The Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

240 | [Q&A] 1st Thing to Automate, Building Rapport with Clients, & Intuit vs Gusto Payroll

• Serena Shoup, CPA • Episode 240

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This episode is a replay of my April 2026 live Q&A, and we cover a ton of ground that I know so many of you are dealing with right now.

Whether you're just starting out and trying to figure out where to even begin with automation, or you're in the thick of building a team and wondering why delegating feels harder than just doing it yourself, this one's for you. We also get into some juicy topics like QBO Payroll versus Gusto, how to handle S-Corp clients who are flying under the radar on reasonable salary, and what to do when a competitor is trying to tank your reputation online.

In this episode you’ll hear:

  • The very first thing I recommend automating in your bookkeeping practice
  • How to confidently ask a prospective client for access to their books
  • QBO Payroll versus Gusto
  • How to advise S-Corp clients on taking a reasonable salary

Resources mentioned in this episode:

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You're listening to the Ambitious Bookkeeper podcast. I'm Serena Shoup, your host, and today I'm airing a replay of a live Q&A that I host every last Thursday of the month. This one's from the month of April 2026. Our next one is going to be May 28th at 10:00 AM Pacific. Then we're gonna actually be taking a break for June and July, and then we'll be back in the fall for our monthly live Q&A. These are open to the community, to our students, anyone who needs support in growing their bookkeeping business. And in In today's live Q&A, we are going to be tackling a few really awesome topics.

The first one is the question:

what are the best beginner automations to set up in your practice, And then we're going to talk about how to get access to a prospective client's books for a diagnostic, even if they're hesitant to letting you see under the hood. And we're gonna talk about handling clients who want to clean up before giving you access. We're also going to have a discussion about QBO Payroll versus Gusto and how and when to switch a client, and the conversation to have to do so. We're also gonna be talking about S corporation clients not paying themselves a reasonable salary and how to advise them on that, and dealing with false reviews from a competitor on Google or Facebook. So if any of these questions or topics spark your interest, let's go. Samantha asks, "Do you have any recommendations for beginner automations we can set up in our bookkeeping practice?" yes. So first of all, my question back to you would be, what is your biggest, kind of bottleneck or pain point in your business right now that you feel would be helpful if you had an automation? Like, for me, one of the first things I automated was my, my proposal process. and beginnings of onboarding process, not the whole... Like, the whole thing wasn't automated. It took a long time to get to where it is now. but one of the first things that I started automating was using my proposal software, which is Dubsado, setting up the proposal, which is connected to an engagement letter, which also is connected to a first invoice, and just automating that first piece of signing on a client was really helpful. because what... Like, what happens if, if this process is not automated, is you s- you know, maybe you quote price on a phone call or a discovery call, but generally people still wanna see something written out. So you send them a confirmation or an email or whatever of what you guys talked about, and, with like, "Here's what the engagement's gonna look like. Here's the engagement letter. Please sign it," blah, blah, blah. And then you're waiting for them to reply or sign the, thing, and you can't put an expiration date on it really, and it's just kind of out there and, like, looming over you. And so just having that one piece automated, knowing that once I send a proposal, now it's up to that system to do the follow-ups to make sure they sign the, the engagement letter, to make sure they sign the invoice, and then I don't have to do anything until that payment comes in and, I don't really have to do much follow-up because that system's gonna automate that for me. So that would be my number one suggestion, especially if you're in a period where you are wanting to grow and sign more clients. that one's a really, I wouldn't say easy, quick thing To automate, but it's simple. you don't have to make it super complicated. That was the first piece I automated, and then after that was set up in Dubsado, then I started building upon that workflow and automating more pieces. so don't try to bite off all of it at once. but yeah, that would be the best, one of the best places to start. Another really good place to start is once you do get that, , first payment in, is just setting up your recurring invoices using the tools that we have that we use for clients. Like, set up that recurring invoice either in Dubsado or QuickBooks or whatever you're using. I personally use Xero. So once we get that payment from our clients and we get them onboarding, I set up automated invoicing'cause I do a flat monthly fee. We set that up to go out in Xero and, , all of that kind of stuff. So you can automate your payment process., We also use, in our onboarding process, when we get the information from the client into Dubsado, we use Zapier to disperse it into other areas, like into our Slack channel and into Asana, into our phone system so we have the client's contact already in there. Those kinds of things. Anywhere where you're duplicating data entry pieces, like especially when it comes to client information, names, phone numbers, emails, those can be automated too usually. Carolyn says, "How can I convince prospective clients to give me access to their books for a quick review, a diagnostic, so I can give them a better quote? I'm fairly new to starting my business, so I don't have a large following of credibility, and I feel like giving me access makes them nervous. Or they say, 'Let me clean things up before I give access,' and then I never hear back. When I've gotten clients without first getting access, the engagement process is seamless, but sometimes I could have priced better." Yes, that's always the risk. yes, and she just bought Dubsado Decoded this week, yay, and she loves it so far. So yes, I'm gonna plug that for Samantha. Our Dubsado Decoded program, is available, and we also have, like, an audio series if you wanna dive into that first. that's free if you just go to ambitiousbookkeeper.com/dubsado. we have a free audio series that kinda talks about the onboarding process and what to expect in that program to get your feet wet. so first of all, I know it can feel kind of- scary to ask someone basically to give you the keys to their finances. and that's where maybe we can do, be doing a better job building rapport on the calls. because some people are not going to just willingly hand over something, A, they feel shame around because they know it's a mess. so whatever you can do to ease their discomfort on those calls about letting them know every time we look at a, a new client's existing books, there's typically, you know, things that have not been done correctly, but it, we don't want that to be a source of shame for you. It's nothing we haven't seen before. And so whatever you can do to ease that, and then, like I said, build rapport upfront. and there's various resources you could go to learn that, like mirroring and, doing things that, you know, get people to feel more comfortable around you. make sure you're not just diving into asking them all these tactical questions without really welcoming them onto the call and kind of building up some sort of personal connection with them. So, , maybe that's an area of improvement, that you can work on. And the other piece is to just stand firm in your confidence of, like, you already know this because you brought this question up, is when you have visibility into someone's books beforehand, you can give them a more accurate proposal, and then you're not having to change and update an engagement letter and spring a surprise on them with pricing. So it's only gonna benefit them, and so I want you to frame it as a benefit to them when you ask for access. You just let them know, "Any time a new client comes to us, with existing books, we ask that we do a diagnostic first. We personally charge for these." You can word it that way or not. I walk through this whole process in my program, The Bookkeeping Business Accelerator, but this is basically what I tell them is, "Any new client that comes to us with existing books, we do require a diagnostic fee. Just like when you take your vehicle to an auto shop and you have an issue that needs to be diagnosed, you usually have to pay a diagnostic fee. Some people do it for free, but we don't.""Because a lot of the work is being done during that diagnostic process, and if no cleanup needs to happen, we will apply that fee to their first invoice. If cleanup has to happen, we also apply that fee to their first cleanup invoice. But what it does for them is, and for us, is gives everybody a better, chances at pricing the engagement correctly and understanding what we're getting into, to set expectations. So it's really just a benefit for everybody all around." So you can come back to this recording and, practice your own way of saying that, and some people are gonna opt not to pay you for a diagnostic, and that's okay because if they are not willing to pay for a diagnostic when they know that it's a pretty low-risk thing, like we know we're gonna apply this fee to the future invoices, then they're probably not serious about hiring you to begin with. and that's all right. Not everybody is a fit. So, it's just better than surprising people with a big cleanup invoice, like,"Oh, sorry, I didn't know this," because most of the time clients don't share everything that is wrong because they don't even understand what is wrong. They don't know what they don't know, so they can't really give you a big heads-up on things if they don't fully understand it. So yeah. Hopefully that helps, Carolyn. if you have questions, just drop 'em in the chat. Happy to answer them. and if you're on YouTube, you can drop it in the chat there. Yes, give me all the questions, Samantha. No one else is asking. I'm here for it. Okay. So I am in the beginning stages of scaling my business, , in terms of, like, building a team. So for the past year, I had a, a... like, I had, like, two part-time bookkeepers, and then in the last 60 days I kind of promoted one to an employee role where she's, like, the main bookkeeper. I gave the one contractor all of the other contractor's clients, and then the other one is gonna be my cleanup specialist, and then I also hired an account manager to review client work. Right now I feel like... I thought, like, in tax season I felt like over capacity and, like, this, this feeling of like, oh my God, there's just so much going on as far as, like, doing the actual work, training, and- I'm trying to, like, pour my soul into the training process so that I have, like, a great outcome at the end of this. but I guess my question for you would be, like, what advice do you have for me in this season? And then also, how do ... I guess, like, I wanna make sure my account manager is, like, really set up for success. Do you have any, like, recommendations for training him, and, like, how to approach the training? Yeah. Okay, so I guess one of my pieces of advice, to answer your first question, would be, to, just know that you're in a busy season, even though you thought that you were gonna be relieved of things. There's usually, like, a three to four-month ramp-up when you hire people to get them fully on board and then really feel like, "Okay, I've hired these people. I can now, like, relax a little bit," because you're in that training and hand-off mode and the oversight role, and, like ... So your workload isn't necessarily decreasing . If anything, it might be increasing a little bit right now, but it should level out. And what should change is, instead of you being the one doing all of the work, is now you're removing roadblocks from people doing the work. Yeah. And making sure everybody has what they need. Another piece that I think is really important, and I constantly have to remind myself of this too, is when I delegate, I'm actually giving ownership over instead of just giving people tasks. So make sure that you're communicating what the outcome, intended outcome is, and if there are specific processes that you do need them to follow, be very explicit about that. Or if you don't have a specific process, you just w- have an outcome that they need to develop a process for, they need to know that expectation as well. But giving people actual ownership so that they can actually do their job, and then the letting them know, like, "Come to me when there's something in your way and you can't figure it out, but come to me with solutions so I can help you decide what's the best course of action." Otherwise, you're just gonna be answering questions all day long, and people aren't gonna be taking ownership because they're gonna think, "Well, she always wants the final say anyway, so I'm just gonna continue asking." And it's a trap that some of us fall into quite often if we aren't careful. And letting go is hard, and I want to acknowledge that, so good job hiring, first of all. and know that it's, it's not always easier, but, - It's okay to feel like you're doing more at this moment, cause you might be. And then as far as making sure your account manager is set up for success, it kind of goes back to that ownership piece of just really sharing with them what you expect them to take ownership of, and what, results that you're after and what would show them that they were successful so that they know, like, I- I'm successful in my role if I'm doing X, Y, Z, or if I've accomplished X, Y, Z. As far as trainings and stuff go, what I personally, it kind of, it depends on your approach. I personally, I have some SOPs built out for my firm, but this last round of hiring that I did, I actually just did a bunch of, like, co-working one-on-one calls with my teammate who also is an account manager, and I just, like, went through the process with her. She had a lot of background knowledge on, like, and experience of working in a corporate environment. but as far as... So she had the foundation. So it kind of just depends on what foundations they have in accounting and, what gaps you need to fill. so it might mean, doing what I did, where I just, like, blocked off a couple hours every day to get on a Zoom call, 'cause we're virtual. Get on a Zoom call with her and work alongside her and just say, "Okay, like, let's go through this process together on this client." or what I would do, uh, like after the first one of those, I was like, "Okay, here's this next client. Go take all the resources that we have already, like the processes that we have in place. You know the intended outcome is a clean balance sheet. Go get as far as you can, and when you get stuck, like, I'm here on Zoom and you can unmute and ask me, but, like, do as much as you can and I'm here for questions." Um, you can structure it that way. another option for, like, reviewing stuff, I'm not sure what kind of level of review that you're, or QA, like quality assurance, you have with your, process in your firm. I share my process inside of Elevate. so the reviewing financials section, you can put your team member through that one if you want. You can put them through the whole thing if you want. So they learn how to advise clients. but the first, the first module is how to review financial statements, and I walk through my process of making sure things are accurate, the type of support that's needed, how we look at bank reconciliations, all of that stuff. And so if you are short on time and you want to implement that process, you can have your teammate go through a program like that and say, "Okay, you go through this program, develop an SOP around it, or take what she, the templates she already has, and use this going forward on all of our clients." Obviously, you have to customize it depending on what some clients have and don't have. Like, not all clients have sales tax, so you're not gonna have to reconcile that on everybody. But the general framework is there. That's super helpful. I think my first month I was doing a ton of, like, Zoom calls with him, like, actually showing, like, reviewing files together. And the second month I was like, "Okay, go do your reviews, and then I'll review your reviews." But I feel like I almost wish that I would have waited one more month and did that for month three, because I feel like there was a lot of things that he still, like, missed in the review. And again, it's like I also have a new... My bookkeeper just got, like, 10 new clients at the same time, so, like, she's not as buttoned up as, like, you know, she is with her other 10 clients. And so, I feel like he didn't really catch a lot of mistakes that I would have hoped he would have and, like, if we would have maybe reviewed more together... So now we're moving into our, we're gonna be closing April, and I'm like, should I get him on more video calls together and go through them together? What would be, what do you think would be the best? Well, I would say, like, the way that I structured, like, the handoff process, and obviously everyone's client base are different. But what I did the first, I brought my account manager on in December, so we were in the midst of prepping for a year-end, and then year-end happened. And what I, like, during December, I had her review one or two clients only. Like, just do an end-to-end, just get familiar with one client and the process for that one client. Um, not doing the books, but the review of them. And then, that way she could take her sweet time looking at just one client and not feel the weight of all these other clients that needed to be reviewed. And so that was her first month, was just looking at one or two client, like, one more complex client and one, like, really simple one. And then at year-end, I had her do like, a thorough review of every single client. But I also did my year-end thorough review. So, both of us were reviewing. Actually, did we split them in half? We might have split the year-end reviews in half, but I still looked at everybody as a whole, like, at the ve- after her reviews as well. and so I kind of didn't, I didn't give everything all at once. It was kind of more of a transition period. so maybe that was part of the issue with some of the mistakes, because maybe he felt like he didn't have a- adequate time to be able to review everything thoroughly, and kind of inadvertently cut corners or whatever. but it's actually, I think it's actually a good thing that you found some stuff, because hopefully those were coaching opportunities with him of like, oh, okay, here's ... The way that I do it, 'cause we're in a virtual environment, is I like just leaving notes. Like, we keep like a Notes document of the review and what was found, and like, "Here's how I would've fixed it." And then when you send it back to them to fix it, or send it back to the bookkeeper, whoever is ultimately responsible, sometimes you don't have time to send it back to be fixed, and it needs to be fixed, so you've gotta have, like, a process for that too where it's like, okay, if in fact I have to fix it because we don't have time to send it back to the bookkeeper or whatever, we still have to have a process to communicate that to the bookkeeper and make sure that they are looking at that note the next month as well so it doesn't happen again. Right, for sure. Yeah. I started doing, like, a error kind of, like, Excel file. Like, is this a major error, minor error, and like a detail of what it is, to try to, like, close that loop of the errors. So thank you. keep, I mean, just keep communicating with your team and keep keeping that open, that loop of communication open with them, too. and everything is, every day is a learning day for everybody. Sure is. Sure is. Um, yeah. Thank you so much. Good luck. Yeah, you're welcome. Any other questions? as you see, if you ask questions, you get, you get answers and coaching. Yes, Hope, go for it. All right, so kind of going back to team member stuff. Mm-hmm. so empowering them to take ownership, like, I don't know how many times I've said, like, "These are your clients. You guys need to take ownership of that." They are still are like, "Oh, only Hope knows the answers." I'm like,"Hope is not the only one who knows the answers." Do you know what I mean? It's like- Mm-hmm how can I ... And I don't know how to empower them more to, like, you know, like you said, come to me with strategies in fixing this instead of just, "Oh, there's a problem. I don't know what to do." So what have you done in the past that has helped with empowering your team members? Yeah, sometimes it does require a, an explicit, like, everyone's on a call, like, "From here on out, I'm not gonna just give you the answer. I'm gonna ask you what you would do." If you were ultimately the one ... Like, if I wasn't here, what would you do? Like, if I wasn't able to answer this question, what would you ... And then, like if ... So everyone knows, like this is what's coming. If I come to Serena with a question, like this is what's gonna happen from here on out. but , I've been operating ... It is sometimes easier to just like give the answer, because you don't want people to have to struggle too long through things, because we're paying them by the hour or whatever. So there's a balance. But like, to let people know, like I really wanna make sure that like Also, I'm not, I may not have the best approach. I might know the answer off the top of my head because I've struggled through things with that client before, but how would you ... Like, I will just straight up ask, like, "Where did you look for the answer first? How would you fix this if it were totally up to you?" Or, you know, What have you tried already?" Like, just a- ask, answering their question with another question so that it causes them to like stop and think, is usually pretty effective. Yeah. Okay, I'm gonna have to start doing that, 'cause we, like uh, when we've been bringing on new bookkeepers, we kind of have like, not Slack, but we use Teams, like the general chat. And so they can go in there and ask questions. They'll ask it to me and like the quality control person. But then I also have my quality control person who is always like,"Oh, I'm not sure. We'll just defer that to Hope." Like, no. Mm. Can you c- help her ask questions? Could you like do that, too? So I guess maybe being more specific with her, 'cause hers will be like- Yeah"Oh, I don't really know about that client very much." Well, you're the quality control person. You keep checking the account. You should know, like, that client fairly well, I would think, after six or eight months. Yeah. So. Absolutely.'Cause also, I think that's, again, accountability of like this is what the, setting the expectation and then, um, you know, making them accountable for that expectation that we have for them. Yeah. And honestly, the truth of it is some people don't want that level of responsibility, and they're happy to stay in a worker bee position and not have to really think about things. So there's always, I won't say always, but typically there's people on teams that are like, "That's beyond my pay grade." Like, and that's just their attitude. And that, and like- Yeah ... it's, you have to decide if you're okay with that culture or if you're okay with one or two people being like that, as long as there's someone else in between you and them that- Yeah ... can answer the question. Yeah. I think we're getting closer to that point where there might be that need to be that extra person. But I feel like the last few rounds of hiring, , just because a lot of it is just a part-time, like contractor position, it's like getting the buy-in, like- Yeah ... that you're part of the company and stuff like that. And then I've had a lot of people leave for like full-time positions just'cause we weren't able to get them like- clients quite fast enough, so I kind of am stuck in a spot where, like, how do you fill that gap between, like, the full-time and, like, a part-time person? So. Yeah, that can be tricky, , for sure, and I will say, like, I feel like I've gotten so lucky with the team that I've gotten, but at the same time it wasn't really luck. Are you in Breakthrough with Alyssa? Yeah, and I've used a lot of that stuff, so we've used a lot of- Yeah ... the Breakthrough stuff, but it's like the last few times of just even going through that, it's like, you know, getting not even just quality people who are applying that are actually following the steps and stuff like that. It's kind of crazy how, like, what percentage of people actually follow the steps. but yeah, it's just, we just haven't been, like, that great, so we're gonna kind of put it on hold for now, and I may just even look at, I don't know if you've tried it in the past, but, you know, we have a college here and my daughter's going, just starting college, but maybe bringing in a junior bookkeeper who can learn some of the basic stuff. So, like, even just categorization and easy stuff, and then have, like, a upper level bookkeeper, like, do the review and things like that, where we're still, you know, maybe teaching a new, a new person new skills, but then- Yeah ... we also have other people reviewing those transactions- Yeah ... and stuff like that. Yeah. I have, , a few, several years ago I hired from the accounting program at our local college as well. and that, that just turned out to not be the right fit because she d- was not actually interested in accounting. At least I got to help her figure that out. At least she figured it out now instead of, like, CPA at point or something. Yeah. She was like, "Actually, I'm more interested in marketing," and I was like, "Cool." "Get that off my back. Totally cool." but yeah, that's definitely an option. The other thing too is, like, I know for, myself, I haven't implemented across, any clients yet because it's still kind of one of those areas that I feel like requires client consent. But I, on my own company's books I've activated the A- the built-in AI in Xero, the, like, automatic reconciliations, and, it's pretty accurate. So it's obviously right now it's just coding transactions. Mm-hmm. But that could be something that you look into to create a little bit of a lift and free up somebody's time to become more advanced., But then that also requires that different- type of person that doesn't wanna just, you know, data entry stuff. They actually do need to be able to, like, think things through and, like, oversee the AI employee. Yeah. It's basically the same thing. Like, you're either overseeing a human or you're overseeing this AI process, so you still have to have that knowledge of what things are supposed to look like. Yeah. Yeah. But- I totally get that. But yeah, that's interesting. I actually m- I don't know if QuickBooks is quite there on that processes, I don't feel, unless you're putting a bunch of rules and things like that in. but they do try to automate the AI reconciliation part, but I've found when I was doing it, it was, had some clunks still in it, quite a bit, so. but a majority of our clients are in QuickBooks right now, but. Yeah. Maybe we need to move to Xero. I just haven't figured that one out yet. Oh, go watch my YouTube video on Is It Time to Move My Clients to Xero? Because I definitely ask some questions. As much as of a proponent of Xero I am, there's still a huge cost of time and- Oh, yeah um, energy that it takes to move people to a new system. Even if ultimately it's better in the end, it may not actually make sense because of- Yeah ... that component. but yeah. So anyways, yeah, definitely, like, the job market's different right now. I feel like it is, yeah. Yeah. I had, like, maybe three applicants that followed my process on this last hiring round, which then it really narrows it down to fewer interviews, for sure. Yeah. But, I've always had very few people follow the instructions fully, but that weeds out the people that I know are absolutely not good fits. Like, I need attention- Yeah ... to detail. Yeah.'Cause I think it was funny, we put it on Indeed and there was almost 300 applicants on Indeed, and we Maybe 10% of those people followed the steps. That's pretty good, actually. I was ... I know, but I was still like, dang, 10%. I'm like, what's going on? Yeah. But yeah. It's, like, crazy. Yeah. Yeah. But you have to kind of look at it the same way as whenever you are ... Like, when you put in processes to qualify leads, it's the same thing. Like, yeah, it's gonna weed out a lot of people, but ultimately that's protecting your time instead of getting on interviews with people who are clearly don't follow instructions, or- Yeah ... like, client leads who clearly aren't a good fit. People weed themselves out. And so that's, like, even though it was only That 10% is actually really good. Yeah. That many people. I, 'cause I think we ended up, yeah, like, 14 to 18 people, so it was nearly the 10%, but it was like, yeah, that was kinda crazy. Yeah. When you think about it, it's just like, wow. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely ... kind of crazy. But yeah, like you said, it does free up a lot of time, because then you actually have people who really wanna be there and actually paid attention to what the process that they needed to follow, which is good, 'cause then we have processes for when they start. Absolutely. Yeah, that's, like, one of the biggest,, most important things to interview for, and it's caught right at the beginning of the interview process. So anyone who's watching this, go to workflowqueen.com, and look, check out her breakthrough program, and she has a whole hiring process where, you set up your job description and hiring process to weed the wrong people out so you're not wasting your time, interviewing people who are clearly not cut out for the job. Yeah. Well, thank you so much. Yeah. That was all my questions. You're welcome. Any other questions? We've got about five minutes left, I think. Yeah. Ish. Almost 10 minutes. Shannon says, " how do you convince clients to switch to Gusto if they are already doing payroll on another system? I have a few clients using QBO Payroll, and it's driving me nuts on the accounting side, but they don't seem to have problems running payroll, so it's hard to find the upside for them.", So if I find mistakes with the payroll filings in QBO Payroll, which is ... If you dig in, you probably will find some mistakes. Um, but if not, that's awesome. Usually it's because of that, if there, if QBO has dropped the ball on filing payroll taxes or paying them., The other piece is if it's cheaper to go to Gusto, which back in the day, I think it was. I don't know if it is any cheaper these days or any more affordable. So if the QBO Payroll, like Intuit Payroll, if there's something broken in the process that's making it difficult for you, you could always, you know, have a conversation with the client about,"I'm gonna increase your price because of the complexity of reconciling this. however, if you move to Gusto, you'll be paying the same price," yada, yada. Um, "It'll be easier, so I won't have to charge you more." That could be an option. You also have to make that true for them. So do your price comparisons of QBO Payroll versus Gusto on what plan they would have to be on with multiple states if they have multiple states, all the things. Make sure you line it all out. Um, if Gusto offers additional features that QBO Payroll isn't for the same price, like HR support or, y- you know, stuff like that, make sure you add that in and show them, like, "You can get this, that, and the other thing for the same price. Plus, it makes my job easier, so I'm not gonna have to charge you extra." You can position it that way. but like I said, if you found mistakes with QBO Payroll, it's gonna be pr- your clients are looking to you as- the expert, and if you say that something is not operating correctly and there's errors, then hopefully they respect that, that call-out. so hopefully that helps. but as far as, convincing people, I try not to lean into the convincing energy of things. I lead with the facts of the matter, like pricing or ease of use, or benefits, , or, like, lack of errors or whatever, streamlining things. And ultimately, it's still up to them as the client, or you can decide if you want to work with people on QBO. You can, you can m- draw a line in the sand when people sign on with you and let them know, "We will switch you, because we don't prefer to work with QBO Payroll." , And a lot of times clients are more than happy to switch, as long as you teach them how to use the new software. Colin says, "How do you find clients in a new part of town if a rival bookkeeper has been spreading some false reviews for your business?" I personally have never had that happen, thankfully. I also don't really work with local clients, so that's probably, , part of it. But I would recommend just taking the higher road and letting your work speak for yourself. and if those reviews are posted in a public forum, I would suggest reporting them for, you know, whatever. If they're on Google Reviews or Facebook or something, like, report those as false or whatever, avenues you can take there. or reply as a comment and clear the air. Whatever you can do., Or just let it go and don't waste your energy on people that are hellbent on taking other people down, because we don't want to stoop to that level. but yeah. I'm sorry you're going through that, Colin. That seems really crappy, and hopefully your work can speak for itself, and the people that enjoy working with you, hopefully they come, you know, go to bat for you as well. Andrea says, "Do you have a good resource to share with clients that are, , taxed as S corp but don't seem to understand the importance of paying them selves a reasonable salary? I have a client that has over 100K in distributions and only 8K in salary, and keeps saying they can't afford to pay themselves through payroll, or that they will start payroll once they get more customers." I would just let them know that, if they have a CPA, their CPA should be providing them with a reasonable compensation. You can also just let them know that, when your salary is not equal to or greater than your distributions, it's a red flag for an audit, and so they should just prepare for an IRS audit and prepare for the IRS to reclassify those as wages. so if they wanna just fix it now going forward and have fewer penalties if that does get reclassified, that's probably a safer bet. And I would just recommend to them, move 50K to salary, get on that on a biweekly or a monthly basis, and, , they can continue still taking distributions, but half of that needs to be reclassified as salary., You can also reclassify at year-end and run a year-end payroll, but then they, they need to make sure they have enough to cover the payroll tax portion at year-end. So, that's something I did the very first year I converted to an S corp. I waited towards the end of the year to understand what my revenue and everything was gonna look like. Um, they never have the cash, so that's an area that you could step in kind of as an advisor and let them know, like, Because one of the reasons why you're not putting yourself on payroll is cash, let's set up another bank account and set aside 15% of what you're intending on paying yourself as tax, and keep that in a separate account so at year-end you have the tax to pay your payroll tax, and you can move 50K to salary. So I would figure out what , that amount in payroll tax would be on a 50K salary, and help them build up towards that for the rest of the year, and just let them know, "You need to transfer this amount of money into here either now, or we could put you on payroll and have it done, and then you don't have to set it aside. Those are your options. Or you can wait to get audited. But then don't say I didn't tell you so." Um, yeah. that's how I would approach it. especially now is a good time to have that conversation before, like well before the end of the year so they can plan for it, and let them know, like, from here forward, I recommend you put 15% of your revenue in an account for taxes, and whether you end up just, you know, paying all that in self-employment tax or on payroll tax, like you'll have it there. So, yeah. All right, everyone. Thank you so much for participating in this live Q&A. Just another reminder that, , May's Q&A will be at 10:00 AM Pacific on the last Thursday, whatever date that is. And then, , we are going to be , taking a break for the summer. June and July won't be hosting live, scheduled live Q&As. I may do some random ones, but I'm not sure yet. and then, lastly, we are running a sale right now on Elevate because I'm revamping the program, so what that means is, , if you're on my email list, you'll get the emails with the special code, so make sure you go subscribe. Go to ambitiousbookkeeper.com/subscribe. If you're in Zoom, you already have that probably, 'cause you got an email with the Zoom link today. but if you're on, just on YouTube, make sure you subscribe to my email list. We're running the sale, for my advisory skills, a program called Elevate., The sale goes through May 9th at midnight Pacific. when that sale ends, also the doors close to Elevate and you won't be able to enroll again until I release the new version, 2.0, of the program with all the new bells and whistles, upgraded content. I am adding in, more of a learning structure so that you can actually apply what you're learning and build the confidence to offer advisory services, so we're gonna have knowledge checks, homework submissions and reviews, and ways to practice and implement even if you don't have a client to practice on. And, yeah, so when that opens up again late summer, early fall, it will be a higher price. So if you get in now, you will get the updated content and you won't have to pay extra. You get it at a sale price. So, make sure you subscribe to my email list so you get the emails with the codes, ambitiousbookkeeper.com/subscribe. Thank you all for letting me do my little pitch. and we will see you next time. Bye.

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