Episode 15 – The Hidden Cost of “Good Enough” QuickBooks

In this episode of QuickBooks Mastery for Small Business Success, father-daughter team Erica Northrup and Lee Davis explore a problem many business owners overlook — the hidden cost of QuickBooks that is “mostly working.”

They break down why “good enough” often creates stress, poor decision-making, tax surprises, and missed opportunities, even when there are no obvious red flags. The conversation highlights how unreliable financial data affects confidence, growth, and peace of mind — and what changes when your books are done correctly.

Listeners will gain clarity around why improving QuickBooks isn’t just about compliance — it’s about building a stronger business foundation.

Key Takeaways

1. “Good enough” books often hide deeper problems and missed opportunities
2. Inaccurate financial data leads to poor decisions around pricing, hiring, and growth
3. Tax season becomes stressful when systems aren’t reliable
4. Clean books create confidence, clarity, and better long-term planning
5. The biggest benefit of accurate financials is peace of mind

Questions to Reflect On

1. Do I fully trust the numbers in my QuickBooks reports?
2. Am I avoiding looking at my financial data because it feels confusing?
3. What decisions would I make differently if I had complete clarity?

Mentioned in This Episode

Free 3-Part Quick Start Guide to Getting Started with QuickBooks

Download at: www.leedavisandcompany.com

Send Us Your Questions:

support@leedavisandcompany.com

Recommended Resources

1. Episode: QuickBooks Reports You Should Check Every Month
2. Free Quick Start Guide at leedavisandcompany.com
3. Episode 8 on Reports

Timestamps

1. 00:02 - Introduction to QuickBooks Mastery
2. 01:06 - Understanding Good Enough QuickBooks
3. 04:34 - Understanding Excuse Alley and Its Impact on Business Decisions
4. 14:00 - The Consequences of Poor Financial Tracking
5. 18:21 - Understanding the Costs of Deferring Financial Management
6. 19:46 - Transitioning to Financial Clarity

Call to Action

If you enjoyed this episode, hit subscribe and stay connected with us at leedavisandcompany.com.

Download our free 3-Part Quick Start Guide to get started with QuickBooks the right way.

Have a QuickBooks question? Send it to support@leedavisandcompany.com — your question may be featured in a future episode.

Welcome to QuickBooks mastery for small Business Success.

I'm Erica Northrup.

And I'm Lee Davis.

I handle the tech and he handles the numbers.

And together as a father daughter team, we bring decades of experience helping small to medium sized businesses thrive.

We know that as a business owner, your time is best spent mastering your craft and growing your business, not getting lost in QuickBooks.

Managing finances can be confusing and you don't have hours to waste sorting through spreadsheets or fixing bookkeeping mistakes.

That's where we come in, helping you streamline QuickBooks so you can focus on building your business.

Each week we break it all down into simple, actionable steps so you can focus on growing your business, not fixing your books.

Let's embark on this journey together.

Welcome back.

This is episode 15 and today we're talking about something a lot of business owners don't really think about until it becomes a problem.

The hidden cost of good enough QuickBooks.

Not disaster, not total chaos, just it mostly works because for a lot of people, that feels safe until it isn't.

Okay, so Papa, I am really excited about these next couple of episodes that we're recording and this particular episode because it's not your traditional look at QuickBooks.

Our goal is to really help people understand what's going on.

So before we talk about the cost, let's talk about what good enough usually looks like.

So when someone says my books are fine, what do they usually mean?

Well, they mean that they don't see any glaring problems when they look at it.

It seems like, I guess to use your phrase, good enough.

Right.

And, and they haven't looked under the hood, if you will.

They don't know the car might be running and it might get to where they want to go.

Right.

But could it be fine tuned?

I think that's what we're going to talk about today.

That there are hidden opportunities in making a decision to not accept good enough.

Right.

There's no major flags.

Your taxes do get filed, your bank mostly matches.

Like everything is just almost there, but it's not square.

That's what I'm learning in carpentry.

It can look like it's perfectly square, but when you do the measurements, it's actually not square.

It's just a hair off.

Which if it's just a hair off, it's actually a disaster.

It's not square.

It won't lay flat.

Like it doesn't actually work.

And I guess you can say that about QuickBooks.

It can be look almost right, but it's just not good Enough.

Well, you know, this is tax season.

I just got a letter from my accountant.

Yeah.

He said that basically he has a whole bunch of releases you have to sign that says he's not responsible.

Right?

Right.

If the data is wrong and they prepared it.

Right.

Then you're on the hook.

Right.

And there could be lots of missed opportunities because they don't audit.

Okay.

You send your accountant the data, they're going to throw it in to a software package and out comes your return.

Right.

And if you owe a lot of taxes, you know what?

They just put it in the letter and say it's due by the 15th.

Right.

Right.

I guess it comes down to that.

You're probably still confused about what's going on underneath.

You still don't quite understand how QuickBooks functions and how it works.

So that you're kind of half getting there.

When you start to uncover some opportunities for them, they get flustered and they think, I don't have time for this.

And if I have to do it this way, well, it's an opportunity for you to learn a way around your situation.

Right.

Maybe it'll be painful for a bit, but you'll be fine.

And you'll also feel better about your overall business health.

Right?

Right.

Absolutely.

Well, you know, sometimes there's a saying, you can't go over it, you can't go under it, you can't go around it.

You just gotta go through it.

And I think sometimes that's really how you have to look at these things.

And when you take on new experiences and when you take on new challenges like QuickBooks, just gotta learn it.

If you don't figure out that system, if you don't have that system laid out for you, it is just very confusing.

Well, Erica, have you ever heard about Excuse Alley?

No, I've actually never heard this one.

I'm looking forward to this one, Papa.

Well, I have determined that there are some people, including me, that I can come up with plenty of excuses of reasons why I'm going to do it the way I've always done it.

And, you know, at the top of Excuse Alley is usually, I don't like change.

And another one right next to it is, I'm too busy.

Too busy.

I'm too busy.

Yeah, absolutely.

And, you know, I got to look myself in the mirror and say, oh, let's see, I might be too busy, but.

And I might blame everybody else, but in the end of the day, I have to turn around and look at me.

Right.

And say, what are my choices?

Right.

Absolutely.

Well, it's how our brains work.

And there's actually a lot of neuroscience there about.

Our brains naturally gravitate to what we already know, even if it's dysfunctional, even if it's causing us harm, because it's easier for us to do something that we've already done than learn something new.

So this is why we're gonna help you, our listener, learn something new by really laying out this system of QuickBooks that is just going to help you exponentially.

Even when things are fine on paper, there's usually something else going on behind the scenes.

So what kind of stress do you see business owners carrying when their books are only good enough?

What does that stress look like for them?

What is going on?

Well, first of all, I've had several clients when they don't know what they don't know, and if they'll admit that, then we can really explore how to help them or give them ways to show where there's opportunity.

Right.

And I think if you talk about people that will constantly dread tax time up underneath, they're not using QuickBooks to be able to just push the button and produce the reports that can be usable by their accountants.

Right.

I had a church, we were using QuickBooks, pretty large church, three to 5,000 people.

But they didn't have the system set up right in QuickBooks.

They were using multiple spreadsheets, and they got lost in their spreadsheets.

Right.

And people will get lost in their spreadsheet.

And so I helped them simplify and make some very clear business decisions in QuickBooks, choices about the way their QuickBook was set up.

And they immediately found it, while it was a little painful, they immediately got relief.

Right.

We may have.

We may have one of those guests on our podcast because he now is 90% there in using QuickBooks.

And before, he was probably at 40.

Right.

And had no faith in the numbers.

And the CPA was spending more.

The list goes on and on.

Right.

I guess it ends up with you second guessing things, second guessing your numbers, not trusting what's actually exported out of QuickBooks.

You're avoiding reports because you just know, well, they may be right, they may not be right.

Who knows?

Those are some of the stresses that you, our listeners, are carrying around when your QuickBooks are just good enough.

Yeah.

Well, Eric, given the fact that you've been taking up carpentry a bit in windows, when you put in a new window and you're going to put a new pane of glass, it requires glazing.

Yeah.

And you have to glaze over.

Right.

So it is oftentimes what you see with people, they glaze over.

Right.

It's like, it's like they don't want to see it.

When you start talking to them, they say, I am so lostly.

Right.

So you have to go back and say, okay, let's go back three steps and see if we can make this easier so that you don't feel overwhelmed.

Right.

That is massive.

Being overwhelmed is one thing, but the numbers themselves also affect real decisions.

I mean, this is what we're talking about, exporting reports.

Right.

So how does unclear or inaccurate data lead people to make the wrong business choices?

Well, I have a client who they've been talking about using this software that would integrate with QuickBooks for at least three or four years.

You know the client I'm talking about, you won't mention them on the podcast, but he would laugh.

Yeah.

He knows that if he used the software and we integrated it with QuickBooks, he would be a lot more efficient about getting paid at the time of service and he'd have the pictures that he needed to put in to show the client.

Right.

Yeah, that's, you know, that's pretty powerful software.

It does a lot of incredible things.

And his worker would be a lot more efficient.

He wants to use it.

Right.

But it's taking the time to go back to ground zero and, you know, reviewing some of the basic pieces of the system in terms of the invoicing and cleaning things up, it would save him a lot of money and he would be paid quicker and he wouldn't be chasing his accounts receivable.

Right.

Isn't this the way it goes?

Sometimes we are just unwilling to slow down two steps that would actually save us time in the end.

Because those two seconds, maybe it takes you to put something away where it needs to go will save you in the future an hour from looking for that particular thing.

So in QuickBooks, that is exactly how it is.

Sometimes we don't slow down to speed up.

Yeah.

And I think there's lots of people, especially this time of the year, they want to know where all the money went.

Right.

They think, well, I'm a $3 million company, I'm a 7 million dollar company, and where's the money?

And so, you know, oftentimes having usable reports such as the cash flow state or a budget, then you can see there are no surprises.

No, they're so people go back and listen to our episode on reports so powerful.

And I think that's what it comes down to.

So when you're not using QuickBooks effectively, efficiently.

You're not actually using it the way that it's meant to be used and you're not inputting the right data.

You can't see these reports that help you to make decisions for your business long term.

Yeah.

And you know when you're considering a major either investment or a opportunity to have an investor, they want these reports and they want you to understand them.

The best time to understand your reports is not when you're under the gun.

No, it's definitely not.

It's the time when you find a report you understand and it's usable and you can edit it to the way you want it.

If you look at companies when they're going to make investment, whether it's equipment or, or manpower or they need to understand what I would call the carrying costs are, what's the cost benefit ratio.

Sometimes the business owners, they don't want to be bothered with that number.

That would just be something the accountants do and the bankers look at it.

So you better understand that especially in this tight finance market, what your opportunity is and where your strength is.

Right, right.

Because it really dictates so much.

I mean we've mentioned overspending.

It can cause you to overspend and cause you to underprice things.

I think that is massive.

You could be missing out on income there.

Maybe it's hiring too late or too early.

If you don't have the help you need, you're never going to grow to the capacity you want to grow to.

Or if you take on too much help too early.

Now you're spending more than you can actually keep up with.

You're missing profit problems if you don't see the right data.

You know we talked about cash flow.

You could have cash flow surprises.

You're not predicting things the right way.

It's just going to make you make wrong growth move.

So this is why having books that are not just good enough, that are on point is really going to save you massive.

Yeah, I have a client who with the cost of product going up on a weekly if not a monthly basis in the well business.

Yeah.

And pumps are so expensive.

You cannot afford to be losing money on a pump.

Right.

You have to keep track of your purchases, make a purchase, order in QuickBooks, create that bill, know that you're tracking that in your inventory and your pricing and keep track of those so it again it will pay you a big dividend.

If you think you're making a lot of money off of pumps but you're selling 10 of them or 20 of them, 30 of them at or below your cost.

Guess what?

Right.

It will catch up with you.

Right?

Absolutely.

And this is usually the moment when good enough stops feeling good.

Right.

With when it's like, oh, man, everything, you know, hits the fan and it all goes totally to pot.

Right.

And they're overwhelmed.

They're overwhelmed and they're just going to try and collect what they can and say, well, we just got to keep going.

Right.

We just got to keep going.

So what happens at tax time when someone's books have only been okay all year long?

You may very well miss deductions.

And you may find that when you've looked at it, you're scrambling to just get it all in.

I. I just need to get it done.

And with getting it done, what does that look like?

Yeah.

It could be your accounts aren't reconciled.

You don't know if you've got it all in.

You think it is, but you don't know.

And there are various checks and balances.

Right.

And then you have your interest statements.

You have a flood of data that comes to you that you need to make sure is accurate before you think about having your taxes done.

Right.

This is what sends you into panic mode.

Totally panic mode.

If you don't have a good handle on your books, you are dreading this time of the year because this is when, you know, everything comes due.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, the other part is your accountant will say, well, you can just go on extension.

Oh, but the next but.

There's a but to that.

Yeah.

You have to pay what your tax liability is.

Yeah.

And you have very little time in figuring out what that is.

Yeah.

And you could miss deductions.

You're not funding your SEP IRA to reduce your tax debt.

Right.

There's lots of consequences for just going on extension.

Right.

You're leaving money on the table.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

You know, sometimes the biggest cost isn't what you lose, it's what you never get.

So what opportunities do people miss when they don't really trust their numbers?

Well, I think the biggest one, if I'd have to look at it, it's really peace of mind.

It's knowing that, you know what I feel good about the month end or the year end, able to do some planning.

Yep.

I can honestly tell you that this is a very stressful time for people and to be able to command your numbers well and feel confident that it's not just you're using QuickBooks.

QuickBooks is a tremendous tool for you, Right?

Right, Absolutely.

Well, I guess also leads to the fact that you're probably not growing, right?

You're not expanding, you're playing small.

You're not willing to put yourself out there because you don't know what you have to say.

Invest.

Or you're missing out on maybe partnerships, things with other people that you could be doing, new businesses that you could be bringing into your fold, that you could be either partnering with or bringing on board, making mergers happen.

You don't have your eyes fully open to what's happening in your business when your numbers are wishy washy.

Well, if you don't have trust in your QuickBooks accounts, including your accounts receivable, on what people owe you because you're using subsystems, or you say to yourself, well, I want to call my customer and tell him he owes me this amount, but I'm not sure I trust it.

Right.

Oh, whoa, whoa, wait a minute.

No, you know, that's a foundational question.

You must trust your QuickBooks and you must have systems in place to feel confident.

Yes, absolutely.

And it's not just all of a sudden you're panicked.

It should be, well, when I made this decision to do this invoicing to set up these systems, what were my checks and balances?

And I mean, we've talked about checks and balances before.

So I believe you have to have confidence in yourself and your numbers.

Yeah, absolutely.

You know, I just have a feeling that all of you out there, you know, all of this, I don't think any of this is new.

Right.

You understand that you have a mess in QuickBooks.

You totally feel out of your element, but you'd think people would fix it right away.

Why do you think so many owners stay in good enough mode for years?

Well, some of the excuses that I've gotten when people have decided to defer is the cost.

How much is it going to cost me, Lee?

Right.

So, you know, I think the cost.

There's a cost factor.

Right.

And also they're too busy.

Right.

It's not a priority for them.

And they haven't hit the bottom yet where somebody's told them, no, I'm not going to lend you money because I don't think that you don't have your stuff together, you know, or I can't find what I need.

You go to the bank and you can't find what you need.

That's not a good sign.

Right, right, absolutely.

And I'M sure there's some fear of messing it up.

It's already screwed up enough.

I don't want to screw it up more.

That's right.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, people are afraid of QuickBooks.

I've never done this before.

I'll mess it up.

Right.

And I'm sure they're overwhelmed.

Right.

They don't even know where to start.

Yeah.

Well, if it's out of their comfort zone and something different.

Right.

They're not going to know where to start.

And I'm sure there's some bad past experiences and maybe they have restarted a couple of times and just hasn't gone well.

So bad past experiences are leading to being completely stuck where you're at.

You know, I think as we chuckle because we've all been there with something, you know, whatever it is, let's end this on a helpful note because I don't want people to leave completely discouraged because this story doesn't have to stay this way.

I think that is the really good news.

So what's different when someone finally has clean, reliable books couple?

Why does it look like.

Well, you know, it looks like where you can push the button on tax time and you can say, yep, I feel good.

Here's my balance sheet, right.

Here's my profit and loss.

Here are my bank reconciliations.

Here's my asset list and my depreciation.

And here are my list of my questions for my accountant.

And I feel I can get these answers and we can make the necessary changes.

But it's all good stuff, right?

What I can do to improve my overall financial health.

Right.

You talked about this earlier, right?

That peace.

You cannot buy that piece.

That will come in your business.

When you are confident in the numbers, when you've put in the time, you'll be calm.

You're going to make smarter decisions, better decisions for your business that you'll actually have data to look at and really confidently say, yep, we want to do that, or, nope, that's a really bad idea.

Yeah.

So good.

And this is why we're building something deeper than quick fixes.

Good enough might get you through today, you guys, but it quietly costs you in stress, missed opportunities, and bad surprises down the road.

Over the next few weeks, we're going to show you what it looks like to move past good enough and finally build something solid.

So if you're tired of guessing, make

sure you're subscribed because what's coming next is for you.

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