Bookkeeping and Payroll Service Provider | Sara Walker
Updated: Apr 19, 2022
Sara Walker really takes the stress out of bookkeeping and has a passion to not only help your business grow but offer opportunities for moms to work from home! She organically started her business, Making Waves Management Group, and in this episode Sara gives some awesome tips and tricks on how you can also manage your own books. Sara has taught other moms the trade of bookkeeping and provides a way for them to clock in, do some work, and clock out. Sara is passionate about helping you find cost-effective ways to manage your bookkeeping and answering all the questions that come along the way.
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About Sara Walker
Sarah Walker is the owner of Making Waves Management Group, a bookkeeping and payroll services company located in Northern California. She serves small business owners by helping them get their finances straightened out and in line. Sara also designs accounting procedures and processes so you don't have to worry about 'what is happening?!' financially. She provides a clear financial picture for your business with her specialized knowledge and skills and puts proper procedures to work for you.
Sara has been in business for about six years. When she started having children she needed to start working again - but wanted to work from home. Since she had a background in finance, bookkeeping came naturally to Sara. Her business grew from an awesome little side-hustle to what it is today. Sara started to grow her business and train other stay-at-home moms to be bookkeepers and really systematize the process. She offers the opportunity for other moms to clock in, do some work in the business and clock out, and go back to their families.
Her business organically grew and she now has a team and is ready to launch to the next level. It has been a journey discovering how to keep a steady flow of work for her team as she begins to level up, but it has been awesome watching everything come together!
Bring Back the Middle Class!
Sara has a massive transformative plan to bring back the middle class, and her company is her step towards that goal. She is here to help as many people as possible. Sara teaches her clients how to run more profitable businesses, showing how money comes in and out, and teaching best practices. She is also coaching a team of awesome moms to develop a new skill and get a new trade. Sara is super-stoked about where the business is going and how she can help even more businesses!
Advice for Business Owners to Get their Books in Order
The first tip is to get organized. In this digital world it is ok if you like to work with paper, just make sure you have a concrete way to organize everything may it be in an envelope or paper shoebox. Sara has had someone bring in trash bags full of papers, and she does not recommend this method! There are also a lot of ways you can digitize your papers by simply taking a picture of your receipt and using systems like DexWallet or HubDoc to collect all of your documents. These are subscriptions, but if you are at a place where you can't afford a bookkeeper this would be an excellent place to start.
One thing is to keep it all in one place. Even if you're not organized with it, find the shoebox at the very least (but not the garbage bag!) and use it every single time. You want to avoid that "oops" moment as much as possible.
The second tip is to open up a business credit card or a business bank account and keep those finances separate. If you are not as organized as you'd like to be, and you have that "oops!" moment, it is a lot easier to track where that money came and went than it would be if you're using your personal funds. This is a super easy step that some new business owners overlook, and even if your business is small and not generating a lot of revenue, always keep those finances separate. If you ever get an audit, these separate accounts streamline that process (otherwise, you will need to pay Sara a lot of money to untangle everything.)
The third tip is to be ready for tax season. You can keep up with this as you go along through the methods mentioned above. Or you will need to sit down and pull your records together and find all the little pieces, putting them in one place. She has had it before when people were not sure what that $30,000 deposit was all about, and you want to avoid that situation!
How do you know it is Time to Hire a Bookkeeper?
Whether it is time to hire a bookkeeper really depends on your goals as a business, and this is a conversation you have to have with yourself first. If your goal is to grow your business 10 times this year, then you want to take on that person yesterday even if you think you can't afford them yet. When scaling up your business quickly your time needs to be spent on growing the business and not on the finer details like, "where did my lunch receipt go?" and tracking all of those little payments that add up. You need to be thinking like you already own and run that large business.
Businesses often come to Sara when they are starting payroll and onboarding their first employee. Sara connects you with a lot of great systems and software to use that would actually cost less than hiring her to do payroll. She helps you get that all setup and running and demystifies the payroll process.
If you have a business and you are just starting off and this may be more of a side hustle, then definitely take your time! Much of bookkeeping can be figured out online, and you can utilize all the tools available to get this going. If you ever find yourself stuck and you can't figure things out, that is when you should ask for help!
So it's really based on your business goals and where you want your business to go
What Sara is Learning About Right Now
Sara has been in the middle of a move and has been listening to the audiobook Cryptocurrency Investing for Dummies! Sara has a passion for investments and loves learning about stocks, so cryptocurrency is new to her. She has found blockchains to be extremely fascinating as it's a technology that can be used to track so many different things from identity theft to IP intellectual property. Through blockchain, you can actually go back and prove that you are the one who owns a document, and she has enjoyed learning how cryptocurrency works and can be used.
Connect with Sara!
Sara has been working very hard to get her business online so she can start working with a broader audience, and she is excited to announce that her new website is up and running! PLUS she has a new youtube channel where she shares even more tips and tricks. Be sure to check her out, and consider Sara for your bookkeeping needs. She is doing some amazing work, and she would love to talk with you!
Check out Sara’s new website! http://www.payrollandbookkeepingsolutions.com/
And be sure to connect with her on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCmTNXzb9gRgBq582iC1swnQ
You can also find Sara on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/sara-walker-a85813137/
If you just want to schedule a call with Sara right now and get the ball rolling, you can do that HERE!
Connect with Dani:
As always, you can find me at https://www.daniellehamlet.com/ Want to be a guest on the podcast? Email discoverycallpodcast@gmail.com. Find me on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/danihamlet/
Connect on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/danihamlet
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Before you go, one more question: Would you like to start your own podcast for your business? If that is a YES, Let’s connect and book a free strategy call: discoverycallpodcast@gmail.com.