to help people figure
out all this stuff when startinga business, because it's not
straightforward anywhere.
You can't find it on the IRSwebsite, you can't find it
anywhere.
So, like she said before, wehad a guide first and then
that's kind of where you gotstarted.
You were able to set everythingup from that guide, but then
(03:28):
it's like what's next?
How do I actually run abusiness and how do I get my CPA
, all the things that they needto do, and how do I have the
books that I need for, whetherit's banking purposes or for
management purposes?
All of those things is what yourun into once you get past that
first initial step.
So that's what the monthlyaccounting program is all about.
(03:51):
But I just wanted to ask youfirst, since you did start nine
months ago and you've been inbusiness for quite some time
like what were you doing beforeyou started and what did that
look like before you moved tothe monthly accounting program?
Speaker 1 (04:01):
So from a business owner perspective and I know a
lot of business owners out theredon't necessarily go to school
to be a business owner I thinksometimes they do and they're
very intentional about going toschool for a business.
I did not.
I am a clinician by trade andbusiness and entrepreneurship
kind of fell in my lap and Itook an opportunity and jumped
(04:24):
and I had no idea what I wasdoing.
So from a financial standpoint,I used what I was basically
using at home, which was whatwas recommended early on, and so
you can either do something assimple as make an Excel document
.
I had an Excel document withall of my monthly expenses, my
ins and outs.
I had calculations at thebottom.
(04:44):
I basically took what I wasusing for my personal finances
and I made that into my businessfinances.
And about nine months intobusiness or so, that Excel
document was not, it was notsaved to a cloud.
And one day I opened mycomputer and it was a blue
(05:06):
screen.
Everybody knows the blue screenmeans and I panicked and
actually we were going on abusiness retreat when it
happened and I finally jumpedship and did I started
QuickBooks.
Now, if anybody's doingQuickBooks, it is life changing.
The trick is is, if you don'tknow anything about QuickBooks,
(05:26):
it's really, really challenging.
So I actually made anappointment with y'all and got
all spent a lot of time andeffort uploading all of my stuff
for that year Cause alleverything turned blue,
calculating everything,categorizing it, reconciling it
and going all the way back forthe whole year which it was
October at the time, whenever ithappened.
(05:47):
So I did QuickBooks but I reallydidn't know what I was doing
and so I was categorizing andthen I didn't know how to do the
reconciling.
I couldn't remember whichbuttons to push.
I could figure out how to getto profit, like my P&L, and I
could get my profit and loss,but I couldn't figure out the
(06:10):
details of it.
And, as a growing business, Iknew that I was going to be
doing payroll.
I knew I was going to need moreinformation.
The biggest fear as a businessowner for me is getting audited
and making sure my I's aredotted, my T's are crossed.
I know I'm not doing anythingillegal, but I don't know if the
IRS is going to think sootherwise and it's kind of like
you just want to stay out ofjail type thing.
And I took all the knowledgethat I had before and I just
(06:35):
tried to kind of run with it andI think the biggest impact was
when we did start the monthlymemberships and we'll kind of
dive into why that's beenbeneficial.
So that's like the shortversion of my whole.
First, I guess two and a halfyears of business was Excel
moved to QuickBooks with blind,blind blindness leading my
(06:55):
blindness to into QuickBooks.
Speaker 3 (06:58):
I love it because we do stay in the book that if
you're going to start out andyou are overwhelmed by maybe
QuickBooks or maybe the price orwhatever it may be, that an
Excel spreadsheet is a great wayto go, and we have lots of
solopreneurs that use an Excelspreadsheet and a lot of times
that's fine.
They can continue going withthat spreadsheet or the Google
(07:20):
spreadsheet, whatever they wantto do to keep it.
But as your business grows andthings get more complex, like
you stated, you needed payroll.
It definitely isn't good forall of that, and so you did
start the way.
But your business grew soquickly that you did need to
upgrade.
So I mean, maybe it was ablessing in disguise, but once
her computer crashed, then thatmade a lot more work.
(07:43):
So converting to QuickBooks canbe a lot easier than that,
especially if you start January1st.
But I did want to point outthat if there is an ideal client
that starts a business like youdid, you know, quitting your
W-2 job, going out on your own,never thought you were going to
be a business owner, but foundyourself in that position.
You are like the ideal clientbecause you don't listening.
(08:07):
You don't know this.
Amanda is very type A and,though she doesn't know
everything and nobody knowseverything when starting a
business she was going to findout.
So she read the book, shelistened to the podcast, she did
all the things that she wassupposed to do.
If we said, open up a businessbank account, you opened up a
business bank account.
And if we said you need to fileyour LLC, you did it.
(08:27):
And if we told you a due date,you put it on your calendar.
Correct.
So you're doing all the stuffthat you needed to do.
And then ran into this roadbump which is kind of the beauty
of the monthly accounting plan,because you know what the thing
is that never stops.
You're never going to stoprunning into issues as a
business owner and maybe issuesisn't the right word, but maybe
(08:49):
you need X, Y, Z.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
You need help, whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
So then your thing was I'll book some QuickBooks
calls, which we, for our clients, do have a link where they can
book QuickBooks help.
And it was becoming where youare needing a lot of help, which
most people do need a lot ofhelp in the beginning, and then,
if you have a very complicatedbusiness, you need help at least
once a month.
So that's where you kind oflanded yourself was just paying
for each individual meeting.
(09:13):
Now we talk about in theaccounting plan.
It's like you can either chooseto pay for meetings, which is
fine, but if you're somebodythat is going to need help on an
ongoing basis, the plan justbasically lets you hold your
spot and it's at a reduced rate.
So then, once we got you set upand going I think that's when
we rolled out the monthlyaccounting plan.
Speaker 1 (09:33):
That's exactly what happened and I feel like the
monthly accounting plan, I wouldsay, for me.
I never took time out of my dayor my month to set aside time
to categorize, to reconcile, tomake sure all the things that my
I's were dotted T's werecrossed.
From a personal perspective, myhusband is a farmer, so we are
(09:54):
also self-employed in there andhim and his brother both wait
until literally the last minuteto do anything, which our CPA
hates us for that.
But it's fine and I didn't wantto do that.
I like to know ahead of timehow much I'm going to owe the
IRS.
I like to know where am I at.
I know my monthly highs andlows and I want to know where my
(10:16):
minimums are, and I thinkthat's where the type A
personality came in.
But early on I used the.
We did a lot of QuickBooks workand I think early on that's
what my intention was.
I'm just going to have y'allhelp me with categorizing and
reconciling, but really, once Igot really good at that, there
was only a few things.
(10:37):
I would have a weird hiccup orweird fee or, for example.
Let me give you a really coolexample.
That happened in December andCarson literally saved my life.
My bank card, my business bankcard, was scanned by one of
those fancy scammers at like ashopping center and they copied
my card physically, made a newcard and they they completely
(10:59):
wiped out my bank account.
Oh my gosh.
Made a new card and they theycompletely wiped out my bank
account.
Um, but the bank gave me mymoney back.
But the categorizing all thisrandom items and cashing out
they the bank refunded me allthe money.
So I had all this money go outreally quickly, within about
three or four days, and then thebank put it back in, but from a
business.
It was my business account, andso I'm like I don't know what
(11:21):
to do.
Speaker 3 (11:22):
There was all these, like I didn't know what to where
to put them, yeah, what tocategorize them as, so that it's
not like you're paying taxes onthe money that came in and that
you're not making it look oneway when you're doing your tax
return.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
And I only.
I honestly caught it because Iwas on top of my books A and I
went negative, but that's awhole other conversation.
But the bank, within 48 hours,had refunded my money.
It was a Friday and by Mondayat 12, my money was back in, but
I didn't know what to do withit.
So Carson on the back end wentthrough and really just made it
(11:57):
a wash and I would have neverbeen able to do that on my own
and that happened in December,which it was all messed up for
January too, and so he was ableto fix all of that stuff and I
was still able to prepeverything for my tax return for
2024.
And so that could have beenreally sour and south if I would
have just sent it in to my CPA,not realizing how ugly that
(12:21):
looked from the back end.
So that was like an extremeexample of how bad things could
get.
Speaker 3 (12:26):
Yeah, that kind of stuff happens all the time and I
can think of a couple otherthings like that where people
didn't realize that their bankcard wasn't flowing into
QuickBooks anymore and then theydidn't do bookkeeping for six
months and then they had thiswhole mess or it double counted
transactions.
So you just being aware of itimmediately and then fixing it
(12:48):
means that you had very littleheadache for a very stressful
situation.
But when you don't, then you'releft with the option of
completely starting over becauseyou don't know how to fix it
right, or paying quick books andtheir help is absolutely
horrible.
The people that they have doingthat are, I think, they're scam
artists or something, becausethe work we've seen them and
(13:09):
people pay thousands to get itback and running the way they
want to.
It's just that's really youroptions is to spend a lot of
money just to get your booksright.
So there is a really other thanjust knowing where you are
financially every single monthand being able to use those
reports.
It's really really beneficialto stay on top of it, and that's
the problem is a lot of times,like you said, it's hard to set
(13:32):
aside that time every month whenyou're working in your business
.
I mean, you're busy, you'reseeing patients and you don't
have that time to set aside toreconcile your books, which,
let's be honest, isn't the mostfun thing in the whole world.
Speaker 1 (13:45):
No, but if I have an appointment on Monday, you
better believe that my books arereconciled by Sunday, because I
am a people pleaser and it'slike turning in your work
incomplete.
Your assignment is due, yes, andso I might not have very many
questions, and by now, like I'vegotten much better at the
(14:05):
reconciling and the basics,carson was able to walk me
through payroll, set up mypayroll.
At hiccup on my payroll, he wasable to go on the back end and
really just nail it out and thenteach me how to do it.
That's where the benefit comesin too, is it's not like he's
just doing it for me?
And then, since he alreadyknows all my questions, all my
(14:25):
big purchases or where my assetslie, he's able to see what I
need to do before the end of theyear or quarterly, and I can
change what I'm talking abouteach time I'm making an
appointment.
It doesn't have to be about thesame thing If we complete it,
okay, let's move on to the nextone.
So I have a list.
Sometimes we hit it really fast, sometimes we take a little bit
longer, and it's definitelylike setting a sign time for me
(14:48):
to stay on top of the basics,but then being able to hit all
the other things that I actuallydidn't realize I needed help
with.
Speaker 3 (14:55):
I do love that you said that, because I was going
to ask you what are the thingsthat you normally talk about on
a monthly call, because a lot ofquestions have came in about.
What does it have to be and canI split between, like, business
and personal, and with taxesit's kind of all just together
because your business makes somemoney, but you pay it
personally.
So there's really a long list ofthings that you can talk about
(15:17):
during these calls, but I likethat you said you started off
with QuickBooks so you could getmore comfortable with it and
really you have the choice withQuickBooks of doing it yourself
or hiring month.
You know someone to do yourmonthly bookkeeping and with the
bookkeeper, or with us, that's.
You know at least $300 a month,if not more, and most people
want to do it themselves.
(15:37):
I recommend doing it yourselffor sure because you know what's
going on.
And the most successful and bestbusiness owners that we work
with are doing their QuickBooksthemselves for the most part,
and then they're getting helplike adding assets and stuff.
But now that you've kind oftaught yourself QuickBooks and
Carson's worked with you on howto run the payroll, how to know
something's off like making surethat you don't just put
(16:00):
something somewhere that it'snot supposed to be you know,
like put it in my ask myaccountant, like you, know very
well how to run QuickBooks andyou know what you shouldn't be
doing.
Ask my accountant is myfavorite category.
Speaker 1 (16:11):
Yeah, ask my accountant.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
So then when you have those meetings, you can tell
Carson like here are the thingsthat I didn't do this month
because I wasn't sure, insteadof plugging them somewhere,
which is what happens, and thenthat's when we get into a really
big predicament.
So then now you're able to talkmore about, like, the payroll
with the S-corp and then sometax strategies.
So you know, how much should Ibe saving?
Am I on track to be saving?
(16:34):
Because we're in the middle ofthe year, which is crazy.
And so we kind of have half ofthe year information we know how
much you're going to have intaxes for that and just
preparing for it.
And then some of the clientshave talked about retirement and
things like that.
But it's really up to you whatyou need during that time, and
every single month it'sdifferent.
Speaker 1 (16:54):
And I feel like y'all are so savvy with the
categories.
I used to think that you had tohave literally a category for
every single thing, but thiscould also equal this, and so
it's all in one.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Which makes it simpler and easier to do your
tax return For sure.
Speaker 1 (17:10):
For sure, and then the questions like personal
finance and personal taxquestions.
He answers all of those duringmy calls as well, and I really
feel like it's just like an allfor one, one for all.
I don't think I could get ascomfortable with where I'm at in
a business if I wasn't doingthe monthly stuff.
And my husband's aself-employed employee too, so
(17:32):
we always owe taxes forsomething, and so he works.
We're in a rural area, so, yeah, he also knows farm and ranch,
and so he can give us a lot ofguidance on that kind of stuff
too, and we don't use y'all forour farm, so it's very
beneficial to help.
Even though he doesn't know allthe I's dotting T's cross, it's
very helpful to move forwardand know all the different
(17:55):
aspects of it.
We've talked about paying ourkids, which is also on some of
your episodes.
We've talked about retirementfor sure, savings, the savings
episode.
I don't remember which episodethat is, but y'all talk about
savings and the buckets of thatsavings account.
I automatically got one and Istarted doing the buckets as
(18:16):
well.
Isn't that the coolest thing?
Speaker 3 (18:17):
ever.
I think it's very for type Apeople.
That's like the coolest thing.
If you don't know what we'retalking about.
It's Ally Savings.
It's one savings account andyou can make little buckets
within that for each thing thatyou're saving for or you're
marking Like.
For me it's the kids' carsright now I have little car
funds and education and thingslike that, but I just I nerd out
(18:37):
on that.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
I love that thing thing it's like putting my excel
document, which I like, into,like a very, very clean
perspective and knowing, knowingwhere your money is going.
Speaker 3 (18:48):
This is for taxes like I have to pay my taxes
later and Carson told me I owethis much in taxes so far, so
I'm going to put it in my littletax bucket.
So that you can't get spent ontravel or what you know,
whatever else.
So, yes, I love that thereality is.
Speaker 1 (19:02):
I remember my eighth grade history teacher said the
only two things you need to doin life is die and pay taxes,
and he's correct.
So it's not trying to get outof taxes, it's finding ways to
categorize and make everythingsituational so you're optimizing
your taxes and you're notpaying for taxes that you don't
necessarily need to be doingwhen you're already doing the
(19:24):
expenses.
A different direction.
Speaker 3 (19:25):
Yes, absolutely, and we do try.
So I'm the person that sendsout the monthly reminders to all
of our monthly accountingclients and it'll say hey,
amanda, don't forget it's June1st.
Book your meeting and it givesthem a private link to book it
at a time to do their monthlycall.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
Which I love, the links.
I mean I love the emailsbecause I do.
I get done with the call.
I'm like, oh yes, I'm going tobook the next one.
Then I forget and I get theemail.
I'm like, oh yes, I need tobook the other.
And so I just book it.
It automatically goes to myGoogle calendar, it
automatically is connected to mywork calendar and then I know
my due date and I do,strategically now do my meetings
not on a Monday?
Oh yeah, yes, right, mondayswere bad because then I had to
(20:06):
do it on Sunday.
But I usually try to do mycategories, categorizing every
week, and then I reconcile, liketowards, I move my appointments
to be at the end of the monthbecause my the way my
reconciling needs to be to getall of it clean is after, like
the 15th to 16th.
It needs to be after that, andI've just figured that out based
on how I learned to reconcile.
Speaker 3 (20:27):
And so would you say that this process keeps you
accountable and make sure you'redoing it, or do you think that
you would be able to do that onyour own?
Speaker 1 (20:35):
I definitely wouldn't do it on my own and I would say
I would do it on my own but,honestly, because I don't have
the willpower, I'd rather seeclients than book, than do my
books, and I'd rather seeclients instead of making a
meeting.
I would rather see clientsinstead of doing everything else
, absolutely.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
So it's an avoidance strategy.
Speaker 1 (20:55):
But when I know I have an appointment, I'm going
to follow through with thatappointment and I'm going to do
what's required prior to thatappointment and I'll push it out
.
Speaker 3 (21:03):
I love that you said that you feel like you know you
have your homework, because youwant him to check it and make
sure your reconciliations lookgood, and that you can talk
about your books.
And if your books aren'treconciled, then there's no
point in talking about them.
So I like that you said that,because reconciliations that was
really our idea was to givesome accountability to business
owners just once a month, setaside that time, and some of
(21:24):
them are not like you.
They just wait and then on themeeting they will walk through
the reconciliation with Carson,which is fine too, right, but,
yeah, I love that you said thatyou're like okay, that means the
next day I need to be ready andit makes sure that you get
everything done that you need todo, because I usually have more
questions than just thereconciling.
Yeah, and they do too.
I mean, they're like next monthI'm actually going to reconcile
(21:46):
before I talk to you, but thegood thing is they are
completely up to date.
You know, they're alwaysreconciled, which they
definitely would not be if theydidn't talk to Carson.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
And if you're trying to reconcile in October for the
whole year or in January for theyear before to get it ready for
your CPA, you don't rememberwhy that $15 is off and you have
to go back.
And once you have a mess up youhave to backtrack, and so once
I have a hiccup, I just stopwhat I'm doing and I'm like you
(22:17):
know what.
He'll work on it on my nextappointment and then I'll be
able to move forward from there,absolutely.
Speaker 3 (22:22):
And also it shocks people how much money they made.
They're usually like, oh mygosh, did I really make that
much money?
Yeah, maybe if you would havedone some bookkeeping you
wouldn't have been so surprised.
That happens every single yearalso.
So, just to recap, everybodygets one call every single month
and it's actually at adiscounted rate, not our normal
(22:43):
hourly rate.
So you're kind of just goingahead and picking up one of
those spots and then the otherthing that we haven't talked
about on today's podcast is thatthey also get a tax projection,
which is free because there'sno additional charge.
It's basically just making surethey do a tax projection
because we want everybody toknow where they stand, and a lot
of people need tax projections,but they just choose not to do
(23:07):
them or they forget about doingthem.
So I was just interested toknow if you had ever done a tax
projection before the one youdid with us this last fall.
We did them all in like October, november, and then I wanted to
know what you thought about it.
Oh, and I also wanted to knowif you thought the tax
projection was helpful and if ithelped you like be more
(23:30):
prepared for filing in April andthe taxes that you actually
owed.
Speaker 1 (23:35):
So I'm going to recap that.
My husband's a farmer, sotypically we well we always owe
taxes because we're bothself-employed and you can't just
like not pay taxes.
I guess you could, but thatgets you in a lot of trouble,
but you weren't paying themquarterly.
Speaker 3 (23:51):
We were not paying them quarterly.
Speaker 1 (23:53):
We were paying them at the October deadline.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
And that's not April.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
No, yeah, the extension, because farmers are
like 80 year old men, that someare 80 year old men, some are 40
and act like they're 80 andthey don't want to give the
government money until the lastsecond.
So that's where I live, but itwould be a complete guess
because as a self-employedfarmer, your guess is as good as
mud Like there is and he wasn'tdoing like the bookkeeping.
Speaker 2 (24:20):
No, he wasn't doing like the bookkeeping every month
.
Speaker 3 (24:22):
He wasn't saying like , yeah, it was kind of a
surprise.
Speaker 1 (24:25):
It could be 5,000.
It could be 22,000.
It could just be.
It could be anything.
And then you don't know, Idon't have that kind of money in
my bank account.
So what we did this time wasbased on my last few years and
my goals for 2024 and 2025 andwhere I'm going with my business
was to really hone in on whatmy estimated taxes would be for
the following year, so that,even if my husband's business
(24:47):
does really bad or really good,at least we'll be sitting in a
different position, which, whenthe tax penalties changed, y'all
had recommended before.
Like it's, you know half adozen one way, it's, it doesn't,
it doesn't matter, you couldpick one way or the other.
And that's how we lived waslike the penalty wasn't so bad
that it really didn't make orbreak us deciding to do the
(25:10):
quarterly tax payments or justpaying it all in one lump sum in
October.
So you just always paid it allat once.
All at once, yep.
And so when we did the taxprojection in the fall, we had a
recommended amount and so nowI'm able to pay that quarterly,
so that even if my business doesway better or the same
hopefully it doesn't do worse,obviously then at least I've put
(25:32):
something into it because,again, it's your best guess
moving forward, and so if you doway better than anticipated,
that's going to show proof inyour books anyways, and if you
do about the same, then at leastyou know you're covered.
And with the tax break changesor the tax changes and the
penalty changes, now I do aquarterly payment.
But it was a really bigeye-opening thing that we
(25:52):
started doing this year.
This is the first year we'veever done quarterly payment.
Well, I'm so proud of you andyou gave me directions.
That was like I don't know whatto do.
So she sent an email with allthe things, exact directions,
who to send it to, what to writeon the envelope.
And that's what I need, becauseGoogle is not helpful when it
comes to the IRS and the IRSwebsite is not helpful either.
So she sent a pretty email thathad all the things on it,
(26:16):
including the vouchers.
So I printed them, filled themout, wrote a check and sent it
directly where it was.
And what surprised me actuallywith the quarterly payment is it
took forever for them todeposit it.
Yeah, they're not quick withanything which surprised me
because I figured if they wantmy money, they would deposit it
but, they didn't.
It took about a month for themto deposit it.
(26:36):
So you're waiting for thatcheck to clear, are?
Speaker 3 (26:38):
they going to take my money or no.
So you're waiting for thatcheck to clear Are they going to
take my money or no.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
Did they forget about me.
Cross your fingers, no, but ifyou have a problem they will be
real quick to turn around and belike you didn't turn in this,
this and this.
So that was a huge change thatwe just started this year.
So I'll be kind of happy to seewhere we're at with the tax
projection from last year.
Speaker 3 (27:06):
And then really when I meet with y'all in like June,
july, where I'm at this yearcompared to last year Awesome,
well, I like that you are allset up on estimated tax payments
for sure.
And also I thought of somethingwhere you're talking was that
the I wouldn't say it's likeactually on paper what a benefit
of the accounting plan is, butit it happens Like Amanda was
like, hey, I need to make thisestimated tax payment.
Carson gave her the number,they had their chat and she's
like, but I don't know how to doit.
(27:27):
I see her name come up, I knowwho she is, I know what her
business is, I know what's goingon, I immediately help her and
I'm like the back end ofeverything, so helping all of
these if something comes up.
We've been able to help thesemonthly clients with things that
pop up, whether it's one ofthem had a mortgage and they had
like they needed somethingwithin like two hours, and
because we've we've talked tothem all the time, it's really
(27:49):
easy for us to do stuff likethat and get them like really
individual, quick help, whereasif it's somebody that we haven't
spoken to all year, we don'tknow what's going on with them,
we have no idea and we have alot of extra work to do so
because we're working with allthese people, they are getting
like preferential treatment andreally quick service.
(28:10):
Because we talk to them all thetime it's like oh well, my
friend needs this thing, so wegot to help them out.
So that is definitely one thingthat I hope that people feel
working with us like.
That is, that they are gettingmore than just the call.
But, like you had said, we hadalready talked about it and set
her up to do that.
And then she's like oh well, Idon't actually know how to make
(28:30):
an estimated tax payment, Ididn't even think about asking
it and that's, I get it Likethere's no thing.
And we were able just torespond right away and make sure
she knew how to do it becausewe had just talked about all of
that in her meeting.
Speaker 1 (28:41):
So I'm going to add one thing.
So I didn't realize how much myconstant, I would say, contact
with y'all was going to behelpful for me, and so let me
ask you a question now.
Okay, so I met with y'all earlyJanuary and because I, y'all,
we did all the reconciling,everything was good for the year
(29:04):
, we basically closed out booksfor 2024.
How easy and how or howcomplicated was it for y'all to
file my business tax return?
Speaker 3 (29:12):
Oh my gosh, it was.
It was so easy.
It ideal client.
And I think it works both waysright.
You know you have clients.
You have people that are idealclients and you have people that
you're like, oh my gosh, thisis a mess.
That's how your CPA feels.
And the fact that all of thesepeople in the beta group had
their books reconciled.
They were ready in January.
(29:33):
We could get started on allthis work.
We have a huge, long list toget through before the filing
deadline and the fact thatyou're like serve us something
so easy, put together with thebow on it, like here is my tax
return ready to do early and mybooks are clean and we know
exactly what's going on.
(29:54):
And you did a tax projection sowe pretty much knew what the
results should be Right and if,for some reason, it wasn't, we
would know why.
So, yeah, it was.
Oh my gosh.
That's one of the biggestbenefits to this is that our
clients that we work with on amonthly basis it's so easy when
tax time comes around.
So I hope that you feel liketax time was easy and that
(30:16):
wasn't stressful.
Speaker 1 (30:17):
It was all I really had to do was reconcile my books
for December, becauseeverything else was already
ready, and then I run a reportand everything's good to go.
The only thing I had to do wasrun W-2s or 1099s for employees
and all the other things thatcome with January.
But in general it was reallyeasy to get everything to,
because everything was clean andeverything was done.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
And, like she mentioned getting getting 1099s
out, you have to get that out bythe end of january.
We were able to file the 1099sthat you had.
Speaker 1 (30:47):
oh yeah and so I wanted to know how to do 1099s
for my people.
So my january meeting part ofmy january meeting was carson
showed me how to do on quickbook, how to file my own 1099s,
because you never had to do that.
Speaker 3 (31:00):
I never did it before because, because you didn't
have QuickBooks, I didn't haveQuickBooks.
Yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 1 (31:05):
There was your January meeting.
It wasn't that hard and itsaved me money because I didn't
have to pay you to do it.
Speaker 3 (31:11):
Right, exactly.
And you were like, okay, if Iget all the stuff in QuickBooks
correctly, then it actually doesa lot of the work for me.
But the problem is a lot ofpeople with QuickBooks can't
file 1099s because they don'thave anything in there.
Right, and it's a mess.
So you have all your stuff inthere and QuickBooks is like hey
, amanda, your contractors needthese 1099s.
And you're like, oh, I don'tknow what buttons to click, but
(31:33):
now I do, because Carson told mehow to do it, so awesome.
Well, yeah, it totally makesour job so much easier.
But I hope that everybody feelslike tax season in general is
not that stressful once we'vedone all this work all year long
.
Not at all, not even stressedabout it.
Perfect, perfect, okay, amanda.
So not to put you on the spot,but you did agree to come to
(31:53):
this podcast.
You kind of are on the spot.
I just want to know, to wrapthis episode up, like what would
you say to somebody?
There's a few people askingquestions about the membership
and want to know what would yousay to somebody who's on the
fence about joining themembership?
Speaker 1 (32:14):
There's literally hands down, no questions asked.
You just need to jump, jump anddo it.
It's going to save you time andmoney in the long run.
It's going to save you so muchless headache and your CPA is
going to love you foreverbecause everything is going to
be so clean.
There's literally no question.
It's worth every penny and morereally Carson.
Speaker 3 (32:31):
Of course, numbers right.
You want numbers right.
He's like I have saved themonthly accounting people more
money than they've paid me, andthat's my goal.
For sure so whether it's settingup the Augusta rule in
QuickBooks for them or payingtheir kids, or telling them they
were doing something completelywrong and they're paying too
much, or we've converted a lotof the monthly members to S-Corp
(32:52):
.
He's like I've saved them somuch money and so for the
monthly fee to do it, you knowit's he feels so good being like
well they're.
Actually, if they hadn't cometo me, they still would be
paying more Correct, a hundredpercent.
So if you could describe thewhole membership in one word,
what would it be?
Awesome.
Don't you love questions likethis?
Speaker 1 (33:12):
I can never think of one, I never think of words, but
it's, it's awesome.
It's truly awesome.
I really feel like I'm actuallyon top of it.
I'm not a business guru.
I did not go to school forbusiness in any way, shape or
form.
That's not even my minor.
I am a people hands on personand I just feel so confident
(33:34):
about my back end business thatI never would have felt
confident for, even like a yearago business that I never would
have felt confident for, evenlike a year ago.
Speaker 3 (33:47):
I love that because confidence is one of the number
one things.
People come to us and feel likethey're just not doing
everything right.
I should be doing somethingelse.
I don't know what it is.
I'm not confident in runningthe business and the books and
everything, and if all themonthly accounting members feel
like I've got this, I feel likewe did what we wanted to do For
sure.
Well, I think that sums upeverything.
Thank you so much for beingwilling to come on the podcast
(34:10):
yet again and just share aboutthis monthly accounting
membership with everybody.
Thank you so much for having meand I hope everybody joins, of
course.
Of course, I think we have fivemore spots left that we're
opening and we didn't talk inthis episode a lot about the
fine details because we just didepisode on that.
(34:30):
So if you want to know aboutall of the different things
we're talking about in here andactually more fine details about
it, if you're really interestedin it, you can check out the
previous episode.
Also, we do have some discoverycalls If you would like to talk
to us.
Those are just 15 minute callsIf you want to see if it's a
good fit, ask additionalquestions, all of that and I
will link that in the show notesso you can book a call.
(34:53):
And, amanda, if someone islooking for a pelvic floor
therapist, which is the best oneever, I would say, in the whole
world.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
It's definitely the best profession in the world.
But as far as physical therapy,a hundred percent, we are the
best all pelvic floor therapists.
Speaker 3 (35:10):
And Amanda's the best .
So if you're looking for helpwith your pelvic floor, where
can people find you and whereare you on all of the things?
Speaker 1 (35:20):
So if you're local to Wise County, I am in Bridgeport
, texas.
My office is called RootedPhysical Therapy.
It's rootedphysicaltherapylccom.
My Instagram isrootedphysicaltherapy, as well
as my Facebook and my TikTok,and my YouTube channel is.
You can search either RootedPhysical Therap therapy or Dr
(35:40):
Amanda, and it's prettyentertaining.
I treat men, women and kidswith all pelvic floor
dysfunctions.
I consider myself an orthopelvic therapist, so I'm looking
at people from head to toeliterally with nothing left
uncovered, and trying to findthe root cause of everybody's
issues.
So even if it's just for somemild entertainment, it can be
pretty fun to watch.
Her content is awesome.
(36:01):
She's issues.
So even if it's just for somemild entertainment, it can be
pretty fun to watch.
Speaker 3 (36:02):
Her content is awesome.
She's amazing If you get theopportunity to work with her.
If you're local or virtual,then she's amazing, so thank you
.
Thank you so much for comingagain and until next time.
Thank you so much for listeningto what your CPA Wants you to
Know.
Podcast.
Bye.
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