In a moment I will tell you that employing the bookkeeping services of Stephanie Bennett at Timely Totals was one of the best choices I’ve ever made at Stonemaier Games from both a business and personal perspective.
Before I do that, I need to share what bookkeeping looked like at Stonemaier Games prior to 2021:
- For me, I would spend a day each month downloading expense/revenue reports from various platforms (bank, PayPal, credit card, etc), sorting through, formatting, and tagging them for our accountant, then calculating the royalty totals for each of our designers/IPs. I would then contact each designer with their monthly royalty and pay those royalties. Also, on an ongoing basis I would invoice localization partners (and follow up when invoices were overdue).
- When Joe joined the company, he took on the job of getting the reports prepared for our accountant and calculating the royalty totals.
- When Alex joined the company, he took on the job of invoicing localization partners and following up with them. He also invoiced for direct shipments to distributors and matched invoices to the monthly report we get from our US warehouse (Greater Than Games), generally spending a fair amount of time in QuickBooks.
Also, each month our long-time accountant would use the reports we prepared to update expenses and revenue in QuickBooks.
At the end of 2020 in their performance reviews, I asked Joe and Alex, “Which part of your job is the least satisfying and why?” As it turns out, both of their answers were the responsibilities mentioned above. My answer was also the same (aside from actually paying designer royalties, which I enjoy).
I mentioned this to our shareholders, and one of them, Ryan, recommended a bookkeeper friend of his. I must admit that at the time I didn’t really know what bookkeeping was–I figured it was just the reconciliation our accountant was already doing.
But after a conversation with Stephanie at Timely Totals, I realized that she could do almost all of the tasks listed above (including the portion our accountant was doing). The cost was reasonable–and it reduced the cost of having our accountant do it–and it removed a pain point from Joe and Alex (the cost will depend on how many transactions you process each month and the scope of your business). So I took the plunge.
As it turned out, the results were far better than I anticipated. The transition was smooth, and tasks that once took 10-20 hours total each month for all of us now only take a few hours (and it’s mostly just the fun part, like sending money to designers each month).
I really can’t stress enough just how easy Stephanie makes this process. She has a few questions each month, but other than that, she makes all of our jobs so much easier (I always worry when I make a change like this that it’ll somehow result in more work for us, but that definitely is not the case with Stephanie). Plus, we removed a part of all of our jobs that none of us enjoyed and gave it to someone who has chosen this as their career (along with her team).
Unless you enjoy the types of tasks I listed above, I highly, highly recommend getting a bookkeeper (specifically Stephanie at Timely Totals, but I’m sure there are other good bookkeepers out there too). Have you taken this plunge with your company?
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8 Comments on “Bookkeeping: The Best Service Ever?”
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I know this might seem strange, but I really enjoy book keeping – certainly more than editing rule books.
I’m an accountant and I hate those jobs. What do you recommend for me?
A bookkeeper. :)
I echo your thoughts here. As a CPA myself, I absolutely love it when my clients use us for their bookkeeping or have their own bookkeeper who is actually a professional bookkeeper (rather than someone else who is merely fulfilling the bookkeeping responsibilities). Bookkeeping is a chore (more often than not) and it often isn’t a priority as it doesn’t bring in any new revenue. When it isn’t fun and it isn’t a priority then it quickly can become a giant project if it gets neglected for several months. Hire a good bookkeeper like Stephanie Bennett to keep your records current! You’ll be able to monitor your business in a much better way with good accounting records.
I also offer bookkeeping services and have multiple kickstarter/game design clients. Game design is fun. Playtesting is fun. Running a business has some fun roles and some other roles that aren’t quite as fun. If you have the means to do so, get a reasonable priced bookkeeper to fulfill one of the roles that you don’t enjoy. You’ll enjoy running a business much more and have a better quality of life if you delegate some of the “less fun” tasks to others.
As an accountant, my advise is that a good bookkeeper is worth their weight in gold. They should be able to save you time and more importantly stress. And provide you with the useful information you need in order to actually run the company effectively.
A good accountant and bookkeeper will never leave you feeling short changed.