Join the club. One of the biggest complaints that accountants, bankers and other professionals hear from their small business clients is that they can’t find a good bookkeeper.

Lots of Bookkeepers in Canada. According to Service Canada (“Job Futures, National Edition, Bookkeepers”,  (19 April 2009)), in 2004 (the most recent year for which statistics are available), there were approximately 126,000 bookkeepers in Canada.  Of those, almost 42,000 (33%) were self-employed.

But very few good ones. Unfortunately, of those 42,000, well under 1,000 (2%) have undergone any kind of voluntary certification through one of the recognized bookkeeping organizations in Canada.

And the good bookkeepers are hard to find. Almost all of the self-employed bookkeepers are sole practitioners – they work for themselves out of their home.  Each bookkeeper can only take on an average of 5 to 20 clients (depending on size and volume).  Most good bookkeepers are already full up with work (mostly through referrals) and so they don’t advertise.

So, what is a small business owner to do?


Come to BookkeepingExpress.


Every one of our franchisees is:

• A Certified Bookkeeper
• Our franchisees have been tested and certified by one of the leading bookkeeping organizations in Canada to ensure proficiency in accounting and bookkeeping concepts and in basic taxation principles.
• A Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor
• Our franchisees have been tested on proficiency using QuickBooks.
• Experienced
• We require all of our franchisees to have at least three (3) years of full-time equivalent experience in providing full-cycle bookkeeping to small business clients.

We have selected from the best and brightest bookkeepers in Canada.  We have high standards because we stand behind our work.  All of our franchisees offer a 100% client satisfaction guarantee.

Come to BookkeepingExpress and Get Peace of Mind.

Historically, our clients come from one of three groups of small business owners:

Doing your own bookkeeping seemed like a great idea when you first started your business.  It was a great way to save money and stay in touch with the financial side of your business.

As time went on, however, you’ve come to some of the following realizations:

• Without training in bookkeeping or accounting software (which is very sophisticated today – notwithstanding how easy it’s vendors say it is), bookkeeping takes you an inordinate amount of time.
  

• The time you spend on bookkeeping could be put to much better use working in and growing your business.  The effective cost of doing your own bookkeeping is not “free”, when it comes at the cost of time that you could spend providing better service to yoru clients and growing your business.

• Your accountant spends quite a bit of time (and you money) at year end cleaning up and fixing your work.

Have you tried using an inexpensive “kitchen table” bookkeeper?

• There are many “bookkeepers” offering their services for $15 to $25 per hour.  They often have limited experience in bookkeeping and accounting, but they are very cheap on an hourly basis (good bookkeepers usually charge anywhere from $30 to $60 per hour depending on their skills and experience).
  
  And, while their hourly rates are “cheap”, they often take an inordinate amount of time to do their work (resulting in large bills – even with low rates).   And, like with those business owners doing their own bookkeeping, you realize that it likely would have been quicker (and less expensive) for your professional accountant to do the work from scratch themselves rather than to try to clean up inaccurate bookkeeping done by someone else.  You end up spending more in combined fees to your bookkeeper and accountant than you would have paid to an experienced bookkeeper to do it properly the first time.

• After experiencing great frustration doing their bookkeeping themselves, or using a “cheap” bookkeeper, many small business clients give up and ask their accountant to do their bookkeeping. 
  
  Many accountants take on this work, not because they want to do it, but because they don’t know any good bookkeepers who aren’t already full-up and who are taking on new clients.  They don’t want to lose you as a client, so they agree to do your bookkeeping as well as your financial statements and taxes.
  
  Most accountants realize that they aren’t set up to do this kind of work profitably (often their overheads are too high and they do not have the systems and appropriately trained staff in place to do it quickly and efficiently).  Instead, they just give it to their accounting students (who have almost no training in bookkeeping and no training in financial accounting software).
  
  Eventually, the accountant gets frustrated at the large write-offs they must take on this kind of work and the dissatisfaction of the accounting students who complain about having to do work that isn’t training them for what they want to do.  Eventually they ask you to find another accounting firm or just raise their prices sufficiently to offset the hassle and frustration of having to do the bookkeeping work.