The Exact System I Use to Onboard Bookkeeping Clients (Step by Step)

If you’re a bookkeeper struggling to get clients or grow your business, this video breaks down the exact system I used to build a $30,000 per month bookkeeping business without paid ads.

I’m sharing my full client acquisition and onboarding process step by step so you can stop guessing and start signing real clients consistently.

In this video, you’ll learn:
• How I get bookkeeping clients organically using social media
• The exact questions I ask on every initial consultation
• How I turn a first call into a paying client in as little as 48 hours
• My proven onboarding workflow for new bookkeeping clients
• How to price your bookkeeping services with confidence
• The follow up system that closes more deals over time

This is the same system I use in my own bookkeeping business with over 70 recurring clients and growing.

If you want to start or scale your bookkeeping business, this will give you a clear, actionable roadmap you can implement immediately.

Whether you’re a beginner or already have clients, this process will help you:
• Get more leads
• Close more deals
• Build consistent monthly revenue

If you’re serious about growing your bookkeeping business, subscribe and follow along as I document everything in real time.

*Learn more about my investment fund targeting 8% to 12% fixed returns*
https://www.zipcapitalfund.com/

Transcript

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How to effectively onboard new bookkeeping clients. It all starts with the initial consultation. So picture this: you just did your sales and marketing on your social media, you booked your first consultation. Now you're about to actually talk to a prospective bookkeeping client. So they're not a current client, but they are interested in your services. So you scheduled a phone call. Now you've got 15 minutes to have your very first consultation, very first conversation with an interested bookkeeping client, and this is your first time doing it. If that's you, this video is going to be perfect for you. Let me break it down. First, let them do the talking. I know you're going to feel nervous. Just start the conversation. Hey, this is Zach Pascarello. How are you doing? Is now still a good time to talk? Okay, great. Why don't you start off by telling me about your business? Let them do the talking. Make sure you are in a quiet, focused situation, a quiet, focused spot where you can take notes and you can actively listen. There's no distractions. There's no kids screaming in the background. You're not driving. You're not at the gym. Make sure you're sitting down at your computer with your pen and paper, with your laptop open so that you can take notes, actively listen. Ask them to explain their business. You should be writing down, okay, construction company. He's got 10 employees. He needs help with this, he needs help with that. He's got an office manager, he's got three partners, he's got two bank accounts. Listen to him because he's going to explain his business. Let them do the talking. And then once they get through their talking, now is your opportunity to ask them to do more talking. Ask them more questions. In my opinion, this positions you in a position of authority. Whenever you're whenever you're the one asking questions, you seem to be the authority figure in the sales consultation, which you are. Even if you're brand new, you're the bookkeeper. They want to hire you. So you are the bookkeeper. You're the bookkeeping expert. So you you are just simply collecting information. It's a lot easier for you to ask questions than it is for them to ask you questions and put you on the spot. So write these down. If you're taking notes, why are why are you looking for a bookkeeper? Try to figure out who was doing their bookkeeping before. What's their situation? Was it the business owner doing the bookkeeping? Did they have an office manager? Did they have a previous bookkeeper? Did they have they never done their bookkeeping? What are they coming from? This is going to help you understand their current finances. This is going to help you understand the current state of their bookkeeping. If they've never done it before, then you got a clean slate. If they've been doing it themselves, you might have some messy, sloppy, unorganized bookkeeping that needs to be fixed. But why are you looking for a bookkeeper? Who was doing it before? And then very simple, how many bank accounts do you have? How many credit cards do you have? Okay, who do you bank with? Who are your credit cards with? I'm serious. Literally write this stuff down. They've got two bank accounts, one with Wells Fargo, one with Chase. Two credit cards, one with Capital One, one with American Express. Write this down. Are you currently using QuickBooks Online? If you are, great. If you're not, are you open to using QuickBooks Online or are you using some other accounting software? Are you currently running payroll? How many employees do you have? Who is processing your payroll? This might be a good time to mention. I don't do payroll. I only do bookkeeping. I only work with QuickBooks Online. Actually, no, I take that back. Now's not a good time to mention that. Get through your questions first. Who's doing your taxes? Write this stuff down. Who's your tax account? What is this? Is it such a good question? What's your budget for bookkeeping? Try to get an answer. Try to listen to what they say because who knows? They might tell you, ah, a thousand bucks. I'm gonna try to keep it under a thousand dollars. Or they might tell you 200 bucks. This is very valuable information. Write that down. Always ask, what is your budget for bookkeeping? What are you hoping to spend? Or what do you, yeah, you get the idea. Make a notes document and keep all of their answers in a file. This has helped me tremendously, especially as your business grows. With your first consultation, you're gonna remember everything. But as you grow, as you do more consultations, you might do three consultations in one week. And then in a couple weeks, that person follows up and you've got no idea who they are. You've got no idea about their business because you've already done five consultations since that last one two weeks ago. So have a notes file, have a folder for every single potential client, have a notes file, and this will really help you organize your clients. That way you don't have to ask the same questions over and over again. And that way you already have a cheat sheet of everything there is to know about this business and what they're looking for. Okay, so once you let them do the talking, once you ask them a ton of questions, now you get to explain what you do. If you haven't done this already, write it out first. Write out an explanation of what you do. Okay, so they've explained what they're looking for and their background. Now, okay, let me explain what I offer. So I heard you mention payroll, I heard you mention QuickBooks Online. That stuff is great. So I only do bookkeeping. So which means I record your transactions, I reconcile your accounts, and I generate your financial reports. And I only work with QuickBooks Online. I heard you mention you don't have QuickBooks Online, that's fine. I can get you set up. I heard you mention you already have QuickBooks Online, that's great. So ideally, everything that's being done right now in your QuickBooks Online, I could potentially take over for you. So I may I essentially manage your QuickBooks account. That's what you can say to this potential client. I can manage your QuickBooks Online account. That's what I do. Very simple. Record transactions, reconcile accounts, generate financial reports. I try to keep it super simple. You don't have to overcomplicate things to make it sound like you know what you're doing. As a matter of fact, I would recommend oversimplify things to make it sound like you know what you're doing because that's what experts do. Experts are able to explain things simply. Don't over overcomplicate things. Don't try to do too much. Don't try to don't try to overpromise because then you might end up under delivering. And that is one of the worst things that you can do. So do not overpromise. Do not try to say you're going to do too much. Don't be afraid to say that I only do bookkeeping. If it's not a good fit, it's not a good fit. I don't do payroll. I don't do taxes, I don't work with QuickBooks Desktop, only QuickBooks Online, only bookkeeping. I say that up front in the initial sales consultation. Okay, so after you've collected information, you've taken your notes, you've asked your questions, you've explained what you do. Now really the only thing left to do is next steps. So in order to get you a quote, I'm going to need one of two things. I will either need to be invited to your QuickBooks Online account, or if you don't want to do that, that's fine. I'll just need to see your three most recent bank statements and credit card statements. Get invited over the phone. This is one of the most important things that you can do. Are you sitting in front of a computer? Okay, great. Do you want to just invite me to your QuickBooks Online account now? Okay, here are the steps. Click on the gear icon in the top right hand corner. Click on manage users. Go to accounting firms. Here's my email address. Click invite. Yep, I just got it. Great. Thank you so much. If they're not sitting in front of their computer, if they don't want to do it right now, you should have a template or some sort of infographic made up with instructions on how to invite me as your bookkeeper, as your accountant to your QuickBooks Online account. So get their email address on the phone. And what I like to do is I like to actually get their email address and then very quickly send them a test email. Hey, I just sent you an email. Would you mind? Check your inbox real quick. I just want to make sure it went through. Have been having some issues recently with my email. So if you could just please double check to make sure you got it. Oh, you got it? Okay, great. I will send you another email with follow-up steps on how to invite me to your QuickBooks Online account. Okay, so you don't maybe they don't want to invite you to their QuickBooks account. That's fine. That's not preferred, but that's fine. Instead, you can just simply send me your three most recent bank statements. Now remember, in the beginning of this video, I told you one of the questions you should be asking: how many bank accounts do you have? How many credit card accounts do you have? Who do you bank with? Now, now that you have that information in your notes file, when you receive their three most recent bank statements, remember I said they've got two bank accounts and two credit cards, one with Wells Fargo and one with Chase, and then another credit card with Capital One and a credit card with American Express. Whenever they send you their three most recent bank statements and credit card statements, you can check. Did I get the Chase bank statements? Wells Fargo, Capital One credit card, American Express credit card statements. If I'm missing something, hey, Mr. Client, I noticed, I remembered you said you have a Capital One credit card, but whenever you sent me your statements, I didn't see a Capital One credit card. Do you still have that credit card account? Or did you maybe forget to include that in your email? This is going to save you during the quoting process because the quote is all about the number of transactions. So if you don't, if they forget to send you a credit card or if they forget to send you a bank statement, then you're going to underquote them because you're not going to count the correct number of transactions. Very important, you want to make sure you get all the statements in the email. So, next steps, do it all over the phone. Get their email address. Get invited to the QuickBooks account. Send them an email with instructions. So if they don't invite me to their QuickBooks, I'm going to send them an email. Hey, Mr. Client, please send me your three most recent bank statements and credit card statements. Now, if they don't respond, I'm following up in 48 hours. This happens. If they don't respond again, following up in seven days. And how I'm following up, always a phone call. Always a phone call first because you can always send an email if they don't answer the phone. So phone call first, they don't answer the phone. I'll leave a voicemail and I'll follow up with an email. And then seven days later, phone call, voicemail, email if they don't answer. And then if they ghost me, which does happen, I'm going to add them to my tracker. So I have a very simple Excel spreadsheet. You might have a CRM, which is totally fine, but I just have a simple Excel spreadsheet. I have the date, first name, last name, email address, and notes. And the date is our last contact date. So March 18th, I'm going to send them an email. Hey, Mr. Client, just check it in. Did you have any questions about did you need any information about the QuickBooks invite? Or did you have any questions after our consultation? Would love to hear back from you. They don't respond. And then seven days later, on March 25th, I'm going to follow up again. Seven days later, they don't respond. And then I'm going to add them to my tracker. And then on the 25th of every month, April 25th, I'm going to send them an email. Hey, Mr. Client, just checking in. Do you still want help with your bookkeeping? Every single month for the next however long until it takes them to respond, I'm going to continue following up. And the reason I do this is because they expressed interest. So they either responded to my message and said, yes, I need help with my bookkeeping, or they reached out to me first. I'm not going to do this with people who have never expressed interest. So if I just reach out to somebody and say, hey, do you need help with bookkeeping? And they don't respond, I'm not going to follow up every 30 days. I think that's kind of annoying. That's just my personal preference. But if I say, hey, do you need help with your bookkeeping? And you say yes, boom. All of a sudden, you have entered into Zach Pascarello Harrisburg Bookkeeping's portal. And now you are going to get a follow-up every 30 days until you respond with either, hey, I'm not interested, or hey, let's do it. Let's sign up. You got to follow up. This has literally happened in my bookkeeping business. Six months later, six months of following up, I had somebody hire me. So it does work. Do not give up. Follow up, follow up, follow up. Add them to your tracker. You gotta keep track. The reason the tracker is so valuable, I know it seems silly right now. You might be just getting started. You might have two or three leads, and they're probably top of mind. You know all of them by heart. You've got all of them memorized. Not a big deal right now. But as you grow, you're gonna have people messaging you on LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, you're gonna have people emailing you, phone calls, you're gonna meet people in person, you're gonna have text messages, you're gonna have Facebook messages. It's gonna be all over the place. So I recommend keep track of all your leads all in one spot, either CRM or a free Microsoft Excel spreadsheet. Keep track of all your of all your leads, everybody who has expressed interest. I'm actually doing this right now for Zip Capital. So I am practicing what I teach. I'm doing this right now in my investment fund. So anybody who reaches out, if it's a phone call or if I see you in person or you message me on LinkedIn and you express interest in my investment fund, I'm adding you to my tracker. And then every 30 days, I'm gonna follow up. Hey, you still want to invest in zip capital? Speaking of that, I do have a link down below. If you want to learn more about my investment fund, I'm targeting 8% up to 12% fixed returns to accredited investors. And so what I do is I lend money to real estate investors locally here in Pennsylvania, just simply because that's the market that I know. I live in Pennsylvania. I'm most familiar with the real estate market in Pennsylvania. I currently have$6 million lent out, and I've got 30 investors in Zip Capital, and I currently have more than 40 loans deployed.$6 million. So if you want to join Zip Capital, I'm targeting 8% up to 12% fixed returns. And there's a link down below. If you want to learn more, if you want to just schedule a phone call with me, if you want to chat about it and see if it could be a good fit, let me know. I would love to chat with you. Okay. So after your consultation, after you get the QuickBooks invite and the three most recent bank statements, send them a quote. Speed is everything. Speed, speed, speed. Some of these people are desperate. Some of these people are ready to hire a bookkeeper today. Be the one they hire. The only way you can be the one they hire today is if you respond quickly. If you give them a quote today, so send them a quote. It's super simple.$3 per transaction. And the way you figure out their number of transactions, look at QuickBooks. Go to the bank feed, go to the chart of accounts, go to the general ledger, look at the number of transactions. I like to find an average. So I'll take three most recent months. So right now is March. So I will do December, January, February. I'll add up all the transactions from the past three months and then divide it by three. And then that is their average number of transactions. And then multiply that by two, three, four dollars per transaction. And so this will give you a rough ballpark. Typically, I have a minimum.$200 was my minimum getting started. Now probably three, four hundred dollars now that I'm more experienced. On average,$500,$600,000,$700, very reasonable. If it's more than$1,000, I would double check their PL. If it's more than a thousand, if they have more than 300 transactions per month, double check their profit and loss, double check their balance sheet, double check their cash they have in their bank account, and just make sure it makes sense. If you got a client making$80,000 a year, probably doesn't make sense to charge them much more than a thousand bucks a month for bookkeeping. But if you got a client making a million bucks a year, sure, absolutely, then that would make more sense. So yes, three dollars per transaction, but if it looks a little high or a little low, don't be afraid to check their revenue and their assets and their liabilities just to see if it kind of makes sense. There's really no, I've heard 1% of annual revenue. I've heard three percent of annual revenue is how much somebody should be spending on bookkeeping. I don't know. It's up to you to decide. I think three dollars per transaction is a pretty good gauge. Keep in mind, you can always go up, you can always go down. So just because you enter into an agreement today for$3 per transaction in six months, if your business doubles, or if I find out that it's way more work to do your bookkeeping, you can increase the price. There's nothing I don't lock my clients. Here's the thing I don't lock my clients into a long-term contract. That's good for both of us. So you, Mr. Client, if you want to fire me, I'm not gonna force you to be in a relationship with me if you don't want to. If you don't want me to be your bookkeeper, I'm not gonna force you to stick around for 12 months. That just feels icky to me. I don't like that. I hate getting locked into contracts. So I treat other people how I want to be treated. I'm not gonna lock other people into a 12-month contract. Could it help with churn? Might it help with revenue? Maybe. Is it worth it? I don't think so. I would rather just do the right thing. If you want to leave anytime, you can. No contract binding you to 12 or 24 months of my bookkeeping services on the on the same side simultaneously. If I feel like I need to increase my prices, I can also do that anytime based on your business activity, your business volume, your business growth. If I feel the need to increase your price, I can do that at any time. With that being said, client agreement. You got to have a client agreement. And in that client agreement, you can clearly articulate there's no long-term contract, but also I could increase prices at any time due to change in business activity or volume or business growth. So you got to have a client agreement. So initial consultation, collect the bank statements, get invited to QuickBooks, send them a quote. Now, up until this point, let's just assume everything's going great. They've responded quickly. You sent them a quote, they like the quote. Actually, no, before we do that, let's say they don't like the quote. Keep in mind, it's not end of conversation, it's not termination. If they don't like your quote, ask them why. Okay, great. I quoted you$800 per month. I hear you. Say that you don't you don't like that, you don't want to move forward. Can I ask why? Is there something holding you back? Is there something else that we could do? What were you hoping to pay? If$800 is too much, what were you hoping to pay? Maybe we could come to an agreement. Maybe they say$800, maybe you say$800 and they say 600. Okay, that's close enough. How about$700? Let's let's split the difference. Is that okay? Or maybe they say you say$800 and they say 200. Okay, probably not. Probably not going to work, probably not gonna split the difference, probably not gonna go all the way down to 500. Or maybe you do, maybe it is your first client, and you're like, you know what? I quoted him 800, he wanted 200. I would be okay with 500 for my very first client. Let's just see what happens. Maybe you do, maybe you don't. The cool thing is, it's totally up to you. Also, speaking of quoting, how do you quote a cleanup project? I do it the same way:$3 per transaction. So if they want a 2025 cleanup, guess what? I'm gonna look at all 2025 bank statements, add up all the transactions. I know it might take you 20 minutes, it's worth it. Add up all the transactions from 2025, multiply it by three. That's your your quote for 2025 bookkeeping. And then I'm gonna do the same thing for 2026, but instead of looking at all of 2025, I'm just gonna look at the three most recent months and find out their quote. So 2025 might be different from 2026, and then I'm going to charge them full price up front. If they're not okay with that, I'm gonna try to push. I'm gonna try to push and I'm gonna try to get them to pay all up front. If not, worst case scenario, half up front and half when the project is complete. Or another thing that you could do that I just heard of somebody else doing. So it's 2026 right now, they want a 2025 cleanup and they but they're short on cash. They don't want to pay full price. So what you could do instead, let's say it's gonna be 500 bucks a month in 2025, and to keep it simple, 500 bucks a month in 2026. Okay, fine. I hear you, you don't want to pay six thousand dollars for a 2025 cleanup right now. How about this? Let's do a thousand bucks a month until you've paid in full. Does that work? Or something else? That's a good compromise. That way you're still getting paid, that way they're not spending a ton of money all up front. And if it's your first client, give it a shot. A thousand bucks a month is still really great. So there are a bunch of different options. Always negotiate, always figure out what they're unhappy with and what they would prefer, and then see if you can make it work. Client agreement. Make sure you have everything clearly specified in the client agreement. I electronically sign, send my client agreement to be signed using panda doc, but I also know DocuSign, Adobe, Google Suite, there are a bunch of different softwares to electronically send and sign documents. I prefer Pandadoc, but you can use whatever you want. Just it doesn't matter what you use, just make sure that you have a client agreement. Make sure you send one. And then also ACH authorization. I have this as part of my client agreement. So I don't wait for my client to pay me. I don't send my client an invoice. Instead, I send an ACH authorization and I get them, I get their bank information. So I pull my payment every month. So if you're paying me$500 a month, then I'm gonna pull$500 on April 1st from your bank account. I love it. ACH authorization. Look into it, try to do it, try to get it done. It just makes billing so much easier, infinitely easier, especially as you grow. Okay, here's a quick billing example. Really, really quick example. So let's say they just want to start fresh in 2026. So that's okay. It's March right now, 500 bucks a month. I'm gonna charge you$1,500 for January, February, March. So I'm gonna send you an invoice right now for$1,500. I'm not going to get started. I will start your bookkeeping as soon as that's paid. I really like to say that very clearly. That way they know we've gone through the whole process. You sign the client agreement. Last thing you have to do is pay this invoice. I I will I will only get started once this invoice is paid. I will not do any of your bookkeeping until that invoice is paid. That way they know what to expect. That way they know, okay, I've got to pay this invoice if I want Zach to start doing my bookkeeping. So$1,500 and then starting April 1st,$500. And in QuickBooks, you can set up a recurring invoice and a recurring invoice template to be emailed automatically to your client. You can even use QuickBooks if you don't have ACH authorization. You can even use QuickBooks to set up a payment processor. So you can send, you can automatically send an invoice through QuickBooks to your customer. And then your quick your customer can actually click that invoice straight through QuickBooks and pay with a bank transfer or a credit card. I do add a 3% convenience fee if they want to pay with a card. And then QuickBooks charges 1% max, 10, 15, 20 bucks to process an ACH transfer. So definitely the cheapest way is to do ACH authorization, ACH origination straight through your business bank account, but you might not be able to get that set up. So look into QuickBooks as a payment processor. And then also onboarding fee. So once again, quoting, not a science. It's more of an art form and a science. It's not an exact science. So$3 per transaction onboarding fee. If they're a brand new business, if they don't have QuickBooks, yes, I might charge them an onboarding fee. If they are if they're paying me for a 2025 cleanup, I'm probably not going to charge them an onboarding fee because they're already paying me so much to do 2025 and 2026. If if even if they're not a brand new business, but if they are an experienced business and they already have QuickBooks Online, then yes, I'm going to charge an onboarding fee. So pretty much every situation, unless they're paying me for a large cleanup, large cleanup. Every other situation, I'm going to charge an onboarding fee. Here's why. Two reasons. If they're brand new, they don't have QuickBooks, I got to get everything set up. If they aren't brand new and they already have QuickBooks, I have to probably clean up their chart of accounts. Or I have to learn how they're doing their bookkeeping. It's going to be a lot of work. It's a lot of work. And inevitably, there are always things that end up needing to be fixed in the past before they hired me. With that being said, very important, I feel like I'm just thinking of so many new things that I want to bring up apart from my notes. Very important. With that being said, if you pay me for 2026 bookkeeping and if you have 2025 transactions, that's outside of my scope of work. So our client agreement is going to clearly state my services begin January 1st. And that means I'm only going to be bookkeeping for transactions that occurred on or after January 1st. No exceptions. I'm not going to help with any 20. I'm your bookkeeper, but you didn't pay me for 2025. You've only paid me for 2026. Now, with that being said, if they do pay an onboarding fee and you already have it clearly outlined in your client agreement, if there's one or two things that need to be adjusted for 2025, I'm not going to nickel and dime my client. I'll do them a favor. I will clearly articulate in the email, hey, per our client agreement, I'm not supposed to be doing anything with 2025. However, I will make an exception this one and only time, and I'll help you with this one thing, but that's it. Okay, client agreement, ACH authorization, billing example. Okay, so now they've paid. Now you got to start doing the bookkeeping. And that's where the video is going to end. Maybe, maybe next week, maybe I'll make a video on how to actually do the bookkeeping if you don't know how to do that. But first, you want to get their bank statements if you don't have them already. So bank statements, credit card statements, and then email. Oh, set them up in QuickBooks Online. If they don't have QuickBooks Online, set them up. And I have an email template that I always send out to all my new clients. I'm just gonna read it for you right here, right now. If you want to write this down, maybe you can, or you get the idea. Here's what I say new client, they've paid their invoice. I'm going to set them up with a QuickBooks account. Hey, I just signed you up for a new QuickBooks account. You should have received an email directly from QuickBooks. You will want to follow the link in the email and create your account as soon as possible. It's important that you do this because the link will expire soon. Then you will need to enter your billing information directly into the QuickBooks website so that your subscription can be activated. It's also very important that you do this as soon as possible. You can do this by clicking the gear icon in the top right corner, click subscriptions and billing, click the green subscribe button, enter your billing information. So, no, I do not pay for my clients' QuickBook subscriptions. It's just it's too messy. I don't like doing it. I started doing it in the beginning and I very quickly stopped. I strongly recommend that you also do not pay for your clients' QuickBook subscription. Finally, please connect all of your business bank accounts and business credit cards to the QuickBooks bank feed. And then I throw in a link on how to do that. So QuickBooks has a ton of great tutorials. I put a link in the email and say click here to find detailed instructions. Please let me know when you have completed all of these steps. Very important. I cannot start your bookkeeping until these steps are done. And then finally, as always, please call me if you have any questions. That's it for the video. Thank you so much. Check out all the links in the description down below of this video. Subscribe to my channel. Check out my podcast, bookkeeping expert Zach Pascarello on Apple, on Spotify. Check out my YouTube channel, bookkeeping expert Zach Pascarello. Check out all the links down below. Follow me on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. I'm putting out new content every single day. And comment down below what questions you might have, what video you want me to make next. And then finally, check out ZipCapitalfund.com, my website, where you can learn more about investing in my investment fund, targeting 8% up to 12% fixed returns to accredited investors. Thank you so much. God bless you. Have a great day.