Are your accounting books in order? As we always say: let the experts do their expertise.
In this episode, Jim and Tyson have Jill Ulett: The Accounting Girl as a guest and discuss about the importance of having tidy accounting books!
As a lawyer you will have to keep your books tidy: the IOLTA accounts are tricky and should be set straight. Get a system in place, get somebody who understands how to move the money back and forth and can help you figure out these processes.
In accounting and law practice you have to have your clients best interest at heart, you have to view them as a whole person. Sometimes you are dealing with damaged people, injured people, and life frustrations. Invest in your client. Feel and root for them. Support.
Relationships. Partnership. “We are going to meet each other halfway to make your life or business a little bit better.
LAWYERS! Get your IOLTA accounts in order and get your retainer reports in order. Know what is a billable cost and what not, and make sure that the ones which are billable are tied to clients. Operating costs, get everything categorized properly. When you are able to give your CPA proper financials that flow correctly, it makes their job easier and keeps your costs down.
Accounting Girl is your personal part-time accountant and virtual CFO, rescuing your company as if in the next phone booth, er… office. Accounting Girl senses when she’s needed (usually by receiving a signal via phone or email) and is at the ready! Her virtual CFO signals are so strong, she picks up your accounting distress from anywhere in the continental U.S., from her St. Louis-based accounting radar.
http://www.accounting-girl.com/
The Accounting Girl uses https://quickbooks.intuit.com/online/: QuickBooks makes online accounting easy.
Jill’s Hack: Set up your expenses to be predictable. You can set up most of your utilities on budget billing, and anything that you can get to be the same amount every month and set up those plans can really help predict expenses and keep things static for you.
http://www.accounting-girl.com/
Tyson’s Tip: https://www.libsyn.com/ Libsyn provides everything your podcast needs: publishing tools, media hosting and delivery, RSS for iTunes, a Web Site, Stats, Advertising Programs, Premium Content , Apps for Apple, Android & Windows devices.
Hacking’s Hack: http://mastermindexperience.com/. The Mastermind Experience is a private event capped at 15 lawyers, so you’ll focus on working only with those who want to grow. You’ll have multiple opportunities during the day to meet everyone at the Mastermind Experience and focus on how you can help them, and how they can help you.
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Transcript: Accounting
Jill Ulett
I think that definitely is one of the things that set me apart from other accountants. I think most stereotypical accountants forget that they’re not just dealing with numbers. They’re really working with people. And you have to remember that there are people behind those numbers and those numbers are money. Those are dollars. And money is so emotional to people and is so personal. So to be able to address that with them, I think is a crucial part of the field of the industry.
Unknown Speaker
Run your law firm the right way. This is the maximum liar podcast, podcast, your hosts, Jim hacking and Tyson metrics. Let’s partner up and maximize your firm.
Jim Hacking
Welcome to the show. You’re back on the maximum lawyer podcast. This is Jim hacking.
Tyson Mutrux
And I’m tasting Meatrix. What’s going on Jimmy?
Jim Hacking
Well, we’re very excited. This week, we have our very first guest to the podcast. And it’s a good friend of both of our firms and of us. Her name is Jill EULA, and she is the accounting girl Jill, how
Jill Ulett
are you? Good. Thanks.
Jim Hacking
So we wanted to have Jill on the show, we’re going to start having more guests. And I’m excited about that because I get tired of talking to Tyson all the time. And the goal was to bring in resources and advice givers for people that are in for lawyers and the people that listen to the show. And Joe, why don’t you tell us a little bit about your business what you offer and sort of how you got into this?
Jill Ulett
Sure. So I’ve been doing accounting for about 20 years, I have a degree in accounting and business management. And I’ve worked for some pretty large firms as their in house accountant got pretty burned out pretty quickly. I just don’t fit well into the corporate structure. And so I went back to school, and I got a degree in social work. And I’m a licensed clinical social worker. And I did that for a few years. And I think that social work background really makes me unique in the accounting industry. So I do a lot of consulting with that. And really helping business owners lawyers especially build a better business and the business said they are really dreaming that they want.
Jim Hacking
I think that’s a great point about the social work aspect to it. Because I know that first of all, Jill is my virtual CFO, she does a lot of work for our firm every day. It’s like having her down the hall, she does an excellent job. And she takes all the bookkeeping headaches that I hate and all the financial stuff and just sort of packages together for me where I don’t have to think about it all that much. And I really enjoy that. And you know, we talk on the podcast a lot about outsourcing and getting a good team together and those kinds of things so that Jill’s men essential to our success.
Tyson Mutrux
Thank you. And actually, I think we both referred her a couple people. And that actually, she works for now. And I think they always have great things to say about a Chris Van. He’s a new client of yours, and he has nothing but great things to say about you. Well, thank
Jim Hacking
you. And so Jill, tell us about accounting girl and how that sort of got started in the branding that you did and the mindset.
Jill Ulett
Sure, started five years ago last month with Jim in a playgroup with Imani five years ago and Amani asked for recommendations for an accountant for you. And I said, Sure, let’s do it. And from there with some encouragement from Jim, I grew it into what it is today. And I have two employees, I work with companies all across the country, helping them better understand their numbers and grow a better business.
Jim Hacking
So about how many clients do you have right now, Joe,
Jill Ulett
on a regular monthly ongoing basis, it’s somewhere in the 40 to 50 range. And then there’s always lots of other things throughout the year. So I probably work with 80 to 90 companies during the year.
Jim Hacking
That’s tremendous growth in five years. That is incredible. And I think it is a testament to that social work background. I think that some people might think of accounting assistants as a commodity. But you know, we always like to talk about how people differentiate themselves. And for me, the biggest differentiator for Jill is that she, it really is like having her stand right next to me. I mean, it’s all virtual. I think we met last month for the first time in about eight months. I think Joe, that was our first time we met all year. And it’s funny because we live about two minutes from each other. So it’s sort of ridiculous that we don’t see each other more often. But it really is like having someone down the hall. It’s it’s seamless, you know, with technology, and email, and QuickBooks Online. All those things make it very doable.
Jill Ulett
My goal was to leverage as much technology as I could and keeping up with all the trends in accounting and technology that I can keep up with. I’ve made it into what I want to make it so I have an office in my home. I can work with companies all over the country and my employees also work from their homes.
Jim Hacking
Well let’s talk about QuickBooks Online because one of the things when we got started is that I had been using I guess it was the old desktop version of QuickBooks and, and you have gone all in on QuickBooks Online. So why don’t you tell our listeners a little bit about your approach to that, and then how you feel that helps you serve your clients better?
Jill Ulett
Absolutely. When I first started, I was using whatever system My clients were using. So Jim, you were desktop 2011, I had somebody else who was on 12, it was all over the place. And for two clients, it was easy to manage. But as I started to grow, it became less easy to manage more cumbersome to keep switching between programs and knowing who’s on what. So I went all in on QuickBooks Online and moved everybody over there, really in bed with Intuit and helping them with beta testing and redesign. And by two and a half years ago, I worked with them on their current redesign. And it’s just such a streamlined program makes it very easy, especially for our attorneys to get the information that they need. And I’m sure
Jim Hacking
there are a lot of lawyers out there who think they can do 90% of the bookkeeping themselves. And you know, a lot of our message here is to let the experts do their expertise. And so you know, just like I wouldn’t want someone to try to do their immigration cases on their own. I’m sure you don’t want lawyers doing all their bookkeeping on their own, because they probably can do a good chunk of it. But it’s those little wrinkles or things that come up where you got to do a refund or something doesn’t balance out, right. I mean, to me, that’s where the real value comes in.
Jill Ulett
Absolutely. You know, I think the biggest issue is what to pay out of the IOLTA. And what to pay out of the operating account. And mixing up the two can have detrimental results,
Tyson Mutrux
I had the experience because of the firm I worked for before you had the experience, because of the firm’s you worked for before, I basically just want to just to go through the common mistakes people make with IOLTA account. Because I think a lot of people don’t have that experience the if they’re just starting out, or they’re just starting their firm, and they never manage the money, that can be a big issue for them, then the biggest factor is money goes in and needs to come right back out as soon as it’s earned. If it’s not your money, it needs to stay in there, your money goes your account, their money goes to them. So I guess just go through the common mistakes that people make when it comes to the IOLTA account.
Jill Ulett
Okay, sure, we can, let’s start with not tracking the IOLTA accounts properly, not knowing how much money a client has in their account at any given time. That’s a big one, because it’s very easy to write checks out of that account and overdraw their IOLTA.
Tyson Mutrux
And that’s a red flag right away, you get audited? Is it an audit? Is it a full audit? How’s that work?
Jill Ulett
It depends on I think the amount.
Jim Hacking
I can talk a little bit about this. So Joe might recall that I changed bank to beat PNC from Bank of America. And during the time that I did that I bounced a check just because I was moving money from one bank to the other. And that simple act of a bounced check got the bar inquiring into you know whether or not I was managing my trust account properly. And I had to watch a trust account video even though I didn’t do anything wrong. And we were able to document everything that had happened to the bar satisfaction. But yeah, it’s not even a matter of an audit, it’s just a matter of if you bounce a check out of your trust account, that’s going to trigger an inquiry.
Jill Ulett
Or if you have to go back to your client and get more retainer funds, because you’ve overspent. That’s another thing I think lawyers don’t like doing. I think the biggest issue with the IOL does is knowing what to pay out of AOPA and what to pay out of operating. And when you mix those two, if they get mixed up, that can also have really bad results. I worked with a client last week who paid some operating expenses out of their IOLTA. And so we had to have a conversation about why we don’t do that. And here’s what the process is going to be. But I think once we get our processes set up and documented, it’s a lot smoother. And then everybody knows what needs to be done and what comes out of where
Jim Hacking
Yeah, Jill, talk a little bit about how it’s sort of better for you and better for the lawyer to get involved early as opposed to like, Do you have any horror stories of jumping in maybe not even necessarily have a lawyer but just jumping into an accounting situation where things were completely backwards?
Jill Ulett
Sure. Usually when I start working with an attorney with a law firm, if they’ve been in practice for a long time, the IOLTA accounts are not straight, and it can take months to untangle them because we have to go back through all the records. We have to go back through all the bank statements, all the client files to see where some of those filing fees went, where contingency fees, all of those little components that make up the account. I had one that took about six months to untangle because things weren’t getting transferred properly even though they had QBO in place QuickBooks Online. They weren’t managed doing correctly, it can be time consuming. And that’s also costly. So I do recommend for new lawyers to get a system in place, get somebody who understands how to move that money back and forth in the accounting, and can help you figure out those processes.
Jim Hacking
I remember one of the things you and I spent a lot of time on early on was making sure that we had the proper categories of payments and things. And I think that some of my classifications of categories didn’t necessarily jive with general accounting practices. And so I think that’s been one thing. That’s been really helpful with you.
Jill Ulett
Thank you. Yeah, I think just making sure that that chart of accounts, makes sense. And, you know, like I said, retainer accounts, I mean, everyone knows I owe the money doesn’t yet belong to the lawyer. So those are other asset accounts. And then we move the money over and it becomes revenue for the law firm. And then we have our operating expenses that have to come out of the operating account.
Jim Hacking
What are some other just general bookkeeping mistakes that you see people make? Or what are your biggest headaches?
Jill Ulett
biggest headaches are oh my gosh, those Missouri, oh, SCA costs, the court filing costs, because I can’t get into the court filing system to see who they are. So I have to chase down with the attorney, which client those filing fees were for, so they can be properly allocated. And I think that’s one of the biggest frustrations, because we need to make sure that everything gets accounted for and tied to a client somehow.
Tyson Mutrux
So what is your recommendation for how attorneys then I guess categorize that or mark that so that you can get it on the right account?
Jill Ulett
Best practice is to shoot me an email as soon as it happens. If I’m working with them, if they’re if they’re doing this on their own, or working with somebody else, of course, there’s a different process. But they would need to make sure that as soon as they make that expense, that filing fee expense that in their accounting system, it gets tied to a client.
Jim Hacking
Yeah, in fact, right before we got on the call, Jill was reminding me that I’ve been driving her crazy, because there’s a payment that was made in August, that we still haven’t tied to the right client, the money is all there, but we just haven’t tied it right. So I know that it’s easier on the life of, of Jill, when I properly tag and notify her of things. Well, I
Jill Ulett
think it’s easier to do things on the front end, or as soon as possible, rather than, you know, three, six months down the road. Because we’re all so busy. I know, I can barely remember what happened yesterday, let alone three months ago. So to do things, when we know about them makes things a lot easier.
Jim Hacking
Right now, before you get too much into the dry topic, which is coming up, which is taxes. The one thing I wanted to say about you, Jill, that I’ve always admired is sort of your positive mindset and your growth mentality. I mean, yeah, I might have been your first client. But I think that you’ve really obviously run with it. And I know that you’re big into networking and BNI. And Tyson, I’ve talked about that. Why don’t you talk a little bit about your experience with business development, networking, and BNI? If you could?
Jill Ulett
Sure. Well, thank you. First of all, it wasn’t until I really started getting out there networking that I started to see traction in my business. And just realizing that people are not just going to come to me because I’m there. You have to be visible in your community and in your networks in order for people to know who you are, know what you’re about and know the value of service that you can bring to them. So the more I got into chambers and BNI and other networking organizations, the more growth I started to see and the easier it became to onboard new clients and new referral partners to Yeah, so
Jim Hacking
you have consistently been positive and optimistic. And I think that goes a long way. I think you resonate well with people. I think that you connect with people. And I think that that social work background does go a long way in helping you establish rapport with people. And just like with lawyers, when you take on a new client, you deal with them as a whole person. And I think that your ability to talk to people, and to be calm when things are hectic and to be nagging when nagging is needed. And I think that all those aspects that you bring to this has really helped your business grow.
Jill Ulett
Thank you. I think that definitely is one of the things that set me apart from other accountants. I think most stereotypical accountants forget that they’re not just dealing with numbers. They’re really working with people. And you have to remember that there are people behind those numbers and those numbers are money. Those are dollars. And money is so emotional to people and it’s so personal. So to be able to address that with them, I think is a crucial part of the field of the industry. Tyson, I
Jim Hacking
think that’s all true for lawyers as well that, you know, we have to have our client’s best interests at heart that we have to view them as a whole person. Sometimes we’re dealing with damaged people or people, obviously, in your situation, you’re dealing with people who’ve been injured, and are dealing with all of life’s frustrations. And, you know, we can look at all as a business transaction and just, you know, checking boxes and getting things accomplished. But I think that when you do what Jill does, which is to invest in your clients, and to feel for them, and to root for them and to support them, I think that it goes a long way for lawyers as well.
Tyson Mutrux
Oh, absolutely. And I think you do something that’s very little in the same vein with your emails, reaching out your email, you do your Facebook posts for you, actually, you’re celebrating your clients becoming US citizens, or I think I don’t know what else you celebrate maybe green cards, whatever it may be, but it’s something that you’re celebrating with them. Some of the things I do, I’m not able to celebrate as much as I’d like to just because of confidentiality, stuff like that. Some of the bigger settlements you cannot do, if it’s confidentiality agreement, but I think it’s the same thing as if you as long as you’re celebrating your clients victories, I think it’s a really good thing. I think it helps you build that rapport with your clients. And it’s back to the Ultimate Sales Machine. Chet Holmes talks about in his book, he talks about becoming friends with his clients. He says he’s friends with almost all of his clients. And that’s very important, because for business purposes, as well, if you look at it this way, you build this rapport with your clients, it’s gonna be harder for them to leave you in the future. So yeah, everything that Jill’s doing everything that you do, Jim, it’s all a big part of running the firm and growing a business.
Jill Ulett
I think it’s all about relationships. And really, when we’re working with our clients, and I see this with attorneys as well, is we’re entering into a partnership of sorts with our clients. We’re saying here, I’m going to help you, we’re going to meet each other halfway to make your life or your business a little bit better.
Jim Hacking
Sure. All right, we’re getting closer to the end. But I have two more topics I want to make sure to cover and one is any tips you have for lawyers getting ready for the tax season each year, Jill,
Jill Ulett
get your IOLTA accounts in order, get your retainer reports. In order, I think the biggest one is knowing what’s a billable cost and what is not making sure that all of those billable costs and billable costs would be any advanced client costs up out of your operating account, making sure that those are all tied to clients and everything is running smoothly. Operating costs, absolutely make sure things are categorized properly. That will really streamline everything for your taxes, when you’re able to give your CPA proper financials that flow correctly, it makes their job a lot easier. And it also keeps your costs down.
Tyson Mutrux
I got a question about that. So the IRS actually gives you a list of categories, right? Is that what you’re talking about by categorizing it correctly?
Jill Ulett
Well, there’s two different things. There’s the IRS categories, and then there’s management categories. And the goal is to marry the two in a way that makes sense to everybody.
Tyson Mutrux
What’s the best way for people that don’t use QBO? I’m trying to think of the attorneys that maybe are just starting out, maybe they’re just putting this into a spreadsheet or something like that. What’s the best way that you think that they might do it to make it easier on you or someone else?
Jim Hacking
I think what she’s talking about Tyson ineligible answer, but I think generally, I mean, for me, what the Godsend was, was sort of having a master Chart of Accounts, you know, that’s what she called it. And it’s each of the categories. You know, there’s probably, what do you think Joe 40 categories on there? Oh, something like that. If this is an advanced client costs, then it’s if it’s posted, it’s this number, those kinds of things.
Tyson Mutrux
Gotcha. So if they were to put it in a spreadsheet, it’d be a gigantic list of different types of things. I guess,
Jill Ulett
there are certain spreadsheets, I do have a template that I’ve sent to people, I work with a lot of musicians as well. And they don’t use QBO. They use spreadsheets on the fly. So I do have a really good chart of account template and spreadsheet for them that they can use every day, every month. And it all flows into an annual thing. I think if you have something like that, great if that’s what’s working, but if you want something more robust, that can help you budget and help you plan for your cash flow, because we all know between the IOLTA and the operating sometimes cash flow goes up and down. So having that system in place where you can track your accounts receivable, you can track your accounts payable, you know what’s coming in and going out, I think makes a huge difference to the firm and especially at tax time because then you’re going to have a lot more predictable expenses, a lot more predictable income, and you’re gonna have a better run practice.
Jim Hacking
Joe, one of the other things we didn’t talk about, and just maybe real quickly is payroll. And that’s something that you’re able to help with as well.
Jill Ulett
Yep, I surely am.
Jim Hacking
So could you give us sort of just a laundry list of the kinds of things you can do for for the lawyers that are listening to the show?
Jill Ulett
Sure. The most important one, I think for attorneys is managing the IOLTA accounts properly, setting up the reports, knowing which client has money and where it is, we do all of the General Accounting, we take care of all the transactions on a day to day basis. We do the monthly reconciliations, we do cash flow projections, we do budgeting, we do profit margin analysis, we do all of those higher level analytics for companies so that they don’t have to do it. So if a company says I want to grow by 10%, before, by the end of the year, we can run the scenarios, run all the numbers, and see how do we get you to that 10% growth by the end of the year.
Jim Hacking
Awesome. Okay. The one other thing I want to talk about is your website, which I think is great. And sort of your branding, talk to the audience a little bit about your branding.
Jill Ulett
I like to have fun. And to me the brand. It’s just all about fun. And accounting girl, I rescue you. I think it’s all in line there.
Jim Hacking
Your website is www dot accounting, hyphen girl.com. What’s your email address,
Jill Ulett
Jill at accounting, Dash girl.com And your telephone number 314-249-8891.
Jim Hacking
All right. So Joe, we always like to end our show with a tip from Tyson or a hack from Jim. But we thought that we would ask our guests to suggest their own sort of life hack or work hack. And so what kind of tips do you have for our audience today? I
Jill Ulett
think one of my greatest Hacks is setting up your expenses to be predictable. You can set up most of your utilities on budget billing, and anything that you can get to be the same amount every month and set up those plans can really help predict expenses and keep things static for you.
Jim Hacking
Awesome, Tyson. What’s your tip for the week,
Tyson Mutrux
my tip of the week is actually a product and the product that I’m going to recommend the service we use for our podcast, which is Lipson it’s actually very, very easy to use. It’s li B Sy n.com. We have multiple holiest I have multiple shows. We use it for this show. And it allows us to track our number of users. It allows us to get it on to iTunes and all the other different places you can listen to the podcast, I think it’s a great, great resource for us. So that is my tip of the week.
Jim Hacking
I like Lipson but I don’t think it’s easy to use. I think it’s very difficult to us, because you’re
Tyson Mutrux
very technically minded is what it is. I think it’s whatever.
Jim Hacking
Alright, so my hack of the week is the mastermind experience I just got back last week I was in Chicago for an all day mastermind experience with Larry bow dine and John Fisher. John assembled about 14 attorneys and we sat in a room for a day at the Sofitel Hotel in Chicago. Everybody got to spend about 25 minutes on the hot seat. And we each got to present our biggest marketing or practice management headache. And then the group sort of advised us or give us tips on how to improve or fix that problem. I know you went to it last year, I know you’re signed up Tyson to go to the San Diego event, you can find it the easiest way to find it is on Facebook, just search for mastermind experience. I can’t recommend it highly enough. I think that we had lawyers sort of in all different kinds of practice areas and sizes of their firms. And it was an absolutely tremendous mind blowing experience. I got a lot out of it.
Tyson Mutrux
And especially for the money you spend the value you get out of it far exceeded. And I don’t know what group you were with. It’s I know that a lot of the same people. The group I was with, I was sitting at a table with a bunch of millionaires. It was incredible. It was just incredible. Some of the best minds mostly are mostly personal injury attorneys. Some of the best minds in the country when it comes to personal injury attorneys. There were big hitters that were marketers. It was just incredible. Larry Weinstein he’s a big accounting guy. He so you really had multiple practice areas. They’re not just practice. There’s different industries there. But it was incredible. The ideas that these people had to help you improve your business was just fantastic. So I agree, especially the cost. The cost is nothing compared to what you get out of it. Yeah, it really made me
Jim Hacking
think Tyson that we need to have a lawyer mastermind group here just in St. Louis for the lawyers that are here where we can meet a little bit more regularly. cuz, you know, we had that other mastermind group that was not for lawyers that we really both got a lot out of. I agree. All right, so that’ll wrap up this week’s show we went a little bit long. Jill, we should certainly want to thank you for being on the show. Again, you can reach Jill at WWW dot accounting dash girl.com. And we really thank you for being on the show.
