Stephanie Thacker is the founder and CEO of Steadfast Bookkeeping Company. After seven years in small businesses and corporate, Stephanie started Steadfast Bookkeeping in 2011, because of her passion for helping business owners achieve their dreams. Growing up in a family of entrepreneurs as well as running a few businesses herself, she realized that bookkeeper is just one of the many hats that business leaders wear today. Since then, she’s worked with small businesses to emphasize the importance of bookkeeping, maximizing profits, and creating budgets. She generally just provides peace of mind for business finances in every area when she’s not crunching the numbers. She enjoys spending time with her husband of 13 years and their five year old daughter. You can find them on the local beaches down in Florida or visiting Disney world. Together, her and her husband serve as a production ministry in their local church.

What is the difference between Accounting and Bookkeeping?

Accounting is more of a general term I would say. If you’re looking at it in terms of business finances, at least looking at it in terms of the business accounting would have to do with, you know, all of your numbers and your finances. Bookkeeping is specifically going to be the portion of accounting that’s done, that’s more of the ongoing record keeping of your business. So, bookkeeping is basically the process of keeping track of the money that’s flowing in and out of your business. When you hear accountants, most of the time you’re probably hearing that and it’s probably referring to a CPA, a Certified Public Accountant who is typically someone who is preparing tax returns and things like that. Whereas, a bookkeeper is going to be the person that’s more in the day to day books and actual record keeping for the business finances. 

Are there any tools that you suggest for mainly creative entrepreneurs, when it comes to bookkeeping?

Yeah, so I’m a big fan of QuickBooks online and that’s what we use specifically here at Steadfast for all of our clients. And really because it can go from just, you know, a solo preneur really, someone who’s just the only person in their business. So if you’re a photography business and it’s just you right now, you can still use QuickBooks online, start with the lowest subscription, but have a way to really have all of your numbers in one place. And then it works up to multimillion dollar businesses with hundreds of employees. It can really grow with you. You can use it, a very simple version of it and you can use it if you have to collect sales tax, if you need to run payroll. And I think it’s pretty user friendly and it’s come a really long way. 

I know for photographers there’s a lot of softwares out there that you can use or that you’re using for contracts or communication. So, whether it’s a HoneyBook or Dubsado, or something like that, a lot of those do have something in there called bookkeeping. What I recommend is keep using a software like that for all the other aspects of your business. Use that as your CRM or however you’re using it, but then have a separate software that’s really just your finances, where you can connect your bank and really run a true profit and loss report and allow your CPA to do journal entries if they need to at tax time.

If someone is looking at possibly hiring a bookkeeper, is there ever a point where you’re too small to hire a bookkeeper or is that something that you can look at hiring pretty soon out of the gate when starting a business? 

It really depends on each individual business. We’ve had people come to us before and say that they are still working a full time job or they’re quitting their full time job and going all in and they know from day one that they don’t ever want to be the one handling the bookkeeping.There are certainly are some people that just know that from day one and they know that it’s going to be a personal investment really to begin with until they start making revenue. I would say, really think individually, you know, is it something that you’d feel confident in doing. 

Listen here, and see how Stephanie can help you make the best bookkeeping decision for you biz!  

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