Empower Your Business with Crm Contact Management for Accounting and Tax

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hey what's up everybody my name is Zach pascarello and in this video I'm going to talk about the best CRM to manage 35 clients I have a bookkeeping business and I've had a bookkeeping business for the past three years and I recently started making these videos because I want to teach you how to start and grow your own bookkeeping business if you enjoyed this video don't forget to like the video and if you want to see more of these subscribe to my channel because I post videos like this every single day and also if you are trying to start and grow a bookkeeping business and if you are looking for mentorship there is a link in the description below you can sign up for a one hour consultation with me I would love to work with you okay let's not waste any time I want to talk about the best CRM to manage 35 clients and this is what I do on a daily weekly and monthly basis this is exactly what I use and over the past three years I have acquired 35 clients so I've acquired more I've lost some but right now currently I'm managing 35 small businesses and I do all of their bookkeeping now this video was actually inspired by Jason De La Cruz he recently commented on one of my videos so if you guys have questions leave me a comment send me an email I would love to answer your questions in my next video but Jason he asked just curious if you use a particular CRM Excel or some other program to organize your clients and Prospects or to follow up on direct messages you've sent to business owners Jason thanks for your comment I'm going to talk all about that in this video right now okay first of all in order to provide some clarity what exactly is a CRM so CRM is technology for managing all of your companies relationships and interactions with customers and potential customers so this is basically software that helps you manage your leads and also manage your current clients but now I want to talk about how I actually manage the clients that I have right now because I have 35 clients and spoiler alert I don't actually use a CRM because I am pretty organized myself most bookkeepers are probably pretty organized so I don't actually have a CRM maybe as I get bigger once I get like 50 or 60 clients or maybe if I hire an employee I will need to have a CRM but right now it's just me I do it all on my own and I just use Microsoft Excel I have three spreadsheets that I'm about to show you right now so incredibly simple so I do all of my Bookkeeping on a weekly basis so here I have company XYZ on the left hand column that is just my client's name obviously in the in the real version that I use I have the actual client's name but because I'm showing you guys I don't I don't want to give out my clients information so I just changed everybody's name to company XYZ and every single client gets a particular day of the week so I usually average five or six clients per day of the week and so for example if I wanted to look at Wednesday I would just pull up Wednesday right here and I know okay these are the six clients who I need to work on today because I have like 30 or 35 clients so I do five six or seven I guess six or seven clients every single day so this particular day will be Wednesday and then I just have the number here number three for the third day of the week and then you can see here February 27th March 6th March 13th and then this week March 20th today actually is Wednesday the day that I'm doing this video and you can see that today I've already done two of these clients so if we want to look at yesterday to see how I did we can just search for two and then we can see here yesterday I actually did the bookkeeping for all seven of these clients for Tuesday because I wrote the day of the week last week that I did their bookkeeping this is just a good reminder for me it's like I'll go in I'll log into each one of these companies book QuickBooks I'll do all the bookkeeping come over here and I'll just write in the date that I did their bookkeeping and then this way I know okay tomorrow who do I need to work on Thursday who do I need to work on that way I touch everybody's books every single week so that's what I do on a weekly basis now let me show you what I do on a monthly basis so here so we do pretty much three things as bookkeepers and I talk about this in all of my videos but we categorize transactions we reconcile accounts and we generate financial statements so every single month I come in here and I actually have the particular day of the week that I work on these clients based on my weekly checklist so I know okay if today is my the first Monday of the new month then I should probably try to close out all of these clients and I have here the start month whenever I onboarded the client it's just kind of nice to see who is my oldest client who's my newest client sometimes if they're a brand new client I'll maybe try to do them first that way they get their profit and loss in the first two or three days of the month and then I have here am I doing their taxes this is more just like a miscellaneous side note it's not super important but if I am doing their taxes then I will know to follow up with them and maybe February or March and just let them know like hey we need to finalize things because my CPA is going to be doing your taxes and also if I have a no here maybe I'll follow up with that client like hey how's your current CPA are you looking to make a change do you need any help with your taxes so I just have a note here am I doing their taxes or am I not doing their taxes and then once I've categorized all of their transactions for the month before so this is on a monthly basis the previous spreadsheet was for a weekly basis so this is my monthly checklist and you can see down here I have January I have February and I have March so did I categorize all their transactions from the month before yes did I reconcile all of their accounts yes did I send their profit and loss yes and if I didn't if I have no right here that probably means that I'm waiting for a bank statement or a credit card statement if I have no in the transactions categorized column that probably means I sent them an email with a list of questions and I'm waiting for them to follow up so if I have a no here and if it's March 22nd and I'm still waiting to finalize their February books because I have a no in categorized or reconciled I'll look up their email address in my in my email and I'll send them a follow-up email be like hey I sent you a list of questions last week can you please try to get those questions answered that way we can finalize and close out your February books so this is all I use to keep track of my clients on a weekly and a monthly basis I don't have any fancy CRM software I literally just use a Microsoft Excel and as I gain clients as I lose clients I'll update this spreadsheet ingly okay now the last thing I'm going to show you is my invoices so this is how I keep track of who do I need to send an invoice to and who is set up on automatic payments so same concept same concept here I have their start month just so I can see when do they start and and I typically use that at because if you look over here I actually increased everybody's rate in January of 2023 so all of my brand new clients you can see I had this sorted here by when did they start working with me and everybody who started working with me in the 20 2021 or the first half of 2022 you can see here I increased everybody's rate by eight percent so if this person was paying me 350 in 2022 in 2023 I increased their rate by eight percent to 378 dollars I did this with how many clients I did this with 10 clients and I only lost one client by increasing their rate businesses especially in the past two years inflation has been crazy business every business has been increasing their rates so I think it's only fair that us as entrepreneurs us as small business owners also increase our rates to keep up with inflation to keep up with cost of living if your client doesn't understand that if they don't respect that then maybe it's time to cut ties at that if they're not willing to pay an extra eight percent for your services then they probably don't value you as their bookkeeper anyway so maybe it's time to let them go and focus your energy on other clients who value your services more okay that's the last thing I'll say about the rate increase I would encourage you to do the same thing every single year January is a great time to do it look at the clients that you picked up in the first thing obviously if you onboarded a client in November doesn't make sense to increase the rate in January but if you onboarded a client in May of 2023 then maybe in 2024 January look at increasing their rates by five or ten percent if you're making fifty thousand dollars and you increase everybody's rate by ten percent then all of a sudden you have just increased your pay by five thousand dollars for the entire year so it really can add up especially as you grow your business and continue getting more clients okay so the last couple things I'm going to talk about here so I have everybody's monthly fee right here so I know exactly how much I'm charging them and I have here timesheet so only three of my clients require that I send them a timesheet and this is great because tracking your time and sending timesheets can be a really tedious process so I try to give almost all of my clients a fixed monthly quote but as you can see here in the beginning back in 2021 and early 2022 a couple of the clients I onboarded I was offering them an hourly rate so yes yes yes for these three clients who require a timesheet everybody else does not require a timesheet and then I have here Auto ACH payment so I actually have several clients that are set up on automatic payments let's see how many do I have I have 10 clients who are either paying automatically with a credit card or pay me automatically with ACH direct deposit so I don't send these people an invoice just because I know that I'm going to get paid automatically anyway and then finally I have here invoice sent question mark and then I really only care about the people who are not set up on automatic payment so for all these people not set up on automatic payment did I send them an invoice yes or no on on the on the last day of the previous month I will prepare all of these invoices I'll check this box yes and then I'll schedule the invoice to be sent on at 8 am on the first of every single month so all of my clients know that I'm sending them an invoice every single month on the first of the month at 8am and I just simply use this Excel spreadsheet to track the creation of the invoices and then obviously I'm a bookkeeper I use QuickBooks to track my accounts receivable so I'll create the invoice in QuickBooks I'll email it to my client and then as payment comes in through checks or ACH direct deposit or credit card payments I will use QuickBooks to track the payment of my invoices and my accounts receivable this is the only CRM quote unquote software that I use I don't pay for any actual software I just use Microsoft Excel I have 35 clients if you have less than 30 clients you probably don't be eating you probably don't need to pay for fancy and expensive software just stay organized with Excel