Lessons from the Ledger – Behind every set of books is a story — sometimes messy, sometimes surprising, and often full of problem-solving. In this series, I share real-life experiences from the bookkeeping desk: the challenges, the tools, and the lessons that stick. Today’s story is about a client whose payments all looked the same, but whose books told a very different tale.
When I first took over bookkeeping for a local constable, I found a mess. Deposits came from multiple sources — AvidPay, checks, QuickBooks payments, PayPal, bank transfers, and even Venmo — but every single payment was for the same amount. Figuring out who paid what, and for which invoice, was like solving a puzzle with half the pieces missing.
The bigger problem? The previous bookkeeper had been applying payments wherever they felt they might belong. The only way forward was to roll back everything to the beginning of the year, get direct access to the client’s tools and merchant accounts, and then re-enter payments with the correct information. It sounds simple. It wasn’t.
No one could have straightened out these books without careful conversations, patience, and absolute attention to detail.
Fast-forward a year — the client introduced a new tool to manage jobs and send invoices. It was great for him, but tricky for me. If invoices were going out through both this tool and QuickBooks, keeping accounts receivable accurate would be a headache.
That’s where I brought in Zapier (an automation tool that moves data between apps). I set up triggers to copy new invoices and even new customers from the new system into QuickBooks automatically. Now, his accounts receivable is correct, without extra data entry.
Lessons learned from this client:
- Don’t automatically trust the work of the previous bookkeeper.
- Payments can come from more places than you think.
- Clients often don’t know what you need until you ask the right questions.