Sign-up Process

Effortless Business Bookkeeping Services Tailored for You How it works

Discover seamless business bookkeeping services with our innovative white glove process. We handle everything from data management to financial reporting and advisory, so you can focus on growing your business.

Our expert team ensures accurate and timely reporting tailored to your needs. We set up an entire online system to manage all aspects of your financials and data management needs. We then collaborate with your CPA or Tax preparation professional to ensure they have what they need to get your year-end handled right.

Get started today and experience the ease of professional bookkeeping solutions. Trust A Bigger Bottom Line for comprehensive and reliable business bookkeeping services. Here's the Sign Up Process and what happens next:

Sign Up Steps

• Free Consultation & Proposal Meetings:

  • 1st, you'll schedule a Free 20-minute consultation so we can get to know each other more and find out if we'll be a good fit to work together.

  • 2nd, we'll schedule a 45-minute Proposal meeting to go over the services we think you'll benefit from and the pricing for each.

  
  

• One-Time Set-Up Services

  • One-Time Project fee is determined based on how much setup you will need for your accounting system (we will set up the right QuickBooks Online file for you). We can determine this if we have all the information we need by the Proposal meeting (consultation form was filled out and any access provided), and if the Proposal is meant for just one business. The info we will need includes access to any current accounting systems you may already have (such as QuickBooks).

  • One-time project clean-up/catch-up fee is determined by how many months' worth of bookkeeping catch-up you will need. This fee is further discounted if ongoing services are bundled into the price. We can determine this if we are given clear feedback on the number of bank and credit card accounts being used and the period of months and years to catch up.

  • Discovery Retainer Service may be advised in order to determine what your One-Time Project costs will be if we can't get the above data by the proposal meeting date. This is a preliminary phase before we gather more info to determine the total cost. We will advise that you start here before we begin your one-time project if certain information is missing and needs to be retrieved, accessed, or determined before we can move forward with quoting everything. Examples of this include situations where there may be:

    • No access to current accounting system (if one exists)

    • No access to current banking or financial systems

    • Not sure how many bank, credit card, and loan accounts you have

    • Not exactly sure what time period needs to be cleaned up (months and years)

    • You did not have time to fill out the consultation form, or you don't have responses or answers for most questions on the form (we can help you figure these out, it just takes a little bit longer)

    • There is more than one company (ex, multiple LLCs, side businesses, personal financials, sister companies, multiple pass-through entities, etc. Each would need its own separate proposal and contract agreement in these cases.

    • There are multiple owners and not all are present in the initial consultation meetings

    • The business structure is unknown or may be changing soon

    • A current staff member or outside accountant is still handling things, but may be getting replaced, and some confidentiality is needed during the transition.

    
    

    In the above situations, it is very difficult to quickly and easily determine what your business financial setup needs are, so by doing 3 more meetings and some investigation during Discovery, we can better uncover exactly how to move forward so everyone is clear on the one-time project strategy. Don't worry, the retainer you spend on Discovery will go toward your one-time project as an initial payment.

• ONGOING SERVICES

  • Platinum Daily Services include our full suite of services. All advanced accounting and advisory support is in this package. By signing up here first, you'll save on most of your one-time setup project costs (90% off). You will also be getting more hands on deck and time with our team, which means your goals will be achieved faster!

  • Gold Weekly Services include an enhanced amount of accounting and bookkeeping services to take the financial burden off your plate and give you and your team more time back. Start with accrual accounting and stay professional. Get your project costs reduced by half and start your journey off on the right foot so you can use your financials to make better business decisions, hire the right people, and get the support you need!

  • Bronze Monthly Services include basic bookkeeping services that get you started with cash basis accounting and monthly reporting so that you can be ready for year-end and stay in compliance. Start here if your needs are simple and you just need to get going on the right foot with a professional bookkeeping team while you grow and expand your business to new heights.

    
    

• Non-Member Hourly Support

  • If you are not ready to move forward with a one-time project or ongoing services, you could simply opt for a one-off one-hour live remote support session.

  • Schedule a meeting in this case and pre-pay for the time.

  • Hourly non-member support sessions are $150 each.

  • Get one hour with a QuickBooks & Accounting expert to give you some guidance on your current setup and questions.

  • Perhaps you are just stuck on one area of QuickBooks and need a little guidance. Book one of these meetings for some non-committal support.

  • Get a feel for what our experts can offer and a better sense of what additional support you may need.

  • Some of our Ongoing clients have initially started here after doing a couple of sessions and saw the value of the support we can offer. Some folks just need an hour or so and have the answers they need to get unstuck. Choose the 1 hour non-member support if you want to start here.

On-Boarding Steps

Book Onboarding Meetings:

• Schedule onboarding meetings through the provided link to discuss the process, gather necessary information, and answer any questions.

Portal Invitation Acceptance:

• Look for an emailed invitation to the portal 1 to 3 days after accepting your proposal.

• Upon receiving the invitation to the portal, accept it promptly.

• Create a login for the portal. Ensure you save the login credentials securely using a password keeper.

• Bookmark the portal URL for easy access in the future.

Portal Orientation:

• Login to the portal and familiarize yourself with its functionality.

• Watch the instructional videos provided on the # Home screen to understand how the portal works. You can also find more How-To Instructions on our portal on our website blog in the Qount (client portal software) here.

• Access your To Do's section to view tasks that need completion and submission.

Submission Process Instructions:

• Review the instructions on how to submit tasks (To Do's) within the portal.

• Understand the process for completing and submitting tasks assigned to you, replying to comments on To Do's, and interacting with To Do reminder emails.

Message Posting Instructions:

• Learn how to post messages within the portal.

• Understand how to reply with comments to messages from the firm or other clients.

Clarify Area Instructions:

• Explore the # Clarify area to understand its purpose.

• Learn how to submit feedback on uncategorized transactions or ask questions for clarification.

Vault Instructions:

• Read the instructions on utilizing the Vault feature within the portal.

• Understand how to securely add new logins and passwords for sharing with the firm.

HubDoc Setup:

• Read instructions on HubDoc functionality.

• Send a test email to your HubDoc account to ensure proper forwarding.

• Save the HubDoc forwarding email address for future reference.

HubDoc Invitation Acceptance:

• Accept the invitation to HubDoc sent by the firm.

• Create a login for HubDoc to access all submitted documents.

Granting Access to Accounting Software:

• Confirm that you have granted the firm access to your accounting software.

• Follow the instructions provided in your assigned To Do's to grant access or upload necessary files.

How Will You Interact With Us?

You'll be given 3 main ways to communicate with us after you are onboarded. 1) Custom email forwarding address 2) Client Portal Communications 3) SMS text messaging

We try to steer away from heavy email back and forth as it is not secure (fraudsters can impersonate our email and make it look like we are requesting items that we are not - this is called phishing scams). Also, things can get very unorganized over time with email.

By forwarding paperwork to your secure custom email (which goes to a secure online filing cabinet provided free of charge), and only doing the back-and-forth communications in the portal, you reduce your risk exposure.

We even provide a secure VAULT in our portal for sharing sensitive login details and other information.

All that said, we still understand that sometimes you just want a quick way to connect or get a hold of us. So we allow text message support as well for quick check-ins and requests. Our SMS text feature only allows our team to access your texts if they are securely logged into our backend portal, so your text messages will never be stored on any of our staff's cell phones. This reduces the risk exposure to you, but keep things effective!

How Does it Work?

You grant us access to what we need and then send us your paperwork each day (receipts, bills, invoices, tax letters, etc). We then take all the info we receive and get your accounting and bookkeeping done at the frequency of service you have chosen.

Bookkeeping Services: Every month, we reconcile the books to your received statements and then post financials for your review (Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and more). If there are any transactions we need your feedback on, we'll post these in our portal for you to comment on and upload any additional info that is requested. You'll have a standing meeting booked with us to review your financials after you receive them. We'll even work closely with your CPA to get the accounting right before tax time (just invite them to your booked meetings or have them book directly with us on your behalf). In the Bronze bookkeeping program, we post your transactions once a month for the previous month, and you're reports get to you by the 20th. In our Gold Weekly service, your transaction postings are done weekly, and your month-end reporting is done by or before the 15th. You'll also get weekly reporting in the weekly service. In the Platinum daily service, we post your transactions daily and get your monthly reports to you by the 10th. You also get some weekly reports and insight reports that can be customized to your needs with the daily Platinum program. Payroll Services: If you opt-in for payroll services we'll set you up with a recommended payroll solution, have your staff fill out new hire forms, enter your company and new hire info into your payroll tool, help you get set up with your state as an employer, provide you with a payroll manual, map in your payroll the transactions to the right accounts, ensure your payroll taxes are paid on time, ensure your payroll tax returns are filed on time, download copies of all payroll returns and reporting and save to your client portal file folder system. We'll also set up new employees and invite them to any payroll portals provided to update their info, download pay stubs, and their W-2s as needed. Accrual Basis (or Cash Modified) Accounting Services: You can opt in to get help with your AP & AP needs, such as bill entry and payment approvals, and customer invoicing and follow-up services. We'll post your transactions weekly in the Gold accrual services and daily in the Platinum accrual services. We can also add revenue recognition services for pre-payments and retainers. Anything that is more balance sheet-focused can be handled with our Accrual Basis accounting services. Inventory Management You can opt in to get our help to identify and implement the right inventory tools to work with QuickBooks Online. YES, you CAN use QuickBooks Online for your Inventory management when you partner with the right 3rd party tools! Contracting We can recommend and implement the best contracting tools to streamline your Proposal and Contract management, budget management, and Final Invoice tracking. We can implement a project management technology stack that will streamline every project you start from hours to minutes, and remove the holes in your current process.

Expense Reporting We can help you implement better reporting and expense management tools for you and your staff. Get those receipts into a reimbursement or job tracking report in no time. We can even help with implementing virtual cards for more peace of mind when your staff makes purchases.

What Services Can You Provide?

Everything in the Accounting realm except filing income tax returns. We leave that to your current CPA, or our recommended one if you require a better fit.

-Bookkeeping & Reconciling

-Financial Reporting

-Payroll -Accounts Payable Bill Payment -Accounts Receivable Customer Invoicing and payment follow-ups -Sales Tax

-E-commerce Integrations -Inventory -Contracting (Proposal-Contract-Phases-Budgets-Job Costing-Billable vs Non-Billable-WIP-Draft Invoices-Final Invoices-Online Payment SetUp for your customers, and more)

-3rd party software integrations

-Technology Vetting Projects

-Expense Reporting Tools

-Integrated Time Tracking Tools -Proposal System Set Up -Contract System Set Up -Fixed Asset Tracking -Amortization and Depreciation Schedules

-Loan tracking

-Class tracking -Budgeting -Cashflow forecasting -Process Improvement

-SOP Creation -CFO Advisory

-Management Consulting

What is the Cost?

It depends. Our basic one-time setup fee is typically $500 to get a brand new QuickBooks File started, but then it depends on how many months and years of backwork (clean up) we may have to do. For example, there will be a higher clean-up/catch-up project fee for a business that is 24 months behind on its bookkeeping vs a business that just started and only has about 2 to 3 months' worth of catch-up bookkeeping to do. The cost of catch-up is typically determined by whatever the monthly fee would have been for that time period, plus 20%. Your typical monthly fee is based on how many bank and credit card accounts there are, the total number of transactions, and the complexity. Every business is different, so each proposal to our clients is unique to their individual situation.

For example, let's say (depending on how many bank accounts, tranasctions, and complexity you have) your bookkeeping would have cost $495 per month to maintain, and you are behind by 20 months, then your clean-up one-time project might be in the ballpark of $495 x 24 = $9,900 + 20% ($1,980) = $11,880. This is a steep one-time fee, but we offer big discounts on your one-time fees if you opt in for ongoing services to keep your books up to date. We can also create payment plans so you can cashflow this initial one-time fee over time. So don't be discouraged. There's always a way forward!

It is just that it's always cheaper to maintain your books month over month than to get behind and have to catch up and clean up your records. We will determine this one-time project fee, and then offer ongoing services to you to maintain your cleaned-up books.

We offer discounts on the one-time setup project fees, depending on the ongoing service you choose to move forward with. For example, if you opt in to receive our Platinum Full Service Daily program ($2,995 per month), then we will give you a 90% discount on your one-time setup. Yup, basically giving away the farm there. So in this example, your $11,880 project would be reduced to only $1,190 after your 90% discount ($10,692). Then your monthly ongoing fee to maintain your books and get a full team of back office support and advisory would be $2,995 per month. Less than the price of one full-time employee.

If you only needed monthly service, we'd offer a 30% discount on your one-time project.

If you need only weekly services, you'd receive a 60% discount on your one-time project setup. If there are many unanswered questions to be determined, and or complexity to figure out at the start of your engagement, we will advise that you begin with a DISCOVERY Retainer project so that we can learn what will be needed in the One-Time Project setup. This Discovery Retainer is $1,500 and includes 3 meetings and a lot of back-office initial support. We then apply this as a retainer payment to determine your one-time project setup fee once we figure out what the total project costs are.

So let's say your project total is determined to cost $4,500.

Your initial $1,500 retainer down payment will be applied to this.

So you're left with a $3,000 project cost. Then we discount this further if you decide to sign up for an ongoing maintenance package.

If you go with Bronze Monthly, you get a 30% discount on the project price. If you choose Gold Weekly, you get a 60% discount. If you go with Platinum Daily, you get a 90% project discount. Our Bronze, Gold, and Platinum package pricing (specific to your situation) will be emailed to you after the free consultation and will be included in your project proposal.

See our pricing page for our standard starting subscription ongoing service pricing.

All our packages include a dedicated bookkeeper, an accounting manager who reviews the bookkeeper's work, and a client manager who works with you directly in your booked Zoom meetings. You have the peace of mind of a TEAM of support, not just one person who could get sick or leave. You have an agency of help that works as a team for your financial benefits. We have our own internal systems, checklists, and SOPs designed to keep the work we do accurate and consistent for your business. We also provide a client portal and document management software free of charge. In addition to these tools, we provide a full accounting manual and many more resources and links to custom forms to get ahead of every business challenge.

We are more than a bookkeeping and accounting team; we are your secret weapon to business financial understanding & success.

How does the billing work and when?

All billing is done through secure online merchant processing services. We never see your bank or credit card info, as you will enter this right into our merchant processor in the proposal you accept. The payment info you enter to pay for your retainer and project fees is then kept on file and used for your ongoing maintenance fees to follow. When your ongoing fees begin, they will be charged to your payment on file on the 1st day of every month. If you'd like to opt for weekly billing, you'll be charged instead on the first Monday of every week. In your client portal, you can change the payment method on file at any time before your next payment runs. To make any changes to your payment subscription program, please send us a message in the portal or to info@abiggerbottom-line.com a few weeks before your desired change. We likely need to send a new engagement agreement to spell out the differences in the program and pricing for your review before accepting the desired change.

Can you clean up my books? Really?

YES! Don't be ashamed or worried. We've seen it all, and you're not alone! You didn't start your business to become an accounting master - that's what we did. We're here to get you caught up, cleaned up, and on the path to streamlined financial bliss and insights.

There are a lot of things about your accounting that you likely don't know that you don't know.

That's where we come in to fill in these holes. But don't delay, each month you wait only increases the workload of the project. If you have fallen behind, the best time to start is now. We are experts in file migrations from other accounting systems and fixing the tricky stuff that most firms will shy away from. We have a proven system with checklists with accountability built in and a team that follows our standard processes. Give us the info and access we need, and we'll get those books cleaned up for you so you can get back to what matters most in your business.

It takes years to master accounting and more years to master the software and tools that keep your accounting accurate. We've already put in the time. Allow us to be your experts to do what we do best. We can accomplish in minutes what will take you weeks to learn and try to figure out on your own. Better to delegate that work to us so you can get back to your goals and top priorities.