In today's discussion, we delve into the intricacies of bookkeeping, an endeavor that many small business owners find daunting yet essential for financial clarity and growth. Our guest, Terry Bork, a seasoned bookkeeper and profit growth strategist, talks about the critical importance of proper financial management and the common pitfalls that entrepreneurs encounter. We explore the necessity of implementing sound bookkeeping practices from the outset, as well as the value of professional assistance in navigating the complexities of financial reporting. Listen in...

WESA Retail Roundup September 29, 2025:

• Host: Glenn the Geek, Host of Horses in the Morning
• Facebook: Retail Roundup Facebook group
• Guest: Terri Bork of Abacus Gal | Facebook
• Presented By: Western English Sales Association

Time Stamps:

04:42 - Transitioning to QuickBooks Online

13:32 - Inventory Management Mistakes

19:21 - The Importance of Financial Clarity for Business Owners

22:20 - The Benefits of Virtual Bookkeeping

Foreign.

You are listening to the Horse Radio Network, part of the Equine Network family.

Well, hey everybody and welcome back to the Retail Roundup here for wesa.

I am Glenn the Geek, founder of the Horse Radio Network and host of Horses in the Morning, one of the longest running daily podcasts in the world.

We're approaching 16 years actually coming up in November, so thank you for being here.

The Retail Roundup is your go to virtual hub for all things retail and a little bit of wholesale thrown in there and manufacturing as well.

You can join panel discussions, learn from webinars, share your thoughts, ask questions and connect with the community.

The best place to connect with the community is the Retail Roundup Facebook page.

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Today we're discussing every small business owner's least favorite thing to do.

Okay, maybe it's mine.

That could be just me, bookkeeping and, and how to get the most out of it.

With me, I have Terry Bourque.

She's a bookkeeper and profit growth strategist with Abacus Gal and she empowers business owners through financial clarity and growth and specializes in bookkeeping, catch up, cleanup, and monthly services.

And she goes beyond the numbers with cash flow projections, forecasting, and insights that help businesses plan for the future.

Hey there.

Thanks for joining us, Terri.

Hey, Glenn.

I am so excited to be here today.

Thank you so much for having me.

I just learned before we started that you're right up the street from me.

Literally.

I am right here in Gainesville, so not very far from your area at all.

Yeah, Gainesville, Florida.

And I am, I'm about 30 minutes outside of Gainesville here.

We're halfway between Ocala and Gainesville at the farm here.

So thank you for joining us.

This is an important topic.

I know.

You know, I'm probably not too far off saying it's every business owner's least favorite thing to talk about or to do.

Am I wrong with that?

No.

You know, a lot of business owners, they're very scared when it comes to their books.

And that's what we're here for.

We're here to make it right for them and easy for them to understand.

And we'll talk a lot about that today, I'm sure.

How to make it easy.

We had to.

I sold the horse radio network three years ago to equine network and it was a six month process, you know, 90 documents.

And it was, it was very time consuming, as most of those things are.

And I had a really good attorney that was, does mergers and acquisitions.

But I had another guy who was like you and he dealt with QuickBooks specifically.

And I could not have sold the network without his help.

He, he went back through years of QuickBooks, cleaned it all up, made it what it was supposed to be, what I didn't, you know, he fixed.

And he was a miracle worker and spent a lot of time working on it and we've kept him ever since.

And I'll tell you what, I could not say enough good things about having somebody on your side when it comes the simple.

What sounds like a simple thing.

Bookkeeping.

But it's not.

And you need somebody that's a professional.

Yes.

One of the things that we see a lot is a lot of business owners hire their significant other to do them.

And you have to wonder sometimes, is that the right decision for your business just to have somebody get it done so it's done.

Not always.

You want to make sure that the decisions, you know, the entries go in correctly by a professional who knows what they're doing.

So you know, they're classified correctly.

So that when it's time to make decisions about your business or sell your business, you know, people know what's really going on in the books.

And especially and for taxes as well.

You want to make sure that you're paying what you're supposed to be paying.

It's one of those cases where you don't know what you don't know.

Exactly.

You have no idea what you don't know and you don't know that you've been doing it wrong all this time.

Time by yourself.

It's true.

Right?

Until it really matters.

Exactly.

The attack Simon.

Sales.

When it's time to sell.

Exactly.

Or the IRS comes and knock it.

Oh well, the audit's its own nightmare.

Right.

No one wants to hear those five letters that the worst five letters in the English language.

So let's.

I have a bunch of questions for you that really involves retailers, small to medium sized retailers along.

And, and we can include manufacturers in this too because they're in a similar situation.

They all have POS systems, they all have accounting systems.

If you're in that.

And they all worry about inventory and all of that.

Okay, so let's start with accounting software.

Is there one you recommend for small retail operations or small manufacturers?

Yes.

So for small retail and light manufacturing businesses, QuickBooks Online is our go to.

The reason why is because it's flexible, it integrates with a lot of apps, it gives you real time visibility into your numbers.

The scalability is also great.

You can start simple and then add lots of functionality to it as you grow.

And for manufacturers, sometimes I'll recommend laying something like inventory or other specialty add on apps depending upon their needs.

But the backbone is QuickBooks Online and.

I know a lot of business owners complain because it is a monthly fee right to have QuickBooks online.

And like any other service, they've been going up under rates the last several years.

We have it still for my consulting business, but the reason I like QuickBooks Online, we've had it for 20 years since they came out with it and we always had the disks and.

Right.

And then you always had to manually buy the new disk to update.

The one thing I really like about it is the software gets updated automatically.

You don't have to worry about that part.

That's correct.

And if I have any listeners out there who are on the desktop version of QuickBooks, excuse me, please know that QuickBooks will no longer be supporting that version of 24.

They're not supporting any prior version of QuickBooks Desktop.

So you have to get QuickBooks 24.

You can still buy it, but they will not support it.

So for those of you who've been holding out doing that conversion from desktop to QuickBooks, the time to do it is before the actual end date so that you don't get stuck and you actually get that stuff taken care of ahead of time and unfortunately then it's going to cost you.

So I have a relative I won't name who, who also has a business and has had it for 20 years and he's on an old disk version of QuickBooks, probably really old, and his big thing is converting it over.

Is that something you can help people with?

Yes, we do conversions all the time.

I'm able to tell somebody the file that and I can do it on Zoom with them, the file that we would need so that we can properly do the conversion and maintain the integrity of the entire file to transfer it into the online version of QuickBooks.

Okay.

He's been scared to do that.

You can still keep it and it will still work.

Right.

But if you have a problem, QuickBooks will not be supporting you.

So you make your best decisions for your business and just kind of like.

Windows 10 is not going to be right.

Exactly right.

But yes, we do conversions all the time.

It's just part of the process.

Now, I don't know if you get into it, but do you get into POS Software at all point of sale.

And is there one that you like the best of all of?

Sure.

So I usually for most of the businesses that we work with that are on the retail side, we usually recommend Stripe or Square for smaller retailers because it's user friendly.

It integrates smoothly with QuickBooks Online.

For businesses that need advanced services or heavy inventory, we like to work with Shopify or Lightspeed because they're great.

They combine everything easily and seamlessly right into your QuickBooks file.

So it's fantastic to work with them.

I do know a couple of the very large retailers in the horse world that have converted to Shopify.

Yeah, it's very popular.

You just want to pick something that's going to integrate with QuickBooks.

You don't want something a that your bookkeeper or accountant aren't used to working with.

And we're all very familiar with working with the big names because we work with them every single day.

You really don't want, you know, if you have an in house person and you want to use a special software, that's fine.

But you're going to find that most bookkeeping firms and accounting firms are going to want to work with the big, the big names.

So what are the top mistakes you see people making when they set up their business either, you know, in QuickBooks or wherever?

Right, sure.

And what's the one big tip you can give them?

And I think we've already done it.

Don't get your wife to do the.

Bookkeeping or her husband.

Well, there is that.

Right.

But I think, you know, number one.

I'm guilty of all of this, by the way.

Oh, that's hilarious.

I think the number one mistake that I see is not setting up the chart of accounts correctly from the start.

And if the foundation is wrong, everything down the line is messy.

Another big one is linking your bank feeds without rules or oversight.

A lot of business owners assume that the software is going to categorize everything for you correctly just right out of the box.

And it doesn't.

So my biggest tip is to invest in the proper setup, either training or professional help.

So you get it right on day one so you can save yourself years of frustration.

I will tell you that that comes back to bite you later.

It does.

Again, speaking from experience on all of.

This, having owned many businesses.

Right.

So what are the key financial reports that QuickBooks or any other software for that matter, what are the key financial reports that a business owner, especially retailer, should be check, say weekly or monthly?

What are the ones that you, that we all should be looking at on a regular basis.

Gotcha.

So as a profit and growth strategist, the report that retail owners should check, there's three big ones that I think you need to check.

That's your profit and loss statement.

Your profit and loss shows you whether you're truly making money after all of your expenses.

So the third thought process is, do I need to cut back on expenses or adjust my pricing this month or this week?

The other report is called your cash flow report.

Even if you're profitable, this will tell you if you actually have the cash to operate.

The thought process is, can I cover my payroll and bills this week or do I need to slow down on my spending?

And the third one is the sales by product or category report.

The purpose of this report is it highlights what product or categories are driving revenue in your business.

And the thought point is, should I reorder the inventory?

Should I run a promotion, or should I double down on my top selling item?

So basically, these three reports, the profit and loss shows if you're making money.

The cash flow shows if you can keep the doors open.

And the sales by product or category shows what's working and what you can sell more of.

Do you find that most retailers are over inventoried or under inventoried or it's, you know, inventory.

Having run a retail operation and helped with many inventory is always the one that gives you the ulcers, right?

Because you're never quite sure.

And I know the reports help, but some of it's gut too, you know, it's sure.

So one of the things that I do, you know, in the advisory portion of my business is I work with my business owners on their inventory.

We look to see, you know, is your business seasonal?

Do we need to order more things for Black Friday?

As we get into the holiday season, are we slowing down in the winter or the summer months?

We really need to take a look to see what kind of inventory we need for the seasons we're gearing up for and then how much inventory we need to have on hand for that particular time of year.

You know, you certainly don't want to order and have warehouses full of product that isn't going to sell.

And you don't want to have the wrong product that's, you know, in your, in your warehouse that's just not going to sell, you know, so it really depends.

You don't want to order a whole bunch of stuff for, you know, June, July and August.

If, you know, we're getting into Black Friday and we need really things to get us through these winter months.

So it's really working with clients to see what is the best way to handle our inventory situation.

So if we take sales out of it.

Okay.

Or lack of sales for my question purpose here.

Okay.

If we take that out of it, what's the one big, the biggest mistake you see people make that.

That's a business killer.

Is it?

Is it inventory?

It is a lot for a lot of inventory for a lot of businesses that are in retail ordering incorrectly, you know, you're leaking cash that way if you're not going to be able to make that money back fast.

So you want to make sure you're ordering right and you just don't want your money locked into something if something's not going to leave soon.

Inventory is a killer for many businesses.

Gotcha.

Okay, so if somebody.

Now let's switch gears a little bit.

Okay.

Let's say that my wife has been doing the books.

Okay.

And now we get somebody in like you.

What are your priorities in the first, let's say quarter, 90 days?

What are your priorities for cleaning things up?

What do you start with?

Is it, Is it the categorization?

Well, actually, the first thing.

Well, the first thing we do is we take a peek inside a business and see what's actually going on with their books.

We look at their categorization and their structure.

We make the necessary adjustments to their categorization and structure, and then we work on cleaning up and reconciling, depending upon where we are in the year or how far back we have to adjust something.

And then we start creating processes for moving forward, standardizing invoicing, payments and reporting so that you have books that are very reliable and you can trust them to make the proper decisions in your business.

And, you know, as business owners too, we tend to.

Even if we look at the reports, let's say we're good about that, we look at the reports, we tend to put our heads in the sand, too, because, you know, nobody wants people bad news, especially when it comes to your business.

Do you find that the businesses you work with, some of them are putting their head in the sand too long?

Is that, you know, I think a lot of them do, I think.

Well, a couple things, right.

I don't think that all businesses know what they're looking at on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis.

So they really don't know how they're doing.

They wait until they go to their cpa, and then the CPA will tell them, you need to go clean this up because it's a mess.

Or they'll give you the really awful news that you've underpaid your taxes and you owe a whole lot of money.

Or you get a nasty visit from someone that you really don't want knocking on your door.

But being a business owner means we need to be responsible and we really need to make sure that every month we're reconciling our bank accounts.

And that doesn't just mean, oh, the bank statement came in.

And assuming that the bank is right, it's reviewing your profit and loss, looking at any outstanding invoices and bills, always on a monthly basis.

Just to, you know, do you have money that you can recover from your clients, that you can be like, hey, let's, let's get this money in here.

Or maybe you can make negotiations with creditors and say, hey, instead of putting me on a net 30, let's put me on a net 10 and reduce my fees.

Another thing we can look at is on a quarterly basis, your tax estimates are you paying correctly?

You're going to look at your payroll to make sure that what's going on in there and look for any trend analysis that you can do.

And then annually, you want to do your budgeting and your financial forecasting and all your strategic planning so that every month you can see, how close am I getting to that goal?

Maybe you want an F450 truck, right, for hauling something, right?

But your bank tells you, like, it would really be hard for you to do that right now.

So maybe you can only afford the F150.

You know, talk to your financial.

Well, that's true, but you want to talk with your, you know, your people and be like, can we afford to do this?

Is now the right time?

Or am I going to hurt myself in the future?

So you don't want that to happen.

You, you want to stay away from crisis mode.

You want to steer with confidence as you move forward in your business.

What do you find is kind of the line in the sand where people go, okay, I need to stop doing this myself and finally get somebody?

And is there a trigger usually, sure.

There'S always a line in the sand.

And for what we see most is when the books are keeping you from running your business effectively.

If you're spending more time wrestling with QuickBooks than serving your clients, it's time.

Another sign is if your business has grown past one or two employees or locations, compliance, payroll and taxes start getting complex really quickly.

And that's where someone like us at Abacuscal can step in and keep you compliant and accurate and free to focus on growth.

And I can't express.

You should be doing the things that you're good at, you know, and, you know, and not doing the things you're not good at, because doing the things you're not good at takes you twice as much time.

Exactly.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's worth.

It's worth the money.

I learned this the hard way, but, you know, I learned it now.

I still have somebody that's looking at my books every month.

And we don't have the, the.

We also don't have the volume or the inventory that a retailer is going to have because they have.

They.

As retailers, you have to look at so many different things, from loss to, you know, to inventory to profit on product.

Right.

Even into down to individual product in many cases.

And you're looking at all that stuff.

And that's a lot to look at by yourself when you're trying to run the business.

Exactly.

Yeah, very true.

So other than hiring somebody, what other messages and suggestions do you have for retailers or small manufacturers?

When it comes to the bookkeeping?

I always like to remind retailers that bookkeeping isn't just compliance, it's clarity.

And when your numbers are clean and they're current, you can see opportunities faster, you can catch any problem sooner, and most of all, you can make your decisions with confidence and you don't have to do it alone.

You know, when you partner with a professional, it lets you stay in your zone of genius and you know that your finances are handled and, you know, there's no surprises.

I would say that opportunity you were talking about, I've seen with some of the bigger companies, I worked with bigger retailers, is they were able to identify the categories that, okay, we're doing well in this category.

We need to focus on this category, which increase.

Usually those categories are also your most profitable, and you're able to increase inventory or skus in those categories.

And without that knowledge or without looking at that on a regular basis, you lose those opportunities.

So I can agree with you more there.

That's.

That's a critical one.

And it doesn't have to just be a large company.

All companies work that way.

You know, you just want to work with clarity.

Right.

Which is something, again, that, you know, usually sometimes we don't view.

We don't view that as a necessity.

And we should.

Yeah.

As business owners.

Exactly.

Yeah, I think so, too.

Yeah.

Anything else you want to add to our conversation today for everybody?

All I would like to say, and my encouragement is simple.

Don't Wait until tax season or crisis.

It's always good to start now.

And if you're ready for clarity and peace of mind, that's what we do.

That's what bookkeepers do and CPAs do.

They empower your business through financial clarity and growth.

And, you know, I think that when my clients win, I get to win, and I get to watch them grow and super, super exciting for me as a bookkeeper to really cheer them on or say, hey, we got something we need to look at.

So.

And then we can cheer them on for the win there.

So reports are important.

Know your number.

It's like having a good lawyer on your side, right?

I mean.

Exactly.

It does provide the wor.

Peace of mind.

You said that.

And I would say for me, having run some successful businesses and some that weren't so successful over the years, that just having somebody there doing the books and keeping an eye on things, that peace of mind is so worth it.

It's just worth it.

It.

I don't care what you're paying.

It's worth it.

Exactly.

And, you know, we're still cheaper than having a bookkeeper in your office.

Our virtual bookkeepers are cheaper than having someone you pay because you're not paying for a chair.

Right.

You're paying for the.

You know.

Exactly.

You're not paying any of those things.

You're just, you know, you pay your fee for the work that we do, and that's it.

So it's actually cheaper and it's much more.

Or at least the bookkeepers that I know and that I partner, you know, in my circle, we all kind of work that way.

So we're much cheaper than actually having an employee.

And it's amazing how actually you're not spent.

It's not a ton of time on your part.

You're keeping.

If it's kept up with every month and those reports are done every month, it's not three days worth of work for most businesses.

So having somebody that does it for you and keeps it up to date for you every month, it's not like you're working for them every day for eight hours.

That's not happening.

Right?

Yeah.

Depending upon how large a firm is determines, you know, how much time we need to spend inside their books any given week.

But, you know, once we get that all worked out, we know what we have to do when.

So that we don't get behind so we can turn those books around timely for our clients.

Yeah, I. I can't say enough good things about it.

Having experienced it recently and you know, having successfully sold a company because of it, I, you know, I just can't say enough good things about having somebody on your side and whether it's legally, you know, legally and in the bookkeeping department.

And I think most people think they have to hire somebody, you know, they have to have somebody in office to do it.

Right?

But that's not true.

So.

No, no.

We work with clients all over.

We are US based.

So I was gonna ask you our station here in Gainesville, Florida, but I have clients up in Washington, the state of Washington, in Seattle through California, up to Bain and all in between, so.

So you can work anywhere in the.

U.S. i work everywhere in the U.S. yes, sir.

All right.

I wasn't sure about that.

I wasn't sure because lawyers are somewhat limited.

I wasn't sure.

No, we are not limited.

You know, and, you know, we.

We grow, we educate ourselves all the time.

We're constantly making sure that we have all our CBEs, and we're continuing to maintain our CBEs every year.

So we know what we're doing.

Are you limited to QuickBooks at Abacus Gal, or can you do all of them?

So Abacus Gal is our main office is here in Gainesville, Florida, but we service clients throughout the United States.

I have clients in Seattle, Washington and Maine, California, and all sorts of places in the middle.

So, you know, we are a virtual bookkeeping firm, and we just love working with clients who want to get clarity in their books and make smart business choices.

And do you just do QuickBooks or do you do all of them at this?

We know several different bookkeeping things, but, you know, myself and my staff, our specialty is QuickBooks Online.

So we prefer to, you know, start there and make sure because it's the most versatile for most businesses.

But you've worked with the connections to QuickBooks through Shopify and all those too.

Stripe, Correct.

Square.

Yes, we work with all of those.

That's all part of your QuickBooks account.

Okay, great.

Well, I appreciate you being here talking about a subject again that, you know, we all want to stick our head in the sand but shouldn't.

So I hope, if nothing else, there's one or two people listening today that goes okay.

I got to do this.

If we'd done nothing else, that would be a good thing today.

Sure is getting somebody to do that.

Terry, thanks for joining us.

Where can people find you?

Oh, so the best place for us is, you know, you can go check us out@abacus.com if you click on Contact us, you can find our calendar.

We're happy to talk to you at any time.

I'm happy to take your calls if you have any questions.

And Glenn, I really appreciate you having me on your on your podcast today.

It was wonderful, wonderful.

Abacusgal.com is where you can find us.

Abacusgal.com Yep.

Thank you, Terry.

Have a wonderful day.

Thank you so much.

See y' all next week, everybody.

We'll be back with another.

Actually, I won't be back next week.

I lied.

I'm on vacation next week.

So we're going to the Albuquerque Balloon Festival.

That's a bucket list item we've always wanted to do.

So we're going to head out and do that.

Largest hot air balloon festival in the country.

Might be the world, actually.

So we're going to head out to that and spend a week in New Mexico hanging around New Mexico.

We have some listeners there that we're hopefully going to meet up with as well.

So I will be back in two weeks.

And you can keep an eye on everything a couple of different ways.

You can check out Wisdom by wesa.

That's the podcast that my wife Jennifer hosts.

You can also find the WESA Trade show on their YouTube channel.

Just search for wesa trade show or wesatradeshow.com we'll be back, of course, with the next trade show in January in Dallas.

And I hope to be there as well.

So check out all the details@wesatradeshow.com and look up Retail Roundup on Facebook.

Bye, Terry.

Thank you.

Bye.

Bye.

Have a great trip.