Category: Bookkeeping Tools

  • Valuation and Your Tech Stack

    Valuation and Your Tech Stack

    One way to kill your exit strategy and it’s too common.

    If your business runs on desktop software or worse, paper files, you’re already losing value.

    Here’s the hard truth: Buyers want businesses that run smoothly and are not hard to value. Not ones needing a full IT team just to see the books.

    Valuable businesses 👍 : Modern tech, scalable, recurring revenue
    Passed over businesses 👎 : Desktop tech, clunky processes, billing hourly

    The fact is, an offer made for your business is dependent on the soundness and transferability of your books.

    If you’re still running on desktop bookkeeping software, you’re getting in your own way.

    Cloud bookkeeping offers real-time data, instant access, and zero headaches at handover.

    Businesses with modern tech systems get better offers. They grow faster. And they exit cleaner.

    If you want to get serious about growth and future-proof your business, start with your tech stack today.

    Every day stuck in the past is value left on the table.

    For most business owners, a sale is when, not if.

    Start simple and in the most important place, your bookkeeping.

    If the books are behind, get them caught up. If you’re on desktop software, get in the cloud.

  • Income-Related Bookkeeping Mistakes Advisors Can’t Afford to Make

    Income-Related Bookkeeping Mistakes Advisors Can’t Afford to Make

    If you’re like most advisors, your clients come first, which often means your back office comes last.😞

    But bookkeeping, especially how you record income, is one of those areas where “later” can turn into a compliance problem, billing error, or credibility issue fast.

    Here are four common income-booking mistakes often seen in advisory firms—and how to avoid them:

    1. Misclassifying Advisory Fees vs. Commissions

    Advisory fees and commissions should be tracked and disclosed differently. Yet many advisors lump them together in one income line—or worse, mislabel them entirely. That might seem harmless until you’re asked to produce accurate breakdowns during an audit or valuation.

    Fix: Create clear income categories (advisory, commissions, planning fees, etc.) and code transactions accordingly. Automate wherever possible.

    2. Failing to Track Fee Splits Properly

    If you share revenue with another advisor, entity, or platform, how you record revenue matters. Many firms record gross income but forget to document splits clearly, creating confusion in P&Ls and inconsistencies with CRM or custodial records.

    Fix: Book gross income and track splits as separate line items or classes, so you can report both revenue and actual take-home income cleanly.

    3. Skipping Revenue Recognition for Accrual-Based Firms

    If you’re accrual-based but still recording income when the cash hits the bank, you’re not only misrepresenting performance, you’re also making year-end financials harder to reconcile. It can also distort key ratios used for practice valuation.

    Fix: Recognize income when earned, not received. Use invoicing tools or journal entries to align with proper timing.

    4. Inconsistent Entries Across Platforms

    Revenue data often lives in multiple places—custodians, CRMs, spreadsheets, and your bookkeeping software. If those don’t match, you’re asking for problems during compliance reviews or due diligence.

    Fix: Reconcile regularly and ensure your income records align with source documents. Don’t rely solely on downloaded CSVs—verify and standardize.

    Why It Matters

    FINRA’s 2022 exam findings noted that nearly 30% of firms had recordkeeping deficiencies, many tied to income reporting. The SEC expects accurate financial records, especially when calculating AUM fees or disclosing compensation.

    Sloppy bookkeeping might not seem urgent… until a regulator, buyer, or CPA starts asking questions.

    A Final Thought

    Your books should be an asset, not a liability. Clean income records build trust, reduce stress, and let you scale with confidence.

    If your books are messy or your income categories feel more guesswork than system, let’s talk. I help service-based businesses (including advisory firms) clean up and streamline their back-office systems so they can grow without surprises.

  • Streamline Your Finances: Best Tools

    Streamline Your Finances: Best Tools


    As the owner of a service-based business, your expertise is your bread and butter, not necessarily in managing your back-office operations. Yet precise bookkeeping is the backbone of any successful business. I’ve spent years watching owners struggle with outdated spreadsheets and manual processes when there are incredible tools that could save them hours every week.

    Let’s cut through the noise. Here’s my field-tested toolkit for those that want to spend less time reconciling accounts and more time with clients.

    Cloud-Based Accounting Software: Your Foundation

    If you’re still using desktop accounting software (or worse, spreadsheets), you’re leaving efficiency on the table. Cloud-based platforms have revolutionized bookkeeping for advisors:

    FreshBooks has become increasingly popular among service-based advisors. Its time tracking integration automatically captures billable hours, and its client portal capabilities are intuitive enough for most practices. The key advantage? The user interface is so clean that clients actually engage with their invoices and payments, improving cash flow.

    QuickBooks Online remains the industry standard for many. Its bank feed integration automatically pulls in transactions, and its reporting capabilities are robust enough for most businesses. The key advantage? Nearly every accountant knows how to use it, smoothing tax season transitions.

    Pro tip: Whichever platform you choose, set up a chart of accounts specifically designed for financial advisory firms. Generic templates won’t capture the industry’s unique revenue streams and expenses.

    Expense Management & Receipt Tracking

    The days of hoarding physical receipts should be long behind us:

    Expensify or Dext (formerly Receipt Bank) have mobile apps that let you snap a photo of receipts on the go. The OCR technology extracts vendor, date, and amount information automatically and syncs with your accounting software. I’ve seen advisors recover 2-3 hours weekly just by implementing this simple technology.

    Payroll and HR Management

    For multi-advisor practices:

    Gusto has become the gold standard for payroll. Beyond the basics, it handles the complexity of split compensation models (salary + revenue share) that many growing firms implement. Its self-onboarding features for new employees drastically reduce administrative overhead.

    Time Tracking for Billing Transparency

    For billing hourly or tracking time against retainers:

    Time tracking in FreshBooks transforms how service-based businesses capture revenue. Its one-click timer automatically logs billable hours as you work, and its project-based organization ensures nothing falls through the cracks. The key advantage? You can track time directly from any device, then convert those hours into invoices with a single click, eliminating the revenue leakage that kills profitability.

    Toggl or Harvest provides simple interfaces for tracking time spent on different clients and projects. The reporting helps identify which clients are profitable and which might be consuming more resources than their revenue justifies.

    The Integration Factor

    Here’s what separates average firms from exceptional ones: integration. Each tool above is powerful, but when they talk to each other, the efficiency multiplies.
    For example, when FreshBooks connects with Gusto for payroll you create an ecosystem where data flows without manual intervention.

    Getting Started: Your Next Steps

    • Audit your current processes – Where are the bottlenecks? Which tasks consume disproportionate time?
    • Start with one core system – Usually your accounting software
    • Add integrations progressively – Don’t overhaul everything at once
    • Document your new procedures – Critical for staff training and consistency
    • Schedule quarterly reviews – Technology evolves rapidly; your toolkit should too

    The right bookkeeping toolkit isn’t just about efficiency—it’s about creating capacity for what truly matters: serving your clients and growing your business. The hours recovered from streamlined bookkeeping translate directly into more client meetings, deeper financial planning work, or maybe just a better work-life balance.

    What bookkeeping tools have transformed your practice? I’d love to hear your experiences in the comments.

    Need help cleaning up your books or setting up systems that make compliance easier? That’s what I do at Becker & Ledger. Let’s talk.