Rock Stars and Receipts: Bringing Bookkeeping to Creative Clients with Receipt Bank

by Line Paras, Owner at Counting Clouds

Life has a funny way of bringing us back to where we belong. When I was younger and still living in Denmark, I served drinks on a charming little boat that was permanently moored in a Copenhagen Canal. With cabaret at night, I was constantly surrounded by different performers and creative people and oh how I loved being around so much talent.

These days, I still surround myself with creative people but in a much different capacity. As a bookkeeper, I’ve naturally gravitated back to creative souls. Working with them is invigorating and exciting. And, in some small way, I feel the work I do for them makes me part of their work.

A Boutique Bookkeeping Practice for Creative Clients

My foray into bookkeeping started when I was on maternity leave and found myself with time during the day as my newborn daughter slept. Bookkeeping interested me because I wanted to do something that was stable, would earn me a decent living and allow me control of my own time. As I looked at my daughter sleeping as I studied away, I knew whatever path I took should leave me plenty of time to spend with her.

I took advantage of the quiet time to complete my studies. I then went out and got as much experience as I possibly could. This landed me a full-time bookkeeping gig at a company that provides full service financial management for musicians. This was my first real taste of helping creatives deal with their finances.

For a while, I also worked for a speaker’s agency, where I handled speaker payments and accounts receivable, as well as payroll. At the same time, I designed and published a website and started to build up a freelance clientele as a bookkeeper under the company name Counting Clouds.

Things took off from there. I started getting more and more recommendations from clients and accountants, so I opened up an office and hired a second bookkeeper to work with me, who’s still with me today.

Since then, we’ve grown the team and our business. I’ve hired a third full-time bookkeeper and a couple of part timers. We’ve expanded to service around 70 clients — musicians and other creative types. We do everything from quarterly business activity statements to weekly account keeping for small businesses.

Understanding the Creative Mindset

Part of our success is based on location, as our office is in an area of Melbourne that’s home to many small creative businesses. The last thing a lot of them want to do is spend time accounting and bookkeeping. They just don’t have the capacity or the interest.

As a bookkeeper, your job is to translate your vision into your client’s reality.

In some ways, I’m a translator. Many creative people don’t speak the language of business. They can’t always express their sensibilities and difficulties to financial professionals. When they sit down with me, some of what I’m saying can go right over their heads. Their eyes may glaze over, and they might lose interest in my explanation.

Part of my job is to help them understand that they need to stay on top of their financial records. In the past I had to ask them to drop off boxes of invoices and receipts. Then I’d manually enter the data for every transaction and file every piece of paperwork myself.

I’ve even had to shake down some of my clients for receipts. If they provided me with three receipts, I’d have to ask them to find the other fifty they’d neglected to give me. Although it never actually came to this, at times it felt like I was driving around the neighborhood, popping into workshops and studios, ordering people to empty their wallets and pockets, while barking “I want to see all your receipts!” You don’t want to mess with me when it comes to record keeping.

With all these receipts comes manual data entry, which leads to a few problems. For starters, the process creates a lot of tedious work for me, and it generates unnecessary expenses for my clients. Then there’s the matter of records retention. Here in Australia, businesses have to keep financial records for five years. This much filing and archiving can put a strain on creative entrepreneurs who want to get on with the business of making, doing, and selling cool stuff…

Read the full story here.