Keeping Businesses in Business
Keeping Businesses in Business is a podcast for business owners who want to better understand the numbers behind their company.
Hosted by Accounting Services Unlimited, this podcast breaks down real world accounting topics in a way that is straightforward, practical, and easy to follow. From bookkeeping basics and tax considerations to financial mistakes we commonly see in businesses, each episode focuses on conversations that help owners better understand how their business operates financially.
Whether you are just starting out or have been running your company for years, this podcast covers the questions, situations, and financial realities many business owners face.
Our goal is simple: to talk about the numbers that matter and the situations that impact businesses every day.
Keeping Businesses in Business
Small Business Accounting FAQs: What New Owners Need to Know
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In this episode of Keeping Businesses in Business, we’re breaking down the numbers every business owner needs to understand to stay in control and make smarter decisions.
If you’ve ever felt overwhelmed by your financials or unsure what you should actually be looking at, this episode is for you. We’re covering the basics of business accounting in a way that’s simple, practical, and easy to apply no accounting degree required.
We’ll walk through key concepts like revenue, expenses, profit, and cash flow, and explain what they really mean for your day to day operations. You’ll also learn which numbers matter most and what to actually pay attention to on a regular basis.
This episode is a straightforward look at the fundamentals so you can better understand what’s going on behind your numbers and where your business stands.
Hi, this is Thomas Fontez with Keeping Businesses in Business. I'm here with my buddy Andrea Assange. Hey, Andrea.
SPEAKER_00Hey, how are you?
SPEAKER_02All right. We're trying to talk about some fine fun facts, fun stuff that have to do with taxes and business bookkeeping. Yay. Anyway, so at least we'll try to make it fun. So we've got some topics we're going to hit on. For those of you that see these clips, please send us a message or something on one of our social media posts so you can uh throw in a question for our next podcast, which should be very soon. Any question? There's no such thing as a stupid question. Yes, there is.
SPEAKER_01That's not true.
SPEAKER_02It's not gonna be a stupid question. All right, Andrea. There are some questions that we set up and then there's some surprise questions Andrea's going to embarrass me with. So let's get started.
SPEAKER_00All right. So we're going back to the very basics, Thomas. Can you start with just telling us what's the difference between a bookkeeper and a CPA?
SPEAKER_02Well, the easy answer is the bookkeepers do all the work and the CPAs get all the glory and all the money. So yeah, it's great to be a CPA, but it's terrible to be a bookkeeper. No, bookkeepers are actually the ones that um reconcile checking accounts, credit cards. We're the ones that communicate with the clients more often. Most of the time we handle sales taxes, uh, payroll, things of that nature, uh the day-to-day, month to month. We're the ones that send reports to the clients and uh you know, answer any questions they have, that kind of thing. And the CPA, usually for a small business, especially one that's starting out, you don't need a big CPA bill. Uh so at the end of the year, usually you send those books to a CPA, to a certified public accountant. Um, and from there, they knock out your tax returns and let the bookkeepers know if there's any changes that they think we need to make as far as where we're coding specific expenses or costs or um changes to the balance sheet. Exciting things like that. Now, um, there are some CPAs out there that do bookkeeping. Those are usually either really large firms or firms that are trying to get by during the whole year. Um, ASU specifically has always done books throughout the year and has a very strong tax department. And we work with several CPAs uh in the area. So yeah, that's cool.
SPEAKER_00So how can regular bookkeeping help me decide when it's time to raise my prices or bring in an additional employee?
SPEAKER_02Well, that's that's a good question. Wow, that is interesting. Listen, I'm keeping you on your P's and Q's and this is one I like. So this is one of the most important parts. Now, this is this is really uh all right. So, for example, one of the things that ASU does, and that's important that any accounting or bookkeeping professional should do, is for example, let's say you're a restaurant and you want to track your cost of goods, what your food costs, your meat, your chicken, your tomatoes, your onions. Right. So you want to make sure that you have a breakdown in your cost of goods.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You want to make sure that you see how much you're spending and also break it down by vendor, because, like you said, so if I can talk to my vendors, if I'm purchasing a lot of one specific product, then I know that I can go ask for a better deal.
SPEAKER_00Right. You got to negotiate those things with your vendors, right?
SPEAKER_02Exactly. Exactly. And so you negotiate with the vendor. And also when prices go up, which in right recently the economies, you know, things are going up in pricing.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Um, that is exactly where you have to make sure that your pricing is in line with what's happening there. So make sure that if it's time to raise your price, don't lose money at any point. And those reports are necessary to keep going. Now, not all industries need to be so on top of it, like restaurants or bars or uh specific, you know, day-to-day operations where somebody, where there's an industry where somebody's buying things on a daily basis. For example, a law firm, an insurance agent, they need to pay more attention to their balance sheet, stuff like that. But going back to the books, yeah, another thing you have to keep an eye on, you mentioned payroll. Of course. And it goes two ways. For example, if you are your sales are going up and your payroll is staying the same, so you're making more money and your costs are down a little bit. A lot of times, that is forward thinking to what may happen is you may start losing clients or customers because you don't have enough people to service them and you may have a bigger problem going down the line. So you want to make sure that you hire accordingly to the work that's coming in. And of course, the other side to that is if your sales are steady and you're hiring more people and they're working full-time, you have to make sure that that percentage of income that is on every profit and loss report that everybody should be looking at on a monthly basis controls that payroll cost and makes you decide whether it's time to hire more people or maybe ask people to step back for a minute or um, you know, look for the toxic ones and get rid of them.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. It's it's time to get rid of anything toxic in 2026, right? So what do you think, Thomas? Um business owners, what's the most common item or service that they forget to expense? Does that make sense? Is my question making sense?
SPEAKER_02Sure, sure. Um it's not really about an expense, is a lot of times what ends up happening is when you're in the day-to-day operations of a business and you're blowing and going. I mean, you're busy. Uh I don't care what industry you're in, but you're taking appointments or you're putting what I like to call butts in seats, yeah, you know, or whatever you may be doing, or or whatever, um, you stop to buy equipment, you stop to buy materials, you stop to buy uh food, we stop to buy uh whatever. And all of a sudden, you realize you don't have your business checking account with you or um your credit card or the business credit card. So they just spend it on their personal.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then this becomes a consistency thing. Or, for example, uh the a wife or somebody in the office that does the same thing, and it's not a big deal. And in some cases, they even reimburse the person for the expense. And then they forget to put it into the PL. They forget to get it reconciled. And those are those dreaded journal entries in QuickBooks that we all do.
SPEAKER_00Right, right.
SPEAKER_02So, yeah, that's one of the biggest, the biggest uh problems or or the worst ones, which is when they automate a payment from a credit card that you don't give to your bookkeeper. That makes me want to cause harm to some of our clients. I'm not gonna mention any names, but you know who you are.
SPEAKER_00Y'all know who y'all are, okay? Don't don't cause us any more issues.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_00Um What are some red flags that might cause the IRS to take a closer look at somebody's business?
SPEAKER_02Geez, Andrea, we just met and you're already asking me about the IRS.
SPEAKER_00I am going for the hard-hitting questions, Thomas.
SPEAKER_02Um Red flags. There's um I'll give you two real simple ones. Um, one of the stupidest ones I've ever seen is when somebody does a tax return themselves. It's usually those do-it-yourselfers that um have a perfect number on everything. Um I brought in$10,000. Um, I spent$3,000 on my cost and materials, and I spent$3,000 on payroll, and I have$4,000 left over. And when those computers see all those great zeros perfectly in there, excuse me, you have almost a perfect chance of getting audited. And one of the beautiful parts about being audited by the IRS, well, number one, there's no beautiful part, um, is the fact that they're gonna go back and look at more years and they're really gonna look under your fingernails because that kind of mistake is, like I said at the beginning, stupid.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. So those perfect numbers are good to be true.
SPEAKER_02Bad.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um, and they're not legit. They're not 100% legit. Nobody has all of those perfect numbers.
SPEAKER_02And you've got to exactly, and you've got to love the ones that have these companies that just somehow always lose money year after year after year. It's like, wow, how do these people survive? Losing money every year. Yeah, that's a great way of getting a little more unwanted attention.
SPEAKER_00Right. Those are the DIY folks. Oh, it's usually those are the culprits.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, usually those are the culprits.
SPEAKER_00Right. Do you have any uh horror stories for us?
SPEAKER_02Um I don't want to call it a horror story. I call it marriage counseling. Because what we've had, and this is not uh a one-time thing, is we've had where the wife or the husband is the bookkeeper, right? They're saving themselves three, four hundred dollars a month by having somebody uh do reports whenever they have time to at home, keep up with it. Of course, it's your spouse. So that person usually puts that other person on the back burner like crazy. Uh they never look at reports. And then as time goes on in any small business, the arguing begins, which is boy, I haven't seen any of these reports in three months. Sweetheart, I don't want to fight with you, but you know, most companies look at financial statements on a regular basis. Uh, and then after that, by the time I get them, it's when they're looking to hire us after they've fallen behind two or three or four years and or more, and we end up talking to them down from divorce or violence in the, you know, in their homes and things like that. So yeah, it turns into marriage counseling. That's why we have boxes of Kleenex and uh and security by the door. Just kidding. We don't have security by the door.
SPEAKER_00How can you save your marriage in 2026? Hire a bookkeeper.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, right.
unknownRight.
SPEAKER_00No, that's totally relatable. Um, my husband, who is in an MRI technologist, thought he was gonna be the bookkeeper and the tax person for my business because I'm I'm not a tax person.
SPEAKER_02So which one of you has started seeing other people?
SPEAKER_00Right, right. That wasn't a good, good decision. I'm like, do I want to keep the business or do I want to keep my husband?
SPEAKER_02We need to hire an example.com profile going up any minute. Any minute. Um So, Andrea, you're you're out in the field a lot. Um you get to see uh what I like to call with business owners a lot of crybabies. Yeah. Um why do you think uh people feel the need to cry whenever they see somebody that works in the service industry that focuses on small business?
SPEAKER_00What do you mean? Try to rephrase that for me.
SPEAKER_02Crybabies. I don't have any money. It doesn't matter that I just spent two weeks on the Gulf Coast or that I drive a$100,000 car. Oh, I just don't have any money.
SPEAKER_00These are the people that I see daily that are broke, but they have everything that money can buy.
SPEAKER_02Right, exactly. Yeah, that that's that's one of the things we deal with. Um the only problem is with the IRS, they will come and check if you ignore them long enough. Um I'll tell you a quick story is uh we had a we had a client that owned a owned a business. Um, it was an insurance agent. And it was the same thing. You know, I never have any money, business is bad, and everything else. And uh finally uh they had somebody from their own company, from the workers. I mean, they obviously an insurance agent works for another agency. And so the agency came and audited the accounting and they won an award for profitability.
SPEAKER_00Whoa.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Can you call them a big fat liar? Whoa. So yes, when I saw the award on the wall for that year on profitability, I said, wow, you're a big fat liar. We need to talk. Yeah, really. But again, we don't work for the IRS. We just want to make sure that these business, the businesses do the smart things, which is why if you are being profitable, make sure you invest. And uh, and we're pretty good at working with other financial advisors and things like that to help them invest. But um, again, one of the things I just touched on, which is we don't work for the IRS. We work for you, we work for our clients, which means that if we can help you write something off or give you an idea of what to purchase during, you know, during the course of a year or towards the end of the year, uh, we're gonna do that. If I tell you to buy more inventory, go ahead.
SPEAKER_00Right. No, it's all about trusting the experts in the field. I mean, I have learned so much about different things that business owners can write off. We can, you know, depending on your profession, of course, right? But you can write off clothing, uh, you can write off plastic surgery. Had no idea. I brought it up.
SPEAKER_02So I'm not doing this. It's gonna be an HR thing.
SPEAKER_00Ladies and gentlemen, hey, I'm enlightening you. Did you do that?
SPEAKER_02Where do you think this came from? Um no, absolutely, depending on the industry, you know, real estate agents, people that are in the public eye, there's lots of things that they can do physically. But a lot of times it's things that you buy for your offices, whether it's uh painting for the wall or whether it's computers, believe it or not, software, music that you play in your office, whether it's from an iPhone iPhone or uh speakers, uh, whether you put new carpeting in, uh, all that stuff. One of the big ones that is software. I mean, a lot of people don't think about the software they download or things, even music, that if you're playing it, let's write it off. I mean, let's be aggressive and look for those things. And none of it is is um is illegal. It's all good. Uh especially, you know, a lot of a lot of other firms, a lot of other very conservative accounts or CPAs won't let you write off any restaurants, won't let you write off any travel, uh, won't let you write off Ubers.
SPEAKER_00Uh that's insane.
SPEAKER_02Well, a lot of them think that it's, you know, it could be looked at as being personal. And we look at it from the point of view we don't do anything personal. We live in our business. That's right. We go out to eat and we talk about business and we're talking to the people around us. Uh if we go, we travel, of course we're gonna travel for business.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02Um if you're gonna if we're gonna travel personally, sure, I'm not gonna put it on that credit card. But when does somebody that owns a small business not travel for business?
SPEAKER_00When are they not working?
SPEAKER_02Exactly.
SPEAKER_00I mean, exactly. Right. So you can write off so many more things. I mean, we never stop talking business. We go have coffee with people, we eat with people, we're, you know, listening to music in our office. I mean, there's not anything. Well, I shouldn't say there's not anything you can't write off. But it's true. I mean, it's not, you know, the the possibilities are pretty limitless.
SPEAKER_02Well, I mean, like I think I I don't know if I'd use the word limitless. There's a lot of CPAs listening that would love to put a comment in the comment section. But um, you know, a lot of it is some common sense and a lot of it is knowledge. And it's important to have somebody standing behind you that's helping you with that knowledge. That's that's um that when you have a question, you can text, email, or call and they respond right away. And that's one of the things we're really popular for.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh really popular because you it at Accounting Services Unlimited, that's what people thrive on that work here. They love answering questions and being prompt about it. If you're working with somebody or you know somebody that works with an accountant or CPA or a firm and it takes them days, weeks, or months to hear back from, it's time to move on.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02It's time to move on because if you're sitting there looking at a major purchase, like a vehicle or equipment or anything else, and they can't answer you on the spot, then what good are they?
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02I mean, I can't tell you how many times on a Saturday I've gotten texts from some of my favorite clients, and you know who you are also, because you got no problem, asking me whether to lease or buy a vehicle. Yeah. And so, you know, those are questions that we're meant to be there to answer. And I don't mind answering it because I pretty much know the answer for every all the clients and say, this is what benefits you, this doesn't.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Um I have an interesting question.
SPEAKER_02Finally.
SPEAKER_00Thomas jokes everybody. You think Thomas should go, you might want to look into comedy. Have you ever done comedy live?
SPEAKER_02Oh, you should see my marriage. It's pretty much a joke right now. No, just kidding. Poor Helen. No, go ahead. Yeah, poor Helen.
SPEAKER_00So look, my question is um tuition. Can people write off tuition?
SPEAKER_02It's a great question. Uh, usually tuition for kids is not a write-off for the parents, except for the state. At least you're in the state of Louisiana, there's a portion of tuition that can be written off. Now, the owner of the company or people that work for the company, if you put somebody through uh whether it's a degree, uh, a secondary degree or any other kind of education, that's a tax write-off.
SPEAKER_01That's a write-off.
SPEAKER_02That's a write-off. But for our kids, not really. There's there are some other ways that you can talk to your financial advisor about how to be able to write off tuition before you pay it. For example, uh section 129, I think it's called. And I might be wrong, you might have to edit that. Um that you're able to put money in throughout the years and uh and it's a pre-tax dollars, and you can spend that money on education.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02And if you don't use it on education, let's say uh Jimmy decides he doesn't want to go to college, then uh that's when dad buys himself a yacht that's called Jimmy's tuition.
SPEAKER_00Right. Right. Okay, because some of the schools are nonprofits, so it's like, okay, can you consider this a donation to the nonprofit?
SPEAKER_02That's when you get into some really gray areas. Um, I don't want to say anything that's gonna get me in trouble. Okay, but no, usually if it's tuition, it's tuition. Um if you make tithes or other types of donations to a nonprofit, of course they're they're a tax deductible. Yeah, but tuition itself for school, no.
SPEAKER_00Gotcha. Okay, so we're in the world of AI where everybody is utilizing AI and utilizing the tools for bookkeeping. So where does the human bookkeeper still provide the most value that an algorithm can't touch?
SPEAKER_02So I think it's the human aspect. It's one of the things that I've said since I started ASU. Um it's every company is a fingerprint.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Every kind, every company. There is no such thing as industry standards when it comes to small business. There are some things that are common, but it's not perfect. And for AI to work, it has to be precise.
SPEAKER_01Right.
SPEAKER_02And AI is not precise, and I don't think it's ever going to be precise for something like bookkeeping or tax or anything like that, because there comes a moment when you have to deal with the client needs. So, for example, now good, this is gonna segue into something else, which is when you need to talk to a bank, or when you need to talk about retirement, or when you need to talk about buying a bigger home or downsizing, AI is not gonna have those answers for you. Because it there's a lot of variables that go into that that that's just never gonna be the same for everyone. Right now, if if I need to know, you know, how to smoke a brisket, sure, AI will be able to give me a nice way to smoke a brisket.
SPEAKER_00Or they might burn it.
SPEAKER_02Or they might, God, I'd love to blame AI for that. That'd be awesome. That'd be awesome. We've got a lot to talk about, AI. Um, but yeah, those are the kind of things that that a good account or bookkeeper will help you communicate with your banks, communicate with your finance advisors, communicate with other people in your sphere and help you make the right decisions. And just AI's not good too.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. So switching gears a little bit, I want to talk about the startup businesses. A lot of time, those are the DI wires, right? Like, oh, I have to do my own marketing, I have to definitely do my own bookkeeping and my own taxes. Those people often learn a costly lesson.
SPEAKER_02Oh, you mean the$27,000 rule? I'll tell you why I call it a$27,000 rule. So you take a small business, let's say a landscaping company, and the landscaping company is doing his own books, and first year goes by and You know, he thinks he's doing his books just by putting everything into Excel and that's it, kicking out a tax return. And because he bought so much equipment, you know, trucks and everything on his first year, he thinks that he's gonna write all this off and then, you know, and then move on to the next year. And then the$27,000 rule happens. And I'll I call it$27,000 rule because usually what happens is after they clear the first$100,000 in gross net income, they are subject to self-employment tax at 15.3%. So right off the bat, you owe$15,300. And then you still owe income taxes. And if you have, you know, a single guy that's not married yet, doesn't have any kids, and that profit is there, all of a sudden he owes another$12,000 in income taxes. Now think about it. And he's gonna pay$27,000 in taxes. So that's usually the moment where they say, Oh my God, what have I done?
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02Uh so that's when we step in. That's when you become an S corporation. That's when we do things like put you on payroll, though it's that's when you create the infrastructure that shows that startup one, quit screwing around, go cut grass, don't try to do my job. And I promise not to cut grass either. Um, and and uh and then moving forward, the savings and the impact is huge. And the important thing is that we make that new client feel as stupid as possible.
SPEAKER_00Goofy, maybe.
SPEAKER_02Right, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Um okay, the one big, beautiful bill act. Let's can you break it down for us non-bookkeepers?
SPEAKER_02Well, I'll give you two, I'll give you two real basic points um because it's a big bill. So no, I don't think I don't think we have enough time. Right. But um, there's two things that I like. One um is the not charging payroll taxes for on tips for restaurants, for waiters and waitresses. Right. Right, which is a really big deal, but there's a specific way you we have to do that. Uh and it means taking into consideration how much minimum wage is and things like that. And then the secondary one is no payroll taxes on overtime.
SPEAKER_00On overtime.
SPEAKER_02So those are two things that are really important, but you have to make sure that they are done correctly. Because if they are not, that company, that corporation or that business owner is gonna get smacked with a bill that's that happens, you know, more often than not with a bill later on down the line that they're not expecting because they thought that this was gonna save them.
SPEAKER_00Right. So, what do the employers need to do in their bookkeeping to ensure that the staff and the business are compliant with this big new beautiful bill?
SPEAKER_02Step one, don't do it yourself. Hand it to a professional. Yes. That's to be the best thing. And make sure that they communicate constantly with their with their professional, whomever they may be, better be us. Um, make sure that we know. Make sure that if it's a it's a 40-hour work week and this person worked 56 hours, tell us. Make sure that if they hire new people that we know that they're for weight staff, things like that. And and those tips that are rolling in, make sure that there is also a sound way of keeping track of those things. So that when it comes time to do those forms every quarter and then taxes at the end of the year, that everything is accurate.
SPEAKER_00Right. Very good advice.
SPEAKER_02Definitely gotta think you've surprised me with enough questions. The surprise questions were pretty surprising. I could have prepared better. Aren't they fun?
SPEAKER_00Isn't it fun putting you on the spot like this?
SPEAKER_02No, no.
SPEAKER_00All right, here's an easy one. Well, maybe. We'll see. Okay. All right. S Corp owners. What is a reasonable salary? And I know it depends on some things, but what is a reasonable salary? And how do we figure out the amount that somebody should be paying themselves?
SPEAKER_02All right. So the reasonable compensation is the exact term that they use. Um, and I have a lot of CPAs that I argue with this over because there's one thing that's theoretical and there's one thing that's practical in this instance. And of course, every single CPA I've ever met uh tells me that the theoretical is what you must go by. And that numbers is uh is around 25 to 30 percent of your profits. Of your revenue. Which is of your profits.
SPEAKER_00Not of your revenue.
SPEAKER_02No, not of your revenue. And so that's usually what they want to do. Well, when you're a small business, not a medium-sized business, not a multi-million dollar company, cash flow is always going to be an issue. So one of the things that we try to steer with, and again, we try to keep this because it's like a moving target. Especially here in New Orleans, you know, we have great months right now. Uh, you know, the, you know, starting in the fall, all the way through the end of spring, beginning of summer, you know, usually business is pretty good. We have tourists, everything's terrific. But then the summer doldrums come for companies or businesses that are dealing with tourism. And, you know, those are times when maybe the owner can't take that 25% profit that he had from previous months. So he lessens it and then you turn it back up in the fall, depending on when your summer ends for a lot of these businesses, because some of them, you know, end the summer ends in the middle of September. Some of them end at the in the middle of October when the kids are back in school to in colleges, or when the parents that are have kids in college are returning from dropping them off, or just simple business tourism returns to the city.
SPEAKER_00Theft in the workplace. What do you know about it?
SPEAKER_02Boo. Um, theft in the workplace sucks. That's what we know about it. Um, one of the things that we deal with always, because we've been around for long enough, is when a business owner is questioning somebody that handles some of the money coming in or going out of their company, we go back for them and take a look at the accounting that's been done. Sometimes we are brought in after the fact, and sometimes we are the ones that discover it. Discovering it is always the worst part because that's when I have to go to a business owner and tell him that somebody he knows and trusts has betrayed them, right? These are harsh words. And I hate talking about it, but it does happen. And it happens for many reasons, and that's not what I'm gonna talk about. I'm gonna talk about how it works. So the way that we handle theft from a client is we have to recreate what's happened in the past if they're new clients. We have to recreate it from scratch. There's no way of taking the work that somebody else has done where it's already been missed, and using that to find theft and also to give it a number, right? Quantify it. How much did they take and for how long? Right. How much? How long? Uh, what do you think they used it for? And I have seen things from actual cash being taken out of the business. I've seen fake employees where they're able to write checks and and and do that. Um where they're able to pay for things for their house. Where all of a sudden, one of the saddest ones was a big uh landscaping company and uh gardens had questioned that there's something wrong. We went to our office manager's house, and they lived in a 4,500 square foot house that had beautiful trim, furniture, everything. And they really, really liked their taste in the house and the decorating and everything. And they had no idea that they had paid for it all. And so, right after that, the spouse said, Wow, this beautiful house, whatever. I didn't know is her husband doing very well. And she said, Well, her husband works for us too. And so uh, you know, then they brought in ASU and we found a lot of money being paid directly to vendors that they knew, businesses that they were familiar with, that also thought that these were all things for the actual owners of the company.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02So that was that was hard to swallow for the owners. They'd known this person for almost 20 years.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, unfortunately, that's sometimes the way that it happens. It's like your most trusted people and for the accountant to find out a very good thing. Right.
SPEAKER_02And and uh and we've had those hard conversations. And it's hard, but it again, it's important to have a third party looking at what's going on on a regular basis to find a lot of those uh mistakes. Because when we're working for somebody, we'll find it quickly. When we when you bring us in later, we're gonna find it quickly, but you're gonna lose a lot. You've lost already a lot more.
SPEAKER_00Right. Do you find that it's more common in restaurants because of the cash handling? Or is that a misconception?
SPEAKER_02It's definitely a misconception. Um, POS systems nowadays handle those things very well. Unfortunately, it is in industries that handle a lot of volume of invoices in and volume of invoices going out. So maybe it's not the restaurant itself, but it's its produce vendor and the inside of the produce vendor. It's the meat vendor, uh, things like this that uh can double up invoices, eliminate invoices internally, um, misdirect payments. I've seen employees that actually open an LLC with a similar name, and the banks don't catch the fact that they're depositing checks that don't belong to them.
SPEAKER_00I've seen that.
SPEAKER_02So it's mostly those. No, I mean, you know, you'll have somebody siphon cash at a bar or a restaurant, but usually they get caught quickly, and it's not significant enough to hurt the the business short term, but it's the bigger ones, those invoices with the couple extra zeros behind or the checks going out.
SPEAKER_00Yes. Yeah, so that's seeing that.
SPEAKER_02Well, this is where we wrap up keeping businesses in business. I'm Thomas Fontez.
SPEAKER_00This is Andrea Assange.
SPEAKER_02And we're gonna say goodbye.