What Your CPA Wants You to Know

101. Stop Dreading Tax Season: Our Solution for Year-Round Accounting Peace

• Carson Sands, CPA & Teran Sands, MBA. • Episode 101

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We created our monthly accounting plan to solve the recurring problem of clients coming to us at tax time with messy books and missing tax-saving opportunities, and after nine months with our beta group, we're sharing how it's working and opening up a few more spots.

• Our monthly accounting plan provides accountability and real-time bookkeeping support, like having a personal trainer for your finances
• Works better than self-doing, external bookkeepers, or costly internal accountants who often create more problems
• Includes monthly one-hour calls at reduced rates with private booking link and priority access
• Tax returns completed by January with no extensions needed because books are maintained throughout the year
• Free tax projections eliminate surprises at tax time
• Covers QuickBooks training, reconciliations, tax strategy, retirement planning, and business decisions
• Costs $225/month with no contracts and consistently saves clients more in taxes than they pay for the service
• Email reminders on the first of each month highlight important deadlines and considerations



If you're interested in one of our limited spots, you can email us directly at carson@sandco.net

You can also book a discovery call with us to address any questions you have on the monthly accounting plan HERE


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Speaker 1:

And, on top of all of that, another one of the things that is a big benefit is all the tax planning that we talk about on this podcast, all the tax planning that some people schedule consultations to do to help set up a way to save on their taxes. That's all something that we do automatically when we're on this monthly plan, because it's just a normal part of the process. Welcome to what your CPA Wants you To Know.

Speaker 2:

Tax and accounting help can be expensive, so we've created this podcast to help guide you through it all and make you feel like you have a CPA in your back pocket.

Speaker 1:

I'm Carson Sands.

Speaker 2:

And I'm Taryn Sands.

Speaker 1:

I'm a CPA with over 10 years of experience helping people start and grow their businesses.

Speaker 2:

And I'm an MBA with a specialization in marketing and entrepreneurship. Taxes suck and we want to make sure you don't pay more than your fair share.

Speaker 1:

We're here to share everything your CPA wants you to know.

Speaker 2:

In a fun and easy to understand way.

Speaker 1:

Let's get started.

Speaker 2:

Let's do it. It has been nine months since we created the monthly accounting plan and started with our first beta group, so we're here today to discuss how it went and share about that plan again, because we're actually going to be opening up a few more spots.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, this is a great program that all of our clients that are doing it have loved. So far we really haven't had any, but we haven't had anyone cancel or complain yet, so that's 100% positivity.

Speaker 2:

So we'll share about what it is today and we'll share why it's maybe something that you didn't even know you needed and exactly what is in it and all the things. And then what the feedback that we're getting from all the people in our beta group. So, first and foremost, like, why did we even think of this monthly accounting plan and where did the idea come from?

Speaker 2:

So we were running into a lot of issues, which, I feel like, is where a lot of ideas come from. You're having a problem and you need a solution, and the issue was that we were working with people who would come in for tax time once a year and their books would be really messy and they didn't understand why the numbers weren't correct and they had a lot of questions and they were confused why they couldn't save more in taxes and all the things. And really the problem was that we hadn't spoke to them pretty much all year long and they didn't really know what they were doing in QuickBooks. So they needed a lot of QuickBooks training to make sure that their numbers were right, and you really can't save taxes whenever you're doing it right. Then, like the year's already done, there's nothing you can do when we're filing the tax return. So we were running into that problem over and over again.

Speaker 1:

And you know a lot of these people were doing a great job for 95% of the work. So that seems like it should be really close to an easy thing to complete. But that's not always the case. If you just have, let's say, one time that QuickBooks disconnects from your bank and you're missing you know 15 days worth of transactions. Well, now you can't reconcile. Well, if you can't reconcile in April, then all the rest of the months are not reconciled.

Speaker 1:

So now, all of a sudden, you get to the end of the year and you have eight months worth of non-reconciled you know bank accounts, or you just have a few other things that you didn't know what to do with. So you just guessed and now they're in weird places and you have to go track it down. It's so much harder than just, you know, leaving it alone and having someone else to categorize it for you. There's so many little things that can spring up that, taken individually and fix along the way, they're not really a big deal, but when you pile them all up and hand them to me in tax season, they can be a costly and time consuming problem.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, and looking at it from a business standpoint from us, we weren't able to deal with all those issues then. Like, we have so many tax returns on the list. Carson couldn't go through and complete bookkeeping for every single client. So we had so many tax returns on the list, carson couldn't go through and complete bookkeeping for every single client. So we had to make the new rule that if he got into a client's books and they weren't ready to do the tax return, we had to extend them and then work on that mess in the summer. Like we couldn't spend a week getting through all the things because it would slow down everything too much and it just it became very, very common that things like that would happen and we had so many of those the previous year that we just like we've got to do something different here.

Speaker 2:

So that's when I was like, okay, what if we could stay in touch with everybody all year long and as things came up, we could fix it along the way. Also, when we would talk to them every single month, we could look at their books, make sure they're doing a good job. If they bought a new asset, we could help them put it in there. If they had a question, we would make sure that it was answered right then and make sure that they were reconciling every month so that they had a good set of books. Because another thing that was happening was that we wouldn't hear from people for a while and then all of a sudden they would need some financials for, like, a mortgage, or their bank for a loan or something, and they would be like hey, carson, hey, can you get me a P&L? Well, there had been no bookkeeping done and there's no way to do an accurate P&L if all of the work hasn't been done. So I was like maybe we could do like a monthly thing. So that's where this idea came from originally.

Speaker 1:

And one of the things that it kind of evolved from is us realizing that, you know, when it comes to, let's say, quickbooks Online, for example, most people, most of our clients, are capable of doing a significant portion of the work themselves and in fact, are the best people for the job, because you have, let's say, you have an external bookkeeper and you are constantly getting emails from them, like, okay, you know, I categorized the things that were obvious, but there's so many things that so many transactions that it's not obvious what that expense was, and so they have to ask you, and by the time you go back and forth on the emails, a lot of times it would have been faster to do some of that yourself.

Speaker 2:

Oh, absolutely so many times. I mean that's. One of the biggest reasons we don't like doing bookkeeping for certain businesses is because there's too much back and forth. It really doesn't make it any easier for them and it creates a pain in the butt for us.

Speaker 1:

So if you have 20 Walmart transactions and 40 Amazon transactions. There's no way we can know what kind of expense those are. You know it's different. If you go to McDonald's, I know what you did there. You know that's different. That's a meal, but well, that's debatable. But you know, some people consider that a meal and but yeah, some of these places there's just no way for us to know or target or whatever. I mean that could be anything. So you categorizing those cause you know that date oh yeah, I was buying, you know printer ink or whatever then you know what that was, and so what you can do then is you can do all the stuff that you can do and leave the rest sitting there to ask somebody on a monthly basis.

Speaker 2:

And that was like to us. If you look at all of your options here, you can do it yourself. Which people weren't doing? They weren't keeping up with it or they were doing it incorrectly.

Speaker 1:

Which is even worse than not doing it at all, right.

Speaker 2:

Even worse and more costly whenever you have to go back and fix everything. Okay, option number two is that you could hire an external bookkeeper and, like we said, that wasn't working out either, because there's so much back and forth, it's not saving anybody any time and a lot of times they're doing it wrong because they're guessing and then they're like that's not right. Well, once again, a lot of work to be done to fix what the bookkeeper had done. And then option number three is has the highest price tag, which is to hire someone to come in your business and run your QuickBooks and all of that have like a controller. But once again, so many things happen with our clients doing that because they weren't vetting them properly and they're not doing a good job and they're creating a giant mess that we then again had to fix. And not only are they paying their salary, then they have to pay us to go back and fix everything.

Speaker 1:

Now if you hire an internal accountant and they are you're paying them less than 50 to 60,000 a year. I promise you don't want them doing your books. You're better off to do them yourself.

Speaker 2:

Well, and most people can't afford that. That is when your business grows to a really, really big point. But if you're going to be doing that, you need to make sure that your CPA looks at their work and make sure that they're doing a good job, because nine times out of 10, they're not. They just say that they can do QuickBooks and then they go in and mess everything up and then it's so expensive to fix.

Speaker 1:

Right, and that doesn't apply to everyone. I mean, some people do need internal accountants and they can afford the proper people to work there, you know. Or even we have some people that have multiple internal accountants that get paid, you know good salaries and they do a good job.

Speaker 2:

But that just doesn't apply to most people that we're working with.

Speaker 1:

And you're not going to get those people because they're already busy, because the people that make millions of dollars are paying them more than you can afford to pay. So, you're not going to find that person.

Speaker 2:

So none of those options are really working for our clients. So we're like, okay, let's create another option. What as your CPA like what would work best for both parties? And that's when we were talking about the monthly plan and let's talk a little bit about how it works. So you get a call every single month and it's like a check-in. Carson always says it's like having a personal trainer.

Speaker 1:

It is. It's kind of the equivalent of that. It forces you to do something that you might not do otherwise.

Speaker 2:

And we get it. We're business owners too. It is not the thing you want to do, but it bites you in the butt if you don't Right. So you have to have that accountability and we tell people all the time put a, you know, put a note on your calendar to do it on the first every month or whatever day works for you, and put it on there so you don't forget to actually work inside your business and it's because you're too busy doing all the other things that are also very important. We totally get that. So accountability is something we wanted in there, and that is with a call every single month. And the beauty of that is that if you're on the plan, it's at a reduced hourly rate, so one hour and you're paying less than you would if you were to book a call on our website.

Speaker 1:

On top of that, not only is it a little bit less expensive whenever you're on the monthly plan than if you're just booking calls with us, it also gets you access to time slots that aren't available all the time because we have to leave those open for some of our monthly clients.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, this is a private link, because one, the price is lower and it opens spots that are just for the monthly accounting clients, right.

Speaker 1:

And then another benefit and this isn't really a reward so much as just it's just practical is that your tax returns are going to be the first ones getting done, because we're looking at your books every month and when we finish our January phone call to go over the final stuff from December and make sure everything's ready to go, I mean your tax return's ready to be prepared and we're going to get it done, because that helps us too. We're able to knock out several clients right off the bat that we don't have to worry about later when we're way busier, because we know the books are cleaned.

Speaker 2:

That was absolutely a game changer for us. But everybody in the beta group everyone in the beta group had their stuff ready to go for tax time because everything had been reconciled, ready to go. And January they got help getting all of their W-2s and 1099s out. All of those questions were cleared and we were able to start on their tax returns and no extensions needed. It could be done in January.

Speaker 1:

And so many of them were like oh wow, january 16th, thanks for getting it done so quickly. I'm like no, no, thank you, we love that. Because now, that's you know, 15 returns that I don't have to do in March whenever we're slammed. So thank you.

Speaker 2:

It's like a perfect ready to go set of books to do a tax return. That's like Carson's, like best thing ever.

Speaker 1:

And that has a lot of benefits too. First of all, there's no reason to stress about taxes for nine or 10 months and extend and when you don't have to just get them done in January and don't think about them for the rest of the year. But also, you know, if you do owe, then you have until April 15th, so that gives you quite a bit of time, and if you're filing right before the deadline, you don't have a lot of time to move money around or whatever you need to do Although if you're one of our monthly clients, that really shouldn't be an issue anyway, because part of what we're doing is tax projections during the year to make sure that we know what you're going to owe, that you're paying in estimated payments or figuring out some other ways to buy some assets or something to save that tax dollars. Whatever you need to do to make sure that you don't have a big surprise bill when tax time comes around.

Speaker 2:

That's something that we didn't mention but built into this plan. We were like what else would we want people to do all year long, ideally, and that's a tax projection. We always tell our clients to do it. Some of them, yes, don't need them, but most of the business owners do, and we were running into lots of surprises in April where they shouldn't have been surprised. So we built into this plan a free tax projection and that or December with Carson, and knew exactly what they would be expecting come April. And that was so nice, not only for them but for us, because they weren't surprised.

Speaker 1:

Yes, that was fun and I did get to brag a little bit and be like oh hey, look, I was within $3 of the amount that you were supposed to owe or that your refund was going to be, and so that's always nice. So, yeah, we like to do that. We don't want anyone to be surprised. I don't like that feeling of I'm going to email somebody and tell them they owe this big amount. I hate that feeling. Sometimes it happens People make a lot of money. They don't talk to us all year and then we get their financials and just do their tax return. I mean, we have clients, that that's what they do and we're happy to do that. I just feel terrible whenever I'm like, well, you did awesome and now you're going to pay for it.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, that does happen far too often, and so we were able to eliminate that with all of our monthly accounting people. And also, we do charge $300 for a tax projection, which is, I'm sure, why some people don't do it is that they don't want to pay the extra money because Carson has to basically prepare a fake tax return to see what what it's going to look like, and you get that free with the monthly accounting plan. So we wanted to make sure that everyone did it, so you're actually getting that for free.

Speaker 1:

So, and on top of all of that, another one of the things that is a big benefit is all the tax planning that we talk about on this podcast, all the tax planning that some people schedule consultations to do to help set up a way to save on their taxes. That's all something that we do automatically when we're on this monthly plan because it's just a normal part of the process, and we do a lot more of it if and we'll get into that later if you're doing your part, that's part of the accountability is. You know, with that hour we can sit there and I can probably do a whole month worth of categorization and reconciliations for you. And the first couple of months I work with people. Sometimes that's exactly what we're doing, but that's not our long-term goal. I I'll do that for you if that's what you want me to do, and I can usually get it done in that time.

Speaker 1:

But ideally I'm setting up rules in QuickBooks so it does a lot of the work automatically. I'm showing you how to do stuff so you can do it yourself. I'm even teaching you how to do the reconciliation so you can do that yourself. That way, we can spend our time finding, working on tax strategies, fixing the problems that you can't fix yourself that spring up, helping you set up payroll if it's time to add that because you converted to an S-corp, or looking at comparisons to last year and seeing you know, yeah, you made more revenue, but your expenses went up by even more. What's going on with that? How can we fix that? These are things that we can look at that are a higher level and they have a lot more benefit to you. But but also we do have people that we spend quite a bit of time helping them with categorization and stuff, and we're hoping that over time, they'll get trained on doing some of that themselves and we'll be able to provide more value doing other things.

Speaker 2:

Well, and that was one of the biggest questions is what can you talk about in the call and anything that you want? Somebody was asking can we talk about our personal stuff, our personal finances? Absolutely, because really, when it boils down to it, you're paying all these taxes personally. So that was a question that came up a lot. And, just over the beta group, what have we talked about in these calls? And we've talked about bookkeeping.

Speaker 2:

Like Carson said, we've gone over QuickBooks issues and got everything cleaned up tax strategy. So we've helped people set up S-Corps. We've helped people set up their kids on payroll. We've helped people with the Augusta rule all of those things. We've helped them plan for asset purchases and we've also helped with like retirement planning and then big decisions on their business or loans. We've had a few that are considering selling a business. We've helped with so many things and anything you want to talk about in that hour, you're free to talk about it with Carson. I mean, if you want to ask him I don't know his his advice on anything non-tax related, I'm sure he'll tell you.

Speaker 1:

But really, it's up to you. We can talk about my favorite fiction books if you want. Um, you know, I don't know that you'll get a lot of value out of that, but yes, Um, but no, if we're talking about accounting things, then you will get a lot of value. You'll save money on taxes and other things. So I think that's where, yeah, the best value is. But I even had people that you know. We talked about retirement options, other investing options, life insurance.

Speaker 2:

And Carson's really good at stuff like that R&R not worth it.

Speaker 1:

I've had somebody I think two or three people now. That's one of my number one goals in life. Besides converting people to S-Corps is to get people off of whole life insurance policies.

Speaker 2:

You hate whole life.

Speaker 1:

I know we've mentioned that we like Dave Ramsey and a lot of stuff he says. He says the same thing, but this isn't a Dave Ramsey thing. This is one of the things that I had before Dave Ramsey, because I have a calculator and because I'm a numbers person and if you're a numbers person, please don't have a whole life insurance policy.

Speaker 2:

I helped somebody cancel one got some of their money back that they had put into it and they got a proper term life insurance policy that costs a tenth as much for the same coverage. It's just a little preview of what you can get with your chats with Carson every single month.

Speaker 1:

That's right Now. I won't talk about that anymore because we have a personal finance series of podcast episodes that you can go back and we talk about why whole life is a scam. So I won't talk about that anymore. Just to say that there are a lot of ways that you can save money outside of even your business, and we're more than happy to talk about all that. I won't waste your time If I don't know about it. I will just immediately say no, this is who you need to talk to about that. Let's move on to something else that I'm an expert on.

Speaker 1:

But you know, when a Taryn mentioned bookkeeping too, I want to make sure people understand this isn't just discussing it. I'm in your QuickBooks while you're in your QuickBooks and we're going through step by step and I'm showing you. Okay, some of the things are one-time things and I'll just do them real fast to get them out of the way. Link your checking account, link your credit card to QuickBooks so that it all imports automatically, and then it's done. You never have to do it again. But other things like this is how you categorize or if you have a loan payment, here's how you split it between interest and principal. These are things that people get wrong a lot.

Speaker 1:

But once I show you, once I mean, y'all are smart people you don't run a business successfully if you're dumb. So there's no magic formula I have in my head. There's no magic brain component I have that no one else has. It's just something I've been taught and as soon as I teach it to you, you'll know how to do it too, and I'll teach you how to do the reconciliations. And that might take you know it might take a few times of showing you. But once you have all that down, you'll be able to use your time for other things. And I do understand that this might mean that some people eventually learn everything they need to know and they fire us, and that's okay. They'll still be clients for tax returns and we won't even have our feelings hurt because we'll feel like that happened, because you got really good at all the things we taught you to do, and that'll just open up a spot for someone else.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that is. Another thing that came up was that can you cancel at any time? And, yes, if you don't see value in this? Absolutely. No one's locked into any sort of contract with us. But all of our beta group is still going strong and everyone has just had amazing feedback. It's been amazing from them, from their standpoint, and I actually recorded an episode with one of our monthly members so that they can share how it's been for them. So that is next week's episode, but for us it's just been an absolute dream. It's for Carson to be able to get into all of their QuickBooks, monthly chat with them, check in what's going on. He knows what their plans for the future are. He knows what's going on in their business. He knows almost everything about their business by the end of these nine months and that makes our job so much, so much easier and more enjoyable. We love working with them every single month.

Speaker 1:

It is. It's because it's the things that I've been telling Taryn since we started this business that, oh, I wish people would just do this and that would make their life so much better. It would save them money, it would take stress off of them and it would make our job easier at tax time too. And then, you know, taryn came up with this idea, and now that's exactly what I get to do every month.

Speaker 2:

So and you love when people save more in taxes than they pay you. That's what you love.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, and all of the people on this plan do. That's the thing is. You know there's there's times when that doesn't happen. It's very rare. But there's times where you know they just their return didn't go that way but um, but you know that's. That's never the case here, because when we're looking at it during the year, there's time to fix things, to do things differently and to save money. After the year is over. Sometimes it's too late, depending on what it is.

Speaker 2:

So, yeah, just to wrap it up, it has been an amazing nine months with this beta group. Because of that, we are opening up a few more spots. I think we were saying five, but a couple have already been grabbed. We released some earlier to just like our email list, so we have a few more left. If that's something that you are considering, I definitely will put a link in the show notes. We have like a 15 minute discovery call if you have any other questions. If not, you can directly email us and just say, hey, I'm ready to get started.

Speaker 1:

And we also weren't kidding about that. Some people might, you know, get off of a plan because we taught them so well I'm specifically thinking of two in my head that you know they might be getting close to that. They really know what they're doing, they're fired up about it and they'll still be tax return clients, but and that's okay, that's great. That just means we did our job well. And so if you don't get one of these five spots, just be on the lookout, because if people do transition out of this plan, then we'll open up the spot for other people.

Speaker 2:

Okay, Awesome. So just to recap before we close out this episode, the monthly accounting plan. It's $2.25 a month and for the $2.25, you will have a monthly call with us and it's for one hour and in that call you can talk about anything under the sun. You can get help with your QuickBooks Carson will be in your QuickBooks with you or anything tax, business, finance related. In that call you will also receive an email on the first of every single month from me. It will give you a private link to book that call, along with things that you should be thinking about for your call. So get your list ready.

Speaker 2:

I always say, like okay, this month we have estimated tax payments coming. Like if you need help with that, make sure to bring that up in your meeting. I also say, okay, this is the month that this is due. So that email is more than just a booking reminder. It really kind of tells you what's going on and what needs to be on your radar every single month, which is what we would love for everyone to know, so that you don't miss deadlines, so that you plan accordingly, all of that. And then you get a second email. If you have not booked yet, you get another one, so that accountability is really built in there. And then, secondly, you get a free tax projection which is done at the end of every single year, and that is all included in the monthly membership for the 225. So anything else you want to add in there.

Speaker 1:

No, I think you covered everything.

Speaker 2:

All right. Well, like I said, check out the show notes if you need more information, and stay tuned next week, for one of our monthly clients are going to be on and she's going to talk about it, how it's changed her business and how she loves working with us and answering the questions that we've been getting like from a different perspective.

Speaker 1:

So until next time, thank you so much for listening to what your CPA Wants you to Know Podcast. This podcast is intended to provide accounting and tax information for educational purposes only. All tax situations are unique and should be handled with the assistance of a tax professional.