0:00

Hey, and welcome back to yet. Another episode I'm so excited because

0:01

I'm sure that you clicked on this

0:04

episode because of the title today. It's all about maximizing profitability

0:06

and techniques or financial success.

0:10

And today we're going to be

0:10

deep diving into a conversation.

0:12

A lot of people love to have, but don't

0:12

like to implement to get the data.

0:16

And that is all about how to truly

0:16

track the profitability per client

0:20

and how to use that data as well. So I think a lot of people want to talk

0:22

through like, this is how you calculate

0:25

it, but what about how to analyze it? What about having those hard

0:27

conversations with a, what.

0:29

Are the things we need to tweak

0:29

in the business or change.

0:32

Maybe you need a price increase. Maybe you need to retrain your team.

0:35

A lot of that data will come

0:35

from knowing and understanding

0:37

your profitability per client. And today that is what we're going

0:39

to tackle in today's episode.

0:42

So I'm going to be covering things

0:42

around analyzing and increasing

0:45

your, profitability per client. I'm also going to touch on some client

0:46

management and financial optimization,

0:49

those different tips and tricks. And at the very end of the

0:51

episode, I'm also going to be covering how we cover in depth.

0:54

A lot of this information inside of my

0:54

group coaching program, breakthrough.

0:57

So I hope you enjoy today's episode. I do recommend that you do bring a pen and

0:59

paper because I talked about a lot of very

1:04

tactical and specific things that you can

1:04

do in QBO for specific journal entries,

1:08

to help you set up this information,

1:08

to get the data that you need.

1:11

So I do recommend that you come

1:11

with resources because there's

1:15

a lot of information here. So I hope you today's episode.

2:14

So let's talk through a very sexy

2:14

conversation that a lot of people love

2:17

to have, which is all about profitability

2:17

and that direct profitability per

2:22

client, and even for your firm as well. So in today's episode, I'm really

2:24

going to be covering maximizing

2:26

profitability techniques that you

2:26

can use for financial success in

2:30

your bookkeeping and accounting firm. I'm really going to focus a lot on

2:31

today's episode about analyzing and

2:35

increasing your profitability, especially

2:35

for those of you who might not be

2:38

correctly pricing your clients, or

2:38

you're not even sure if you are not.

2:42

maybe you just got an idea from

2:42

someone else in a Facebook group or

2:45

from a program you took about what

2:45

you should price, but you're not even

2:48

sure if that's actually going to be

2:48

priced to you for long-term growth.

2:51

We're also going to touch on some client

2:51

management and financial optimization.

2:54

so I'm gonna give some tips in ways that

2:54

I'm able to track my client profitability,

2:58

just so that way you can walk away

2:58

from this episode with some great key,

3:01

things that you could be using as well. So let's go ahead and dive in.

3:04

I've got a lot for this

3:04

episode for you guys.

3:06

I know that this is a topic that a

3:06

lot of people love to talk about.

3:10

Mostly because who doesn't

3:10

want to talk about how we can

3:12

be profitable in the business. Right. So let's start from the very beginning.

3:16

I really want to talk about analyzing,

3:16

increasing your profitability.

3:19

So before we try to like dive into really

3:19

analyzing your profitability, we really

3:23

need to think through, well, are you

3:23

actually even tracking this information?

3:26

Do you even know this? So if you're listening right now

3:27

and you can't tell me right now,

3:30

per client, I'm talking per client. what's your profit margin per client.

3:34

If you cannot answer that question, then

3:34

I really, really hope that you get a

3:37

pen and paper and you get ready because

3:37

one of the most important things is

3:41

to know that you're even profitable. You need to be tracking the data.

3:44

So yeah, you might be telling

3:44

yourself, well, Alyssa.

3:47

You know, I do have my books. Like I know how much money I

3:49

make, like overall for my firm.

3:52

And I know my overall profit margin. That's great.

3:55

And that will get you to a really great point. But I think that as you scale your firm

3:57

and as you continue to grow and grow.

4:00

You will find that you

4:00

need more deeper data.

4:04

That's going to really help you to

4:04

leverage like, are your clients not only

4:07

being a time suck, but also maybe like

4:07

you're losing money on your clients.

4:11

So in my program breakthrough, we

4:11

have a lot of students that when

4:13

they go through, because we have

4:13

a module dedicated to, our offers.

4:16

And so it's not like offers her a newbie

4:16

stage it's offers from you already have

4:20

been in business for quite some time. And maybe you haven't

4:22

been pricing correctly. But what we do with our students is we

4:24

have them analyze all of their current

4:27

clients and their lists and see their

4:27

true profitability if their time sucks.

4:31

If it's something that they're not happy

4:31

with this client and so on and so forth,

4:34

and a lot of our students, because they

4:34

get to submit homework reviews, they

4:37

submit their homework and a lot of the. things that I'm seeing as a trend, as a

4:39

lot of students who come into breakthrough

4:43

are at the stage where they are. Wildly losing money from all

4:46

of their clients, because

4:49

they're really undercharging.

4:51

So if you are listening right now

4:51

and you're charging, like, I don't

4:54

know, your baseline is $200 a month. I'm telling you right now

4:56

that that is way too low.

4:59

It is just not sustainable for long-term

4:59

growth, especially as you want to grow

5:02

your team, you'll just get stuck in this

5:02

like, like cycle, this vicious cycle of

5:07

constantly undercharging your clients

5:07

and never being able to afford someone

5:10

to support you as the business grows. And so it's a really eye opening

5:12

experience for all of our breakthroughs

5:15

students that they go in and they

5:15

submit this portion of the program.

5:18

A lot of them do go end up changing

5:18

their pricing, do the price increases.

5:23

And they come back saying

5:23

like, I'm way more profitable.

5:25

I can afford my team. And they're continuously growing.

5:28

And so I just want to preface that,

5:28

like I have seen through my students.

5:32

All the different ways that

5:32

people charge and I'm telling

5:34

you that the industry standard. As a lot of people are really

5:36

undercharging and we really need

5:39

to collectively, as a group,

5:39

start to adjust our baseline to

5:43

be no less than a certain amount. Right. For my firm, our monthly fees.

5:46

The smallest package,

5:46

nothing goes less than $400.

5:50

Every one of our clients has

5:50

to be on a package over $400.

5:53

Our average invoice value per client

5:53

is I believe it's around $895.

5:57

So that's like our average

5:57

fee that we mostly sell.

6:00

And so just so you know, I don't

6:00

know if that helps anybody.

6:02

I don't know. I also work with just like

6:03

basic service providers.

6:06

E-commerce brands. The e-commerce brands are minimum.

6:08

We go no less than $600. Because e-commerce is very complex.

6:12

So if they're an e-commerce brand, They

6:12

immediately have to be at least at a $600

6:16

package and above because there's a lot of

6:16

complexities, a lot of different software.

6:19

We have to use to integrate with it. But service-based, and like our

6:21

course creators and our coaches,

6:24

minimum is $400 rarely ever do

6:24

our clients ever meet the minimum.

6:27

They're usually higher than

6:27

that, but that's our baseline.

6:30

So I really encourage you. If you're listening.

6:32

If you are currently, maybe your baseline

6:32

is like a hundred dollars or $200.

6:36

I encourage you that next time

6:36

you get on a call and you.

6:38

Send out a proposal, just increase it

6:38

just by a little bit, just $50, just $25.

6:43

And see if people take it. You're going to get more nos than you are.

6:46

Yes. Is when you start to increase your

6:47

price rates, but I'm telling you,

6:49

you find quality clients that your

6:49

team is actually happy to work with.

6:53

So I just want to kind of like

6:53

preface with that part here.

6:55

that like, if you're not taking the time

6:55

to look at your client profitability,

6:59

then honestly, you're, you're just going

6:59

to be stuck in this really vicious cycle.

7:03

So this is really what this episode is all about. So, first of all, when you were talking

7:05

about analyzing your profitability,

7:09

and when I say profitability, I'm

7:09

referencing in this podcast episode,

7:13

Your profitability per client.

7:15

this is not the overall

7:15

profitability of the company.

7:17

that's a different conversation for a different day. So one thing that I really recommend

7:19

is checking in on your client

7:21

profitability at some sort of frequency.

7:23

And so this frequency is

7:23

totally up to you, but for us,

7:26

we do it on a monthly basis. And I'm also going to recommend this

7:27

to you to do this on a monthly basis.

7:30

And the reason why is because. In the accounting space, we

7:31

have a 30 day full cycle.

7:34

And so, because there's a full 30

7:34

day cycle, you want to make sure

7:37

that you're capturing that data

7:37

on that monthly basis, if you can.

7:41

And so for us, what that

7:41

looks like is we do this on a

7:43

spreadsheet every single month. So I believe it's at the

7:45

beginning of each month.

7:48

we go in and pull the time tracking

7:48

data, and then also all the

7:51

information from QBO that we've set up. To be able to easily calculate

7:53

that information for us.

7:55

And we just take that information

7:55

and add it to a spreadsheet.

7:58

And essentially this spreadsheet has

7:58

each and every client listed out.

8:02

And then on the left-hand side,

8:02

it also has what bookkeeper we

8:04

also, is in charge of that client. And also what account manager

8:06

is in charge of that client. Just so we can see how much time

8:08

each of those spent on them.

8:11

And then who's like in charge of

8:11

that client, if that makes sense.

8:14

So essentially in that spreadsheet,

8:14

we're putting the client's name and

8:17

then each of the months of the year,

8:17

and then we're essentially pulling

8:20

a report from QBO that will tell us

8:20

what the profitability is per client.

8:25

And so we just plug that information

8:25

in and it's a percentage.

8:29

And we could see our average

8:29

percentage of profitability per client

8:33

because every month is different. Sometimes, you know, our team has to

8:34

work a little bit more than usual.

8:37

Per quarter, I don't know, I'm

8:37

just making up random things, but

8:40

maybe per quarter, we have to do

8:40

some like advanced journal entries.

8:43

So it might influx our time,

8:43

but we want to see the average

8:46

profitability per client. So we do that every single month at the

8:47

beginning of the month, but we're pulling

8:51

that data from several different places. So I wanted to kind of take

8:53

a step back for a second.

8:55

Before you can have these types of

8:55

resources, you need to understand how to

8:59

calculate the profitability per client. So really the profitability per client

9:01

is going to be taking the amount

9:05

that you charge the client minus. The software cost and minus

9:06

the direct cost for labor.

9:09

So anybody that you're hiring. To do the work.

9:12

if you are a solo business owner, do

9:12

not include your own like rate, I'm

9:16

doing bunny ears, but you can't see it. You can't even hear it either, but

9:17

like I'm doing these buddy years

9:20

because your rate doesn't count.

9:22

Like I know that sounds really crazy. And a lot of people might differ

9:24

with me and that's totally okay.

9:26

Just do what feels good for you. But in my mind, you can control

9:28

how much you're paid by how

9:31

much money your company has. You can't really control that with your

9:33

team member that you've hired on that

9:36

you've, contracted with to say that they

9:36

are going to get paid X number of hours.

9:40

And so what we do is we take the

9:40

client's fee minus Coff cost of software,

9:45

and then minus the cost of labor. And that brings us to the full

9:47

total of how much we're profiting

9:49

per client and the dollar amount. So let's just give a really easy example

9:51

because I am so terrible at math.

9:55

It's really sad. I love calculators.

9:58

So let's just say that you're charging your client a hundred dollars. Let's just keep it really

10:00

short, sweet to the point. So you're charging your,

10:02

client every single month, a hundred dollars for their fee.

10:05

But let's just say that you

10:05

spend $10 on software and then

10:08

you spend an additional $10. Which would be so cheap

10:10

on your cost of labor.

10:13

So that would be anybody working on the

10:13

books directly related to that client.

10:16

So that means that overall you're

10:16

profiting $80 for that client.

10:20

And so from there, you can also even

10:20

see, like, what's your percentage

10:23

of profitability and whatnot, but

10:23

I'm not going to go through that.

10:25

calculation right at this moment

10:25

because I really want to stay focused

10:28

on the overall profitability here. So the reason why we do this is because

10:30

a lot of the times, all of you listening

10:34

here, we do sometimes pay for QBO.

10:36

Maybe you pay for things like

10:36

keeper or XenX, any of those

10:40

softwares in order to deliver on

10:40

the service to support your client.

10:44

You're going to want to keep in mind. You're not going to want to calculate

10:45

in your cost of software per client.

10:48

Like things like Google drive. Like, you're not going to want to

10:49

like cost it and things like Asana

10:52

because that's not directly related

10:52

to delivering on the service.

10:54

We're only talking about the direct software. So for example, if you serve

10:56

e-commerce business owners,

10:58

just like we do at my firm. Then you might want to consider

11:00

the fee that you pay for A2X you

11:02

also might want to consider the

11:02

fee for QBO for, for me it's XenX.

11:06

And so we're going into Hubdocs. Sometimes we cover the cost

11:08

of Hubdoc for our clients.

11:11

So we want to calculate all the different

11:11

tech that we're paying for in direct

11:15

correlation to delivering on the service. And then we also look at what account

11:17

managers and bookkeepers are spending

11:20

their time on that client's books. And the way that we're able to

11:23

calculate that information is

11:25

it's really straightforward. We use a time tracking system.

11:28

And the time-tracking system that

11:28

we use is Clockify and so even if

11:32

like you don't have a team, I still

11:32

recommend that you follow this

11:35

process because it's very eyeopening. so clarify is essentially this free,

11:37

like time tracking system and it connects

11:41

with our Asana, which is really great,

11:41

which is my project management system.

11:44

I do know it connects

11:44

with click up as well.

11:46

I don't know about the other

11:46

softwares and systems, but if you

11:48

use something like keeper, then you

11:48

can use our time tracker in there.

11:51

As long as they have the ability

11:51

to tag things and note what

11:55

client it was in relation to. So every time you're doing work for your

11:57

clients, I really recommend that you

12:00

time, track those tasks, at least do this

12:00

for 30 days, just to see if you don't

12:04

feel like time tracking all the time. That's. Okay. But maybe every quarter

12:06

you do it for 30 days.

12:09

Just to kind of see the overall

12:09

profitability per client.

12:12

So essentially you're talking your time. Every time you're doing work for

12:13

a specific client, you're just

12:16

going to tag it like in Clockify,

12:16

we have the ability to tag.

12:19

So we tag that time entry

12:19

with the client's name.

12:23

And so we actually set up each

12:23

of our team members, billable

12:26

rates inside of Clockify. Which is really cool.

12:28

So at the end of each month where we're

12:28

doing this calculation, or how often we do

12:32

this, We could just go in there and just

12:32

pull the data and pull the information

12:36

and Clockify we'll calculate for us

12:36

the billable rate for that client that

12:40

they worked on, which is really cool. So you want to be tracking

12:42

your time if you are solo.

12:45

So if you're someone who's like, I want to

12:45

still know if I'm profitable per client.

12:49

And you want to hire somebody, like I

12:49

said, your rate really doesn't count.

12:53

So what I would recommend is that

12:53

if you do want to hire someone.

12:56

I would still track your time. And then what you would do is for your

12:58

cost of labor for per client, you would

13:02

take how much time you spent on it. So let's just say you spent

13:04

10 hours on that client.

13:07

And then times that by the rate that

13:07

you would potentially hire someone for.

13:11

So let's just say that you would

13:11

hire a bookkeeper for $20 an hour.

13:14

So that would mean that if you

13:14

spent 10 hours at $20 an hour on

13:18

the client's books, it would cost

13:18

you to pay someone $200 just to do

13:23

the books for that specific client.

13:25

And so the reason why I say doing that

13:25

is because if you are so low and you're

13:29

dreaming of hiring someone, but you

13:29

don't know, you know where to start and

13:32

you don't know if you can afford them. And you don't know if you're actually

13:34

pricing your clients correctly, to

13:36

be able to afford the longterm team. This is a great way to do that.

13:39

So take your hours times at,

13:39

by the rate that you would hire

13:42

someone for, to see and do that

13:42

calculation of cost per client to see.

13:47

What the overall profitability is. This is really eyeopening for

13:48

a lot of people who joined like

13:51

our free boot camps and our free

13:51

sessions, or even in my programs.

13:54

Where they're like Alyssa, I want to

13:54

hire a team, but like right now, my

13:57

profitability is really high because

13:57

it's just me because my time doesn't

14:00

count where my money doesn't count. That I, you know, work

14:02

for, for, for the client.

14:05

And I always tell them, like, then just

14:05

change the rate to be the rate that you

14:08

would charge a book, pay a bookkeeper.

14:11

So it's really that straightforward. So what you're gonna do, like I mentioned

14:13

before is choose your frequency.

14:16

Of how often you're gonna be

14:16

tracking your client profitability.

14:18

Like I said, we have a spreadsheet that

14:18

we do monthly user time tracking to be

14:22

able to tell you what your direct cost is. Per client for each team members

14:24

time that they spend on each client.

14:28

If your time tracking

14:28

system does not calculate.

14:30

the billable rate. Per team member then that's okay.

14:33

Just take the amount of hours that

14:33

each team member spends each client

14:37

and times that by their rate, the

14:37

calculations really that simple.

14:41

And then what you want to do is I want

14:41

you to make a list of all the different

14:44

tech and software that you pay in direct

14:44

correlation to delivering on that service.

14:48

So now you should know the overall.

14:51

Software costs the

14:51

overall labor, for them.

14:53

And then that way you could calculate

14:53

out your overall profitability and then

14:57

what I would recommend that you do and

14:57

how we have it set up is that we set up

15:00

our QuickBooks online account for, from. To essentially gather all this

15:03

information and gather all this

15:06

documentation to be able to spit out

15:06

the Profit margin per client inside

15:11

of QBO and these reports for us. And so I definitely had a lot of

15:13

support from Brooks one on this

15:16

one, because she had kind of had

15:16

the system already nailed down.

15:19

So huge shout out to Brooke Swan. So essentially what we do is every time

15:20

we pay our team members, cause we use

15:24

Gusto every time we pay our team members. We actually extract the report.

15:28

from Clockify that tells us how much

15:28

time each team member spent per client.

15:32

And then also look at how much we

15:32

actually paid each of the team members.

15:35

And we do like an advanced journal

15:35

entry and inside of QBO where

15:38

essentially the journal entry. Is taking the salary and wages and

15:41

it's offsetting it to like add tags

15:45

and classify it to the client's name.

15:48

And so each team member is classified

15:48

in each, each dollar amount essentially

15:52

is classified to the right client. And this is really helpful for us because

15:54

at the end of the day, what it will do

15:58

for us is it will tell us each pay period,

15:58

how much money went towards an allocation

16:02

of each client, which is really cool.

16:04

and it's just super helpful data. And then the other thing that

16:06

we do as well is that we create journal entries inside of QBO.

16:10

For the software. And so for each month we have like a

16:12

recurring, like we have a recurring

16:15

journal entry inside of QBO. That doesn't automatically recur.

16:19

We have to actually like fire it

16:19

off, but at least it's set up for

16:22

us that essentially calculates

16:22

out all the different software.

16:25

Because if we add on a new client

16:25

in our onboarding, we make sure that

16:28

we have a task that says if we're

16:28

paying for certain software, to make

16:31

sure to add that client software

16:31

to our journal entry inside of QBO.

16:35

So every month when we run those reports

16:35

and we actually use those journal

16:39

entries, when the fee from let's just

16:39

use an example from QBO comes in for the

16:43

fees that we pay to QBO for our clients. We'll go in and like adjust the journal

16:45

entry to reflect the amount of money that

16:49

we are spending per client per software.

16:52

and same thing, we classify

16:52

it to each of the clients, I'm

16:55

sorry, we don't classify it. I should probably take a step back.

16:57

We don't classify it. We actually use classes as the type

16:58

of service that we're offering.

17:02

We use the feature clients inside of QBO.

17:05

So sorry if I confuse you there. And so essentially what we do is

17:07

every time that we're onboarding

17:10

a new client, we're adding that

17:10

client to our journal entry.

17:12

With the software that we know that we're

17:12

going to automatically pay for them.

17:15

So we have separate journal entries for

17:15

A2X separate one for Hubdoc separate

17:18

one for QBO and a separate one for

17:18

XenX, because those are typically the

17:22

softwares that we're usually covering. the expense for, for our clients,

17:23

if you don't cover software for your

17:26

clients and just ignore all of this. so anyways, what we do is when those

17:28

fees come in from those companies

17:32

charging us for a monthly bill. We're just then creating that

17:34

journal entry to like, Take all

17:38

of the fees and allocate it to the

17:38

correct clients that we had attaches

17:42

to the correct client side of QBO. And what this does is by the time that

17:44

we run like a P and L every single month,

17:49

to be able to put our data into that

17:49

monthly spreadsheet, I talked about.

17:52

When we do this by the

17:52

time that we get to that.

17:54

Aspect of things we could pull like

17:54

an easy P and L that like breaks it

17:58

down per client and it'll actually

17:58

show us the profitability percentage.

18:01

And so that's the percentage that

18:01

we're using and putting inside

18:04

of our monthly spreadsheet. That will help us average out.

18:07

And so the reason why I bring this up,

18:07

and I know that sounds very complex,

18:10

but once you get this running and

18:10

you get it set up, it seriously works

18:12

like a charm and you really don't

18:12

ever have to like worry about it.

18:15

but I really want you to give

18:15

yourself an idea of what profitability

18:18

you want to reach per client. And I always recommend that you.

18:22

Make this percentage a little

18:22

bit high, because remember we're

18:24

also not considering all the

18:24

other tech that we have to use.

18:27

All the other things we get to

18:27

pay for that assistant, all the

18:30

different things that we have to pay

18:30

for that are outside of the direct

18:32

cost, delivering on the service. And so for us, we are aiming for 65%

18:34

to a 75% profit margin per client.

18:40

And so determine whatever that amount is.

18:43

And so on our spreadsheet every single

18:43

month, when we're putting in the data of

18:46

like the percentage that's coming from

18:46

our books, That's telling us, you know,

18:51

the profitability per client, we actually

18:51

can see are we actually hitting our goal?

18:56

And are we outside of that goal? Are we below the goal?

18:59

And then if we're below the goal,

18:59

that's when we're having a conversation

19:02

with the team members to see. why are things taking so long or maybe

19:03

we're just not pricing correctly.

19:07

And so when you have this data, this

19:07

black white information, It makes

19:11

it way easier for you to then make

19:11

decisions to increase your clients

19:15

rates and you don't feel guilty. And I think a lot of people just

19:17

blindly going into these price increases

19:20

with their clients and they feel bad.

19:23

They feel guilty. They feel like they're

19:24

doing something wrong. And like the reason why you feel

19:26

like you're doing something wrong is

19:29

because you don't have data to back

19:29

it up black and white data will make

19:32

you so much more, less emotional. And I know this from experience.

19:36

If you can see that you were actually

19:36

losing money on your clients, I can't.

19:40

Tell you how many times we've had

19:40

our students do this in breakthrough,

19:43

where they're like looking at the

19:43

direct cost of each client and they

19:46

see that they're really losing money. You'll be surprised how quick

19:48

and easy it is for them to

19:50

actually make that price increase. Because now they have

19:52

black and white data. It's pretty straightforward.

19:55

And all they have to do is

19:55

increase the rates for the clients.

19:57

And so my recommendation is to

19:57

just take the time to determine the

20:00

frequency that you want to track

20:00

this client profitability, do the

20:03

internal work to be able to get that

20:03

data, which is through time tracking,

20:06

tagging each of your entries with. the, client's tag for each task that

20:08

they're performing, take their billable

20:12

rate, add it to a journal entry to

20:12

offset what you're actually paying them.

20:16

So that way it's like tagging it per client. Then, then setting up your journal entries

20:18

for each of your, softwares as well.

20:22

And this will help you to

20:22

produce a P&L by client that will

20:25

help to give you the, percent. Profit percentage.

20:28

that you can use in your calculation. So it's honestly super eyeopening.

20:32

Like I can't tell you how many

20:32

times I'm like, oh my God, we need

20:34

to increase our rates and whatnot. So setting up your books to track

21:43

this data is really, really key.

21:46

If you've never done this before. And this sounds very overwhelming.

21:49

I think this is what is going to

21:49

help you with your clients as well

21:53

is if you could figure this out

21:53

for yourself with how to set up.

21:57

You know, tracking your own client's profitability. Imagine the services that you

21:59

can offer for your clients.

22:01

So imagine what you could do for

22:01

your clients to say, Hey, you know

22:04

what, let's do an analysis of your

22:04

profitability per clients as well.

22:08

Here's what I'm going to need you to do. And here's what I'm gonna do on the

22:09

backend so that we can get that data.

22:12

We do that. And as a service at my firm is we do,

22:12

program offer and also service and down

22:18

to the depth of the client profitability. And sometimes we only do them on

22:21

one-off occasions when the client

22:23

just like really needs to know

22:23

if they're actually profitable.

22:26

So we could do one-time calculations

22:26

or consistent calculations.

22:29

And so this could be something that

22:29

you can add on as a service as well.

22:32

If you have any followup questions

22:32

to this, please feel free to like

22:34

Instagram me @workflowqueen or shoot me

22:34

an email at support@workflowqueen.com.

22:38

I know that was like a lot

22:38

of data tech specific things.

22:42

If you are a breakthrough student listening here. if you have any followup questions,

22:43

feel free to bring them to a

22:46

coaching call, feel free to bring them to the Facebook group. Our team will help you.

22:48

Brooke Swan is also one of the coaches

22:48

and she's more than happy to walk

22:52

you through this process down to a

22:52

T any of our breakthroughs students.

22:55

get full access to have a

22:55

support you in this capacity.

22:58

as much as we possibly can. So let's talk through,

23:00

increasing your rates. So depending on what data you

23:02

find, when you actually do the

23:06

calculation of profitability for

23:06

a client, Is going to determine

23:09

whether you need to increase or not. You also might find that maybe

23:10

you need to decrease your rates.

23:13

Maybe you're charging your client too much. like I said, if you are so low, then

23:14

your percent, your profit margin per

23:18

client is going to be way higher. Than everyone else.

23:21

Like I do have a team, so like, I

23:21

literally have to pay for my team.

23:25

Here's what I'm about to say. I have to pay for my team.

23:27

And so like, unfortunately my profit

23:27

margin is going to be lower than

23:29

someone who doesn't have a team. And like I said, if you dream of

23:31

a team that I would calculate your

23:34

hours, times the billable rate that

23:34

you would pay them to see if you'd

23:37

actually be losing money and your

23:37

profit margin would change per client.

23:41

And so I would take the time to determine

23:41

if you do need to make that increase.

23:44

There's a really great

23:44

resource by Melissa Honan.

23:47

She has, increasing your, price,

23:47

some sort of like resource.

23:50

I always forget the name of it. I will drop the link below this

23:51

video, and it's really just all about

23:55

how to price increase your clients. And she talks through some things around.

23:58

how often you should be doing this. And she also gives you like a

24:00

resource on how to actually do this.

24:03

So I'm gonna highly recommend that. and that's Melissa Honan and I will drop

24:04

that information below, cause I totally

24:07

forgot what the name of her program is. So I apologize, Melissa,

24:09

if you're listening. so now we're going to move on to creating

24:11

more efficiency, to reduce the time.

24:14

So. If you find that your team members

24:15

are taking a lot of time to complete

24:18

the work, making your profit margin

24:18

lower, then maybe you want to

24:20

consider what are the things that

24:20

you can do with each team member?

24:23

in correlation to that client

24:23

to make things faster and

24:26

make things more efficient. So I'm going to try to give you

24:27

the best example possible for this.

24:31

But for me, we work with e-commerce brands. And so a lot of these

24:33

different e-commerce platforms.

24:35

So like Wix, Shopify, like,

24:35

um, square, all these different

24:40

platforms that our clients are using. Really don't give us the best information.

24:44

Very straightforward. If you have an e-commerce niche

24:45

and then, you know what I'm saying?

24:48

And so we determine that like the

24:48

easiest way that we could cut our

24:52

time down on when we were actually

24:52

put, cause we would do like monthly.

24:56

Journal entries for the sales. So we create clearing accounts and

24:58

the clearing accounts for like Wix

25:02

clearing accounts for after pay

25:02

all the different, applications.

25:05

But essentially what we do is for

25:05

the, journal entries, you would do

25:08

just one massive journal entry, moving

25:08

money from the clearing account and

25:11

then putting it to actual sales. Right. And so I swear to you, all these

25:13

platforms do not make it easy

25:17

to get the right reporting. Sometimes you have to go to four different

25:18

places just to get the reporting,

25:21

to be able to put onto the books. And so we determined that it would

25:23

be best for us to take the time,

25:26

which it did take us a while to be

25:26

able to calculate all these things.

25:29

It took us some time to create

25:29

these custom calculators.

25:32

That we have that are customized. Per like platform.

25:36

So per Shopify, after pay

25:36

Wix square, all the different

25:40

platforms that our clients use. And so we create these custom

25:42

calculators because each one's

25:44

calculating different things because

25:44

reporting is different in each of these.

25:48

Different payment processing systems. And so the reason I'm saying

25:50

this is because we were able to

25:53

create these calculators that

25:53

literally cut our time down by 75%.

25:58

Per time that our team member

25:58

does those journal entries.

26:01

And then we also use something called right tools. So if you haven't heard a right

26:03

tool, it's freaking amazing. So we use right tool to

26:05

be able to easily paste.

26:08

The journal entry that it calculates

26:08

for us into QBO because of this.

26:12

We were able to cut down so much of our

26:12

time across all of our clients that we do.

26:16

E-commerce for that we're actually

26:16

have a higher profit margin.

26:20

So the, this is, What I'm trying

26:20

to tell you is take a step back

26:23

and say, how can we improve the

26:23

efficiency to get things done faster?

26:27

And sometimes this means collaboration

26:27

with your team, having those tough

26:30

conversations of like, Hey guys,

26:30

let's talk about the operations.

26:33

Like, what do you do that? Like you dread, are there ways that you

26:34

can create better and more comprehensive

26:37

trainings for your teams on setting up

26:37

rules inside of QuickBooks online because

26:41

rules seriously make you so much faster.

26:44

And so my recommendation is

26:44

take the time to ask the hard

26:48

questions for your team or. You do the work as well to see what are

26:49

the hiccups, where can we make it faster?

26:54

In what ways can we make those resources?

26:56

another great example is things like

26:56

if you don't have a project management

26:59

system and you're doing everything

26:59

by memory and you're emailing each of

27:01

your team members, all those tasks,

27:01

then maybe it's time to get you set

27:06

up in a project management system. It won't have a direct correlation per se,

27:07

to like the overall efficiency per client,

27:13

but it will have an overall efficiency

27:13

for the whole entire company, which could

27:16

bleed into each of your clients as well.

27:19

And so just taking a step back

27:19

and looking at the hard things

27:22

in the business and saying, what

27:22

can we do to make things easier?

27:25

Maybe there's a team member who needs

27:25

additional training, who takes a lot of

27:28

time completing specific client's work.

27:31

So instead of being mad and frustrated

27:31

about it, just firing them, what are

27:35

some resources and things that maybe

27:35

you could prerecord or things that

27:38

you can do to help your team members? So this information is not there to just

27:39

sit on a spreadsheet and tell you your.

27:43

You know, you're to gloat

27:43

the profit margin per client.

27:46

It's really meant to help

27:46

you analyze the business and

27:48

really break these things down. And so I really recommend that if you are.

27:52

Like listening to this episode, and

27:52

this is something that you've been

27:55

putting off for a very long time.

27:57

You've been super busy. We just got done with 10 99 season

27:58

and we're all in cleanup season.

28:01

Like I totally get it. But like it's seriously such a

28:02

game changer when you can like walk

28:05

into a sales meeting, knowing that

28:05

like, you can not afford to charge

28:09

people no less than X, because it

28:09

will seriously make you go broke.

28:13

I swear to you, you have way more

28:13

confidence when you're landing a sale.

28:17

When you know you can't afford to have it. Anything less than that.

28:19

And I promise you, it works like a charm. And so if you're listening and you

28:22

want some more support with your

28:24

offers, and you're really trying to

28:24

scale the business and you really want

28:27

to get to that next level by hiring

28:27

the right team members or expanding

28:30

your team, if you currently have one. That will help you to be remove

28:32

yourself from the day-to-day work so

28:34

that you could focus on other things

28:34

in your life, or maybe even building

28:38

something different, and focusing

28:38

your attention somewhere else.

28:40

And maybe you're just burnt out by being in the weeds. Then I'm going to highly recommend

28:43

checking out my group coaching

28:45

program, and it's called breakthrough

28:45

for bookkeepers and accountants.

28:48

And this has meant for bookkeeping

28:48

firms that aren't at the newbie stage.

28:51

So you must at least have some clients

28:51

under your belt, and have experienced

28:55

issues within your business to be

28:55

able to take into breakthrough.

28:58

So that way we could support you with it. and you must also have some sort of

28:59

a project management system in place.

29:02

It does not have to be the project

29:02

management system I teach, which is Asana.

29:06

it could totally be any sort of system.

29:09

We just can't take people with pen and paper. If you only use pen and paper and

29:11

you check off every other box, have

29:14

a conversation with me because we

29:14

have a program called kickoff with

29:17

Asana where we actually give you

29:17

all the methodologies and everything

29:20

that you need to know to set up Asana

29:20

and also all the templates that you

29:23

need to run your whole entire firm.

29:26

But my recommendation is if you're

29:26

at that scaling phase and that you

29:28

really want to expand and grow. We have a whole entire module

29:30

dedicated to just offers, which is all

29:34

about pricing for long-term growth.

29:36

Re-evaluating your profit margin. Really stepping into, restructuring your

29:38

packages and what that should look like.

29:42

Analyzing each of your clients to see if

29:42

you're actually happy, how to let them go.

29:45

How to price increase. I know I mentioned that Melissa

29:47

has a price increasing asset,

29:49

but we also include that for

29:49

our breakthrough students.

29:52

any of those price increase emails, any

29:52

of the assets even include trackers.

29:55

So if you're at that stage in

29:55

business, and that's only one

29:58

portion of breakthrough, all other

29:58

parts cover the internal external

30:01

systems, everything beyond. Uh, down to mindset removability

30:03

and hiring your team members.

30:07

And so if that's something that it

30:07

just gets you excited and you want

30:10

to have a conversation about, feel

30:10

free to book a consult with me,

30:13

I will be super direct with you. I do this all the time with people where I

30:14

get on these consults about breakthrough,

30:18

and I let them know immediately

30:18

whether they're a good fit or not.

30:21

And then also if you're not a good

30:21

fit, what you need to do in order

30:24

to get ready for breakthrough. Because sometimes people come on and

30:25

they haven't started their business yet.

30:28

And unfortunately, breakthrough is not for you. We really need people who have experienced

30:30

those issues in business, where they're

30:33

starting to hit a wall and they really

30:33

want to break through that's the

30:36

intention of the name the program. So I'll drop a link below

30:37

where you can go to workflow. queen.com, backslash consult dash

30:39

call and book a call with me.

30:43

I'm more than happy to chat with you. And that will be extremely transparent.

30:47

But if you really want to implement

30:47

a lot of what we talked about

30:49

today, then breakthrough is

30:49

definitely the program for you.

30:52

So I hope you enjoyed today's episode. Go back relisten to it.

30:54

If you need to, if you have any follow-up

30:54

questions, feel free to reach out to me.

30:57

Like I said, if you're a breakthrough

30:57

student and you're listening to

30:59

this and you want to go deep dive

30:59

into this information and what this

31:02

actually looks like, feel free to

31:02

come bring it to a coaching call,

31:05

come bring it into the Facebook group. And I'm more than happy to share with

31:07

you the, journal entry, everything

31:10

that I have put in place, as well. And I'm sure that broken also

31:12

talk on that as well as a

31:15

coach inside a breakthrough to. So, yeah, I hope this helped everybody out

31:17

and I hope you enjoy the rest of your day.