Interview: QuickBooks ProAdvisor® Stacy Kildal on Year-End Tune-ups and Building Business
Stacy Kildal is the principal of Kildal Services, a full-service bookkeeping firm. She has been a QuickBooks user for eight years and a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor for four years. She also teaches and provides training in QuickBooks.
QuickBooks Payroll Bulletin: What ways can accountants help their clients who use QuickBooks better prepare for payroll year-end?
Kildal: I would say to do a tune-up—go in and make sure their payroll items are set up properly, their tax tables are up-to-date, their liability payments are current—check that they're not in arrears for any of the taxes that they may owe, either federal or state. Make sure that they've been filing and submitting their forms (either electronically or via paper mail). Reconcile the W-2s to the 941s, and simple things: make sure Social Security numbers and addresses, even for former employees, are correct. Making sure that basic information is accurate before the year-end process begins makes everything go a little more smoothly.
ProAdvisor Program Pays for Itself
QBPB: In your experience, what benefit does being a ProAdvisor bring you?
Kildal: I've built almost my entire business through the ProAdvisor program—about 90 percent of my new clients have found me using the database. Within one year of getting my first certification, I more than doubled my client list and I've just added another assistant. Aside from my ProAdvisor listing, the only kind of "advertising" I do is my participation in a fast-growing business networking group: Sunrise Networking Group (www.sunrisenetworkinggroup.com).
QBPB: So, you'd say that the investment of becoming a ProAdvisor (because there is a certain investment in time and training) is paid back to you?
Kildal: Oh, yes! It generally pays for itself within the first two months of the year. I probably wouldn't have such a successful, growing company without being in the ProAdvisor database. Being asked to teach workshops through the local community college is a direct result of keeping up my certification and continuing my membership in the ProAdvisor program.
Professional and Personable
QBPB: What is it that you think most small-business owners are looking for in an accounting firm? How can an accountant attract more small-business clients?
Kildal: Small businesses want somebody that's professional and personable. I know my clients want someone who's going to remember them—refer to them by name each time they speak to them. Some are also looking for help in tax planning—they want their tax professional to say "Okay, let's put together a game plan for what we should do next year."
If you provide really good service, the best form of advertisement is word of mouth. When a client is really satisfied and someone asks, "Who do you use?" that client will say, "Use my guys—they're great!" As a client's business grows, being able to offer some industry-specific consulting or at-risk business consulting as well as personal pension and retirement planning would be great. If your firm offers a wide range of services, it's just going to help you get more clients, as well as a more diverse group of clients.
QBPB: A lot of our ProAdvisors and accountant partners are CPAs, but you're not a CPA, you're a bookkeeper. Do you feel that you have any advantage over a CPA?
Kildal: Not at all—I don't think I have any "advantage" over CPAs. We generally do completely different things—that's really comparing apples and oranges. My niche is the very small business owner who doesn't even know where to start when it comes to basic financial record keeping, can't justify (or afford) a full-time employee to do the bookkeeping and payroll, or maybe just doesn't have the time to recruit and train one. Most everyone in my family is a small business owner, so I've seen it my whole life—the struggles of starting and running a small business or the cash flow problems that they can experience. My clients generally relate to me because I'm in the same situation as they are—another small-business owner doing the same thing that they're doing: trying to build and maintain a successful empire!
QuickBooks Payroll Bulletin
Editor: Lise Quintana
Publisher: Intuit
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