In this dynamic episode of the eCommerce Podcast, host Matt Edmundson is joined by Nathan Hirsch, the visionary behind eComBalance, and special co-host Jared Mitchell, a seasoned entrepreneur deeply entrenched in the eCommerce world. This session takes an unconventional turn as we dive deep into the critical realm of eCommerce bookkeeping, finance management, and the tools that transform this daunting task into a manageable and insightful process.

Episode Highlights:

1. Introduction to eCommerce Bookkeeping: Discover why bookkeeping is a foundational pillar for achieving financial success in the fast-paced eCommerce industry.
2. The Importance of Early Bookkeeping: Nathan Hirsch underscores the significance of implementing a bookkeeping system from day one to avoid poor financial decision-making and pave the way for informed business strategies and potential future sales.
3. Choosing the Right Software and Support: Jared Mitchell shares his journey of navigating through various inventory management and bookkeeping systems, highlighting the importance of selecting the right software complemented by exceptional support.
4. Key Tools for eCommerce Businesses: Learn about indispensable tools like A2X for accurate cost of goods sold (COGS) reporting and Fathom for generating user-friendly financial reports, essential for complementing primary accounting software such as QuickBooks Online or Xero.
5. Collaboration with Service Providers: The conversation sheds light on the value of open communication and collaboration with bookkeepers and software platforms, setting realistic expectations for financial reporting and customizing services to meet specific business needs.

Key Takeaways:

• Embrace bookkeeping from the onset of your eCommerce venture to ensure financial clarity and strategic decision-making.
• Opt for accounting software that is supported by robust tools and backed by excellent customer service to ease the management of your finances.
• Maintain a collaborative relationship with your bookkeepers and service providers to enhance operational efficiency and navigate eCommerce finance complexities with greater ease.

Featured Tools and Software:

• QuickBooks Online
• Xero
• A2X
• Fathom

About Our Guests:

Nathan Hirsch is an entrepreneur and the founder of eComBalance, a firm specializing in eCommerce bookkeeping services designed to help businesses manage their finances efficiently.

Jared Mitchell brings a wealth of experience from his extensive career in eCommerce, offering invaluable insights into the practical aspects of financial management and software selection.

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Engage with Us:

We'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode and your experiences with eCommerce bookkeeping. Connect with us in the comments on YouTube or drop us an email. Your insights could be featured in an upcoming episode! Don't miss out on future episodes where we unravel the complexities of eCommerce and share actionable tips to propel your business to success. Subscribe to our podcast and follow us on YouTube to stay updated on the latest in eCommerce innovations and strategies.

Welcome to the show.

It's great to be with you.

Like I said, Nathan and I, we're gonna be talking about all things finance.

But before we get into that, let me mention to you about the

website eCommerce podcast.net.

If you haven't visited us already, do come check us out.

There is a newsletter you can sign up for that.

And every week we email you the notes, the transcript notes, the sort of the links

to your inbox, just come straight through.

Yes, it does.

So you don't even have to go pick it up from the website, we'll just email it

to you, but you have to be subscribed to the email for that to happen.

So why not come join the rest of us on there.

Now, today's episode is brought to you by the eCommerce Cohort.

The eCommerce Cohort is our monthly mastermind group that you can come join.

Be great to see you in there.

Every month we have great guests coming in and delivering some amazing workshops

around eCommerce and how we can utilize that in our own eCommerce businesses.

Super practical, super helpful, and that's just great actually.

We go through them together as a business.

You can do it as an individual, you can do it as a business.

Come join us.

It's pretty cheap to join.

Find out more at ecommercecohort.

com and I will see you in there.

Now, before we get into the conversation with Nathan let me give a shout out

to Ben Leonard, actually, because Ben was the chap that introduced us.

We also have another mutual connection, which we'll get into in a little bit, but

there's a chap called Ben Leonard, who has been on the show a couple of times.

Now, Ben Leonard, if you haven't got it already, do check out his book, quick

plug for his book called Quit Stalling and Build Your Brand by Ben Leonard.

It is a great book, just telling you the journey that he went

through in setting up and building an eCommerce business to sell it.

And he gives you all the tips and tricks that are in there so you

can make it work for you as well.

So if you haven't done so already, do check out his book.

Great book.

Very good read.

Lots of practical advice.

And if you look at the picture on his back, I don't know

if you've seen this, Nathan.

Oh, smacking the microphone.

The picture on the back, he looks about 12, but he's genuinely not.

But do check that out.

You don't need an MBA to crush it in eCommerce, it says on the cover.

So do check out.

That now, Nathan, let's talk about Nathan, the entrepreneur

extraordinaire and the brains behind the 12 million success story, freeup.

net started with just 5, 000.

Now today he's rocking the business world with hits like Ecom Balance

and Outsource School alongside his partner, Connor Gillivan.

Now.

He's been on a lot of podcasts, he's done all the social media stuff, but for some

reason he has agreed to come onto our show and share his knowledge and wisdom and

I'm looking forward to the conversation.

Nathan, great to actually finally meet you, how are we doing?

Matt, I'm doing great.

I'm in tired dad mode.

I don't know if you've been there before or it's just a constant tiredness

that doesn't go away, but it's Monday morning, so I'm feeling pretty good.

Actually, I was just thinking, is it Monday

morning or is it Tuesday?

No, you are raight.

It's Monday evening for me but the time differences.

And I can definitely emphasize tired dad, having 3 kids.

But I think my kids might be slightly different age.

My 2 boys are at uni.

, My daughter's, at college, she's just about to go to university,

maybe, possibly, I don't know what she's going to do.

But yeah, so very different life stage.

So I empathize fully having been there.

How are you finding it?

It's great.

My, my son's five months old, so I'm still new to all of it.

And we're getting a lot of help from my wife's parents and my parents.

Thank you.

But it's been great.

So I have nothing to complain about at all.

Is this your first child?

Yeah, it is.

My, my wife and I were foster parents.

We've been fostering teens for a few years.

So we've

Oh, wow.

but for first bio kid.

Wow.

Wow.

Awesome.

Fostering kids, man.

That's really good friend of mine, a guy called Phil Watson here in Liverpool.

I don't know what his official job title is, but he works for the

council here championing fostering and he does all kinds of crazy

things to champion fostering.

And so I've a lot of respect for him, a lot of respect for what he does and the

kids he brings in are just incredible.

And so well done for doing that.

And teenagers to a five month old.

It's way different.

It's a whole different experience.

Yeah, no doubt.

Absolutely, no doubt.

Whereabouts in the world are you?

I'm in Denver, Colorado.

I don't know if you've ever been, but I've lived here for a few years.

It's a place that's tough to beat.

The weather's great, even in the winter.

Lots to do outside.

I've got my whole family to move here, so it's a good spot.

Never actually been to Denver, Colorado, but I've been told,

and you correct me if I'm wrong is it a good place to go ski at Denver, Colorado?

Yeah, not in Denver, but in Colorado in general you're

always an hour away from something.

Yeah, skiing is great here.

I'm a big snowboarder, so it's fun to get out there.

Okay, you were until you had a five month old baby, right?

I haven't done much this year for sure.

Can I just say, just a little word of caution, there's been

two times in my life where I've put on quite a significant amount of weight.

The first was when I got married and the second was when

we started having children.

So just because life just takes on a very different season.

Just bear that in mind.

So tell me about EcomBalance.

Tell me about the story behind that.

Yeah.

You mentioned FreeUp, our company before it, and even going back before that, I

was a 20 year old entrepreneur running this pretty large Amazon business.

I started in 2008, 2009, and I ignored bookkeeping and struggled with it.

I tried doing it myself.

I tried hiring college kids to do it.

I tried dumping it on my CPA at the end of the year.

Never really had a good understanding for what my numbers look like every month.

And it was hard to make decisions.

And fast forward ahead, when we started free up, my partner

and I said, that was crazy.

Let's not do that again.

Let's hire a bookkeeper from day one.

And that ended up being one of the best business decisions we ever made.

Not only did we have.

Immaculate books every single month that we could make decisions on.

But when we went to sell the business four years later, we had clean books going back

to day one, and that helped us pass due diligence and eventually sell the company.

So that kind of gave us the idea of some kind of finance business.

We didn't know what exactly.

But we started consulting with different entrepreneurs,

different eCommerce sellers.

After we sold free up, we quickly learned that we hated being consultant.

So we didn't want to do that.

But the common theme was that everyone just had a mess.

When it came to bookkeeping, no one actually knew what their numbers were,

which made it tough for us to consult.

We had the idea to launch our own eCommerce bookkeeping business.

We actually launched a second non eCommerce brand called Accounts

Balance for agencies and software companies, but all around the fact that

entrepreneurs need to know their numbers.

Most of them hate bookkeeping, they don't speak bookkeeping, and

we've tried to approach it from an entrepreneur's standpoint.

Make it as easy as possible to get numbers you can understand each

month and make decisions on them.

very good.

Very good.

I actually similar, not similar stories, but similar background in a lot of ways.

When I came out of uni one of the things that I, cause my university

degree was accounting and law.

And I came out going, I never ever want to be an accountant, but what

I did do is I set up a side hustle doing bookkeeping for other companies

because I figured no one wanted to do bookkeeping because it's just horrendously

boring, dull, and so on and so forth.

And it turned out I was right, actually.

I don't do the bookkeeping thing anymore, but I've always learned that finance

and understanding the numbers is super, super important for eCommerce companies.

It's intriguing that you've gone almost the opposite way to me.

You've gone, now let's go get into bookkeeping, let's do that.

So to let listeners know and if you're watching this on YouTube, just

letting you know, there is a chance We will be joined by Jared Mitchell

on this show, who is a, who has been a guest previously, on the podcast.

Jared is a good friend of mine.

And also, Jared, right?

You have worked with him.

And so I did that thing when I went to your website, I looked on your

website, and I saw Jared's podcast.

Picture on there, I thought, I'm gonna text Jared and say, Jared,

gimme some really awkward questions to ask Nathan . And he was like, I've

got the best questions for you, man.

So he started texting me a whole bunch of stuff.

And then I said to him why don't you just come join us?

We're doing the recording in 20 minutes.

And hopefully Jared's internet will be working and he'll be joining us soon

just to let you know if a third voice starts appearing in the background.

That is why first time we've ever done it on eCommerce

podcast, we'll see how it goes.

Nathan's game, Jared's game, I'm game, so see how it all, how

did you meet Jared, by the way?

Yeah, so whenever you start a company, not just eComBalance, this is

going back to free up or outsource school.

You never really know how it's going to go and we have the mentality of

being upfront and honest with clients.

We offer clients either discounts or free months of bookkeeping or whatever it is.

And, In exchange for feedback and allowing us to break everything.

And we try to be upfront and honest that there's going to be processes

that aren't going to work, that we're going to have to build on.

And part of the deal is you're going to get a good price and

some discount or free bookkeeping.

And in exchange, we want feedback.

We want to know everything you like, everything you hate.

What's working, what doesn't work and we'll use that to build our team.

So Jared was looking for a bookkeeper at the time.

He was nice enough to be one of our first beta clients, definitely

went through some growing pains.

Nothing too crazy, but just us figuring out.

Who's our team?

What are our processes?

What are our communication channels?

And I'm not a bookkeeper.

My business partner's not a bookkeeper.

To run a bookkeeping business, we had to hire a lot of bookkeepers,

hire a controller and everything that, that goes with that.

So a whole adventure that was a lot of fun, a lot of hard work.

And Jared was nice enough to give us feedback and bear with

us through those growing pains.

And now, hopefully, it says we're have this under control and have

a good monthly process, but there was definitely some element of us

figuring stuff out in the early days.

Fantastic.

Here he is.

Let's see if I can pull him in here.

Let's just add him to the guest list.

No, let me assign him that.

There we go.

Let's go on here.

Here he is.

Man of the hour.

Mr.

Mitchell, how are you doing?

Hey, what's up, Matt?

Good.

How are you?

Yeah, really good.

Yeah really good.

There's three of us on screen now, which is, like I say, first time

ever for the eCommerce Podcast.

Super excited.

So thanks for joining us, Jared.

Yeah.

Thanks for having me, man.

I'm honored.

I know, it's great.

I was saying to Nathan, when I saw that you were on your beautiful face was on

his website, I thought we've got to do something together and and just grill him.

Why not?

And Nathan's up for it.

Yeah, Jared, great to meet you.

I actually don't see you on screen, so I've never actually

done a video call with you.

I don't really know what you look like outside of your picture,

but great to hear from you.

Prepare to be disappointed, my friend.

So you guys have never actually seen each other, you've

worked together all this time but you've never actually seen each other.

Yeah, I've done a bunch of calls and stuff, but I don't think

we've ever done a Zoom or anything.

Wow.

Yeah, I've only cyber stalked, social media stalked Nathan.

So that's about it.

Sounds about right.

Yeah.

Wow.

Wow.

Mr Mitchell, how's life in California?

It is rainy and the reason I say it like that

is because it never rains here.

And so it's something I should talk about.

I just feel the need to offload, it's raining,

I don't know what to do.

Yeah.

No one knows what to do.

It's a big deal.

So yeah, man, I'm doing really well.

How about you guys?

Life's good.

I was telling Matt, I'm in tired dad mode.

My son's five months old and just trying to learn how to be a dad and

wake up six times throughout the night and still work the next day.

But it's tough to complain.

It's tough, it's very tough to complain.

And let me tell you, it gets better and better, Nathan, it does I think,

going through the different ages.

Although this is not a show about parenting, but it does get better

and better without a doubt.

Jared, Nathan was saying that you were one of his early guinea pigs

and you're very gracious with him.

I'm curious, why don't I turn the floor over to you a little bit?

Bearing in mind, people who are listening to the podcast are going to be going

I'm in Ecommerce, some of them will have bookkeeping and accounting sorted out,

quite a lot of them won't, and it'll just be one of those annual things,

so let's get into, I guess, why this matters, why it's going to help people

and maybe ask some questions around that.

I don't know if you've got anything top of mind, Mr.

Mitchell, that you can throw in?

Questions or answers to what you just said?

Let me, that's actually a good point, actually.

Why did you go to someone like Nathan for bookkeeping?

What was it you were missing, do you think?

I

is I've been in Ecommerce for about 20 years.

And when I started the only thing available for bookkeeping was like the

discs or CDs that you put in computers and download QuickBooks to your computer.

And I am not an accounting finance mind, but I know enough about it to

understand it and hire the right people.

So with those deep disclaimers I think I came across Nathan.

Through you, Matt, I could be mistaken.

And this was in a time when we had been on NetSuite and had a very bumpy ride.

And I actually, when I dug into it, my accountant wasn't even

using NetSuite for accounting.

I was paying for it, but they weren't.

NetSuite provides accounting and like IMS ERP stuff if you want to pay for it.

And once I found that out I started looking around for new IMS ERP systems

and also for new I guess accountants or CPAs to help us run our books.

Yeah.

And so you came across that.

I don't know if it was from me.

Maybe it was.

I don't know.

When was this?

Gosh, I want to say it was when you had me

on as a guest on your show.

Yeah you just were like, hey, check this guy out and Nathan, you were one of the

maybe three or four firms at the time that I checked out and I wasn't familiar with

what you guys do, how you're structured, competitors, your space and something

I did after is I actually reached out after I hired Nate, I reached out to

probably 10 to 15 of his competitors, not only to learn more, but just to

make sure I was in the right hands and I had the right systems and all of that.

Oh, this is a great testimony for you, Mr.

Nathan Hirsch.

This, you stood up to the 15 people that he was checking you out against.

Yeah, I appreciate it.

Like I was telling you before Jared came on, we're grateful to anyone

that gives any of our companies a chance when they're young.

Business is hard.

Trusting someone who's not a bookkeeper, I'm not a bookkeeper, is even harder.

And just for someone to give you that trust when you're in year one, or even

the first six months of a business, you want to do your best to make good on

that trust and give a good experience and treat them well going forward.

Totally.

So let's get into this.

So you've got companies that come join you, right?

Yeah.

Does it make sense for somebody who is just starting out in Ecommerce to

think about bookkeeping from day one, to maybe talk to somebody like you

from day one, or is it something that I can think of six months down the

line when I've got proof of concept?

My mentality for any business we start is we don't

start a business unless we're hiring a bookkeeper from day one.

Even if the business is gonna fail down the line, unless you're

a bigger company like Jared, bookkeeping is relatively cheap.

You're not gonna go out of business because of your bookkeeping expense.

You will go out of business if you don't understand your numbers and

you're making bad decisions based on what the numbers are telling you.

I think veteran entrepreneurs know that, hey, if I'm starting a

business, even if it's a startup, I'm going to hire a bookkeeper.

I think rookie entrepreneurs, they think, Oh, I'll do it myself for

the first six months or I'll ignore it for the first year and I can

always go back and do it later.

And I would strongly argue against that.

Yeah.

Fair play.

I totally agree.

I guess what, if you are starting out in Ecommerce, what would I

appreciate, I need to know the numbers, but what numbers is it specifically

that I really should be looking at?

Yeah, it's a tough question.

It's different for every single business.

Obviously understanding your sales and what fees.

For each marketplace you're selling on, what that actually looks like.

I think we live in an era of vanity metrics, right?

There's a lot of seven, eight figure sellers out there, but it

doesn't tell the full picture.

So understanding your fees, understanding your cogs what you're

actually making per platform.

A lot of people will be wasting their time on platforms that actually aren't

making them money or where they could just be doubling down on what's working.

But then you dig into, okay, you've got.

Private label sellers, you got wholesalers, you got people who

are just Amazon, you got people who are spreading out across different

Amazon platforms and marketplaces.

And that's where it can get a little bit more company specific with the

numbers that Jared cares about might not be the exact numbers that a smaller.

more isolated seller cares about.

Yeah.

That's a very good point, but I think it's, I think one of the things that I've

observed with eCommerce businesses is

Podcast,

There are a lot of these vanity, I love this phrase, vanity

metrics that you mentioned, the metrics that we like to chase, but actually

don't really make a whole big deal of difference to our company and not

really should spend a lot of time on.

What are you, what's your experience in some of the vanity metrics

that people get caught up in?

If you can get that 20 30 percent margin opposed to that seller

that's in that 1 5 percent margin that makes all the difference in the world.

And then where are you spending that money on and looking at it every single month?

Are there expenses that I can cut?

Can I really hire more people?

How do I lower the cost of products?

These are the questions you got to be asking yourself as

Amazon cracks down on margins.

I know when I was an Amazon seller, I had products that I was making 35 40%.

Net margins on which is just unheard of nowadays.

But yeah, that's what you really have to care about.

I'm curious, Jared's thoughts.

Yeah, I think for us, and this is a really important question

for us, because if you're listening to this and you're like me, and you're an

entrepreneur that has more of a marketing mind, this conversation that we're having

right now is something that's probably not a priority for you or on the back burner.

And the reason why I'm saying that is because that's how

it was for me for 15 years.

Number one, because the systems didn't really exist 10 to 15 years

ago, like they do now to support all these metrics and these important

ratios and to have them at hand.

But number two, because it's not your default, right?

But for us, what I've had to discover the hard way is which systems I think

have the best bang for their buck and which ratios work best for us.

For us, we pay.

Really focused attention around CPA and not only that, but from which

channels we're getting the best bang for our buck through marketing.

And then we tie it back into inventory and we have a very close understanding

of how much that inventory costs us to let everyone know we have around 15, 000

active SKUs, the reason I mention that is because this is not I guess when I did

consulting in the past for Neil Patel, we did like thousands of websites, most

of them, the SKU count was like in the hundreds, so if we're not really careful,

we're not about these metrics and about keeping an eye on our inventory and our

margins, we will start spinning our wheels in an area of advertising really fast.

And that does nothing but waste everybody's time.

Very good.

Just explain what you mean, Jared, when you say things like CPA,

for those that might not know.

Cost per acquisition, like how much it costs for you

ultimately to get a customer.

But not only that, breaking it down to how much the fulfillment costs you

coming in through your door if you do your own fulfillment out the door, or

even if you use a fulfillment center.

And how long it takes as well, because there's a cost to that.

Very good.

You want to come in on that, Nathan?

Yeah, I think something that I've just seen Jared

do a good job of over the past few years is adjusting systems.

If he doesn't feel like it's spitting the right information out.

I know you just change inventory systems because we weren't

getting the correct information.

Cogs, which cost of goods, which is obviously incredibly important

if you want to know your margins.

And the thing about inventory systems is there's a bunch out there.

Everyone loves and hates every single one.

And the ones that the ones that are out there that they just don't

fit every single business model.

So I've seen clients switch two or three times before they find one that really

works for them to get accurate numbers.

But Jared, I don't know how much we want to go into Jared's business

personally, but switched over to a different inventory software to, to

get better numbers, which is only gonna make the books more accurate.

You've probably heard the fa phrase, like garbage in, garbage out.

The bookkeepers are only as good as the numbers that, that they're getting.

And even though I know it was a pretty big move for Jared's business and his internal

team and lots of hours and time were spent, not only doing the research but

actually switching over to that company.

At the end of the day, if you're getting more accurate numbers,

it makes it all worth it.

That's really interesting, isn't it?

Because I'm just thinking of my own eCommerce businesses, and

we've got a lady who manages the operations director of operations.

She's called Michelle.

She's a beautiful lady.

If I even thought about suggesting to her that she changed our accounting

software from say, sage to zero, she would slap me upside the head because there's

just no way she's got it into her head in the sense that this is what we use.

I know the system, it gives me the right data that I need.

But actually for you, Jared, then move in systems, how big of a decision was that?

Oh, it was massive.

I want to say, cause we had moved platforms from Magento to Shopify the year

before, and that was a long time coming.

I really wanted to wait until Shopify could prove to me that they could handle

a vendor that had over 10, 000 SKUs.

And so I waited a long time and then.

It just became a no brainer because there were so many vendors that had

successfully, I don't like being a test dummy, so successfully put their

store on Shopify and had no issues.

And so I moved to Shopify and it's been night and day better for us than Magento.

And I would venture to say it would be better for anyone

than Magento, quite honestly.

So after we did that yeah.

That's my opinion.

And after we did that, that opened the door for us to work with almost

any IMS, Inventory Management System, or ERP that we wanted to.

So like I did with the accounting thing that I mentioned about Nate I did

the same thing with IMS ERP systems.

And just to give everybody a history of the ones that we have tried,

we started out with a company called Didacom, mail order manager.

I want to say that was about 15, 17 years ago, used them with some success.

We used a company called Stitch Labs for a while, and we used them with some success.

And then we heard everybody raving about NetSuite, so we moved over to NetSuite,

and we used them with some success.

But we felt like we were paying way too much for our accountants, we were paying

way too much for the system, and we weren't able to make it work for us, and

their support wouldn't really help us.

We just felt like we were too small of a company for them.

And I think we were.

So after researching like 15 of these systems which took probably a month

or two of, you know how you do it.

You get on the phone, you make the calls, you talk the talk, you're

talking to sales, you ask the questions.

I get a big list of questions then I keep adding to the questions.

I go back and forth and now I'm like, I learned the lingo and like I've

learned about the space and we settled on a company called Finale inventory.

And I cannot sing their praises highly enough.

Like I'm not on their payroll.

Like

should set an affiliate link up, maybe.

their support's amazing.

I gotta tell you, we're paying around five to 10 grand a month for a NetSuite.

We're paying about 500 a month for Finale and it's a way better

system for us, in my opinion.

Oh, wow, that's a hell of a saving, isn't it?

Jeez, that's a lot of money saved every

it paid my, it paid for my entire rent.

We just expanded our facility and it literally, I was like instead

of paying that, let's expand.

Nathan, do you get when people like Jared come along

and say, I'm changing systems, dude.

Do you get nervous?

Or are you like, no, let's do it.

Let's go for this because I think you probably should.

Not so much nervous, and I definitely don't put my opinion in

whether you should or shouldn't do it.

That's more of a business decision.

For my side, in the best possible scenario, you do a clean cutoff, right?

Even if you're switching from QuickBooks to Xero, you do it January 1st, and it

just makes everything easier for everyone.

In a more realistic situation, that rarely happens.

There's always nothing ever works in the exact timing that you want it to.

And especially when you get to bigger and bigger businesses,

you don't want a situation where past books are done incorrectly.

If you're in year two of your business and year one is okay, somewhat

accurate numbers, but you're pretty small, you could probably get away

with your CPA, filing your taxes and just being right going forward.

And five years later, no one's going to care about that initial first year.

And Jared's situation doesn't necessarily make a lot of sense.

From there, it's setting realistic expectations and hopefully Jared

feels this way of how long it'll actually take for us to go backwards

and fix it and how much that'll cost it and how much time it'll take.

But yeah, Jared knew what he was doing and knew what he wanted to do it.

There was no talking him out of it or anything like that.

We wouldn't do that anyway.

But yeah, it's more of what makes the most sense of in terms of time

and how far back do you want to go?

What you wanna avoid is.

Every time we switch something, we've got to go back five

years and change everything.

That becomes unrealistic pretty quickly.

Yeah, top tips there.

Nathan, I guess this leads me on to actually a question which

you text me, Jared, when I said, gee, I'm talking to Nathan.

Give me some questions to ask him before we agreed that you're

going to come on the show.

And I thought this was a great question.

So talking about changing software or moving to suppliers or vendors.

What are, Nathan, some of the most important questions

a company needs to ask?

What needs to be on the question list, Jared's sort of checklist of

questions when he's on the phone, to make sure that a company like,

say, eComBalance, when you're talking like financing, bookkeeping.

Accounting.

What are some of the questions that maybe I would need to ask

to make sure we're a good fit?

Yeah,

software, if we're, we only use QuickBooks and Xero, if you're

using a bookkeeper that has a lot of experience with QuickBooks or vice

versa Xero and you're on the other one that could be a pretty big red flag and

Jared said in a common theme through all of this is you don't necessarily want

to be someone's guinea pig if they've been using QuickBooks for 30 years, you

don't want to have them be your First first zero client or, and from there

just Ecommerce in general, you'll see a lot of local bookkeepers that have

no idea what Ecommerce is or how to do the bookkeeping for it, and they'll

probably say that they could do it.

And do you really wanna be someone's first e-commerce client?

Asking questions around that and what connecting tool you use would you like A2X

and link my books in terms of connecting from the marketplaces to QuickBooks or 2.

0?

A pretty good way to tell whether someone knows eCommerce is if they're

using a connecting tool, if they're A partner of that connecting tool

like we're gold partners with both.

So a lot of people that don't understand eCommerce, they're either going to try

to connect Amazon directly to QuickBooks, which won't work very well, or they're

just going to take the money deposited into your bank account and put that

as a top line of income statement, which your CPA is not going to like.

That's incorrect.

Some quick ways to just see if they understand eCommerce bookkeeping.

And the next thing, and hopefully Jared thinks we do a good job here is just

integration, getting view only access to everything, documents we need up

front so that each month we're only requesting things that we actually need.

You might run into banks that don't allow view only access and stuff like

that, where we need statements every single month, but our goal is to get.

Tho that access every single month.

So we can log into Amazon, we can log into your bank, we can log

into your credit card and pull as much information as possible.

And a lot of bookkeeping firms that they might be good at the

bookkeeping, but they're bad at the stuff around the bookkeeping, that

leads to a not so good experience.

systems, processes, integration, customer service, stuff like that.

fantastic.

So if I was starting out if I was starting a business today, I'd be

curious, should I use Xero or QuickBooks?

What's your preference?

Are you

pros and cons to each one.

That's why we allow clients to use both.

The real answer is whichever one your bookkeeper has more experience with.

Our controller who has 30 years of bookkeeping experience has 30

years of QuickBooks experience.

So for us, if a client comes to us and they don't have any books, we're going

to say, hey, we think you should be on QuickBooks Online for this reason.

Now, if they hate QuickBooks Online for some reason and they're adamant

they want to be on Xero, Sure, we can still work with that and we

can still take on a zero client.

But if it's up to us, the default is going to be the software

that we're more familiar with.

And what you really want to avoid is like the final loops and the benches

of the world who have a software that no one else uses because not only

are you stuck there and it's going to be an absolute pain to, to move

off of, but no CPAs, your tax person doesn't necessarily use that software.

At least stick with something that's going to be easy for you to switch.

Hopefully Jared has a good experience with us, but if he doesn't, there's a

lot of eCommerce bookkeeping, bookkeepers out there that use QuickBooks online.

QuickBooks or Xero, Jared?

QuickBooks Online.

And have you been on that for a while?

Do you like it?

I like it.

It's clunky.

It reminds you of checking out on Amazon when you need to buy something.

There's just stuff everywhere.

They have, so you gotta know what you're doing.

They have decent support.

I echo exactly what Nate said.

If you're wondering what to use, hopefully you have a CPA.

That's helping you with taxes and then hopefully you have a solid booking,

bookkeeping team like eComm Balance.

Ask them and make sure that they're extremely comfortable with both.

And that'll answer your question.

So just for the sake of those who are maybe listening this side

of the Atlantic rather than your side of the Atlantic, you've used this acronym CPA

twice to mean two very different things.

Oh, really?

What did I do?

What did I say before?

Cost per acquisition and certified public account.

you're using it, I'm just aware that in England we don't

call bookkeepers CPAs, and so I'm just getting you, just to clarify when you say

CPA in two different contexts, you are talking about two very different things.

Is that the right acronym name, Nate, for what I call my tax guy?

Isn't it CPA?

Am I?

It is if I could jump in.

So this is a quick way to think about it.

Yeah.

CPI.

You've got accounting.

Accounting is like the big bubble that everything falls under and

accounting can be really three parts.

You got your bookkeeper who's doing your monthly books every single month.

He gives payment balance sheet cashflow.

categorizing.

You got your tax person in the US, it's called the CPA outside the US.

It's called something different.

They're there to give you tax advice, tax strategy, actually file your taxes,

communicate with your bookkeeper.

And then when you get a little bigger, you can go more that CFO

or consultant, whatever you want to call it, a part time fractional.

They're there to help you make business decisions.

Say, Hey, this is what the numbers are telling you.

You should spend more on PPC.

You should hire more people.

You can forecast cashflow, whatever it is.

So those are the three elements and you at least need a tax person and a bookkeeper.

And then the CFO is optional as you get bigger.

very good.

So I'm just going to translate this, ladies and gentlemen,

for the English amongst us.

We would have a bookkeeper.

An accountant and maybe a CFO at some point when you get that's a good point.

Actually, would you, if you're starting out in a business, would you have someone

who is competent, involved, who is not.

You're not necessarily employing him as a CFO, but certainly bringing in

someone quite early into the business with that kind of acumen and thinking.

Yeah.

It just depends how complex your business is.

Like I ran free up, which is a, we got it pretty big to 12 million, but it

was a pretty simple business, right?

It's cashflow positive charge your clients, take our fee,

pay the freelancers on delay.

We didn't have an office, we didn't have lots of overhead, so wasn't the

most complex business in the world, and I consider ourselves decently good at

finance, so we never did hire a CFO.

If you're running a pretty large eCommerce business and other situations,

it might make sense, and I know Jared has people on his team that and maybe

I'm wrong, but I believe you have people on your team that specialize in that

just because you said it yourself, your background is more in the marketing.

So it depends on what your background is too.

Very good.

Very good.

Jared, you said what other pieces of software does he recommend

clients alongside of his make sure to ask him about Fathom?

Yeah, Fathom, there's a few tools that we use.

Rewind, which I'm actually testing some other stuff, but that's good

for just backing up your books in case anything goes wrong or you hire

a bookkeeper and they mess it up.

Always good to just have a backup copy.

Fathom, we really like for reports.

It turns, again, QuickBooks can be very clunky and the reports are no different.

They're a little hard to read in my opinion.

Oh wow.

That's amazing.

I just love it.

I think that this was a great idea.

Yeah, I think it's wonderful.

I think it's a great idea, too.

I think it's a really great idea that you guys are bringing forward.

And I love that.

And I think it is great that you guys are bringing it forward.

It is great that you are taking up our space to be a part of this because I

think it would be great to have you back on the show, that to keep us going.

And for those of you that don't know what the crowd church is, crowd church where

it's all about meeting people and a lot of people that have been listening to

us on Those are a few tools along with the A2X and LinkMyBooks that complement

the QuickBooks Online and the Xero.

Very good.

Anything from you in terms of software that you use, Jared, that

can throw into the mix here that people might be interested in?

Yeah, I think two things.

I wanted to echo what Nate said but I wanted people that are listening

to know, because you might not have accurate inventory, and you might have

skews going on, that's you don't know, what your inventory, where it's at.

And so there's a tool that Nate mentioned called A2X that connects to your platform

that'll actually help you get a decent COGS number for the month until you

catch up and get accurate inventory.

I wasn't aware that it was as slick as it is.

The reason we know it's as slick as it is because what Nate and I actually did

now that my inventory is live, is we went back and fixed some of the months.

We've just fixed some of the months that we had a sort of not had live

inventory for, and the adjustments we made are not that far off.

So that was pretty cool, pretty encouraging for me to see.

The second one that like, I can't speak enough positive

things about would be Fathom.

And the reason I love it is because, we've been talking a little bit about CFO.

In the past, I've had to hire like part time CFO type minds to

help us answer certain questions about our financials or inventory.

This tool, Fathom, their support's insanely good.

And basically they replaced that whole need for me.

Like I can ask.

Hey, I want to figure out, this about my inventory.

And they will sit there and walk me through it and set up a custom

report for me or show me where that information already exists.

And answer my question.

So it seems actually listening to you talk

Jared support is a big deal.

So whichever software platform you are using, because obviously there's

gonna be different bits of software around the world for different things.

But it seems like one of the key things for both service choosing a bookkeeper

and choosing a platform is actually.

The customer service, can you get on the phone?

Or if you're a millennial or Gen Z, can you email them

or have instant chat, right?

And can you talk to a person that's actually going to be helpful?

It seems like remarkably simple, but it seems like this is a common thread,

which is weaving its way through.

That's one thing that I'd say kindly about Nate,

in addition to many other things.

But I'd start with the fact that this is the funniest thing.

There's at some point in our relationship.

Where he emailed or called, and he's dude, you email me a hundred times more

than any of my other clients combined.

I was like, oh no, I had no idea.

I had zero clue.

And it was like Nate said, we had a lot, we were like early stages

and had a lot to figure out.

But what I really appreciated about them is they fielded the emails

and they answered my questions.

And I have a lot less these days cause things are figured out and cleaner.

Every step of the way with your CPA, with your bookkeeping team, with your

inventory management system, if you can't get an answer to something,

you're dead in the water, especially if there's like a big issue, right?

To me, it's everything.

I have a few thoughts on that.

To backtrack for a second, just like Jared said, he tests out every single

software and asks them a lot of questions.

We went through that in the call me, call my home.

Say, Hey, are you in technically high school?

I live in Morgan, St.

That's the funniest place ever.

Yeah.

So we didn't, when we first talked about how sort of school.

My new business, True SEO, all about customer service.

We want everyone to respond within a business day.

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people ask questions and

they don't get answers, direct answers to those questions.

So bookkeepers, they're unique human beings, right?

Like they, they hide behind the numbers.

They're categorizing stuff all day and we've had to do extensive just

email training on and with someone.

Hey, a client sends you five questions in one paragraph.

Don't respond to three of them.

Break it down and make sure every single one is answered.

Make sure that email chains don't go back and forth more than three times.

If you're doing that, then you're doing something wrong.

What is the situation where you say, okay, this isn't working via email.

Let's hop on a call and hash it out.

And you want to do that before you get to email 15 on the email chain.

So we've gotten through a lot of email train, a lot of email training with

bookkeepers who are great when it comes to what they normally do, the

bookkeeping side, but trying to add that customer service element that.

We want to be the best of the best compared to other

bookkeeping firms out there.

That's generally good business advice when it comes

to email, I feel, and offering customer service to your own

customers via your eCommerce business.

What's the I guess one of the questions, Nathan that maybe you can touch on is

when I think of bookkeeping, I think of what the guys at 40X call lag measures.

So you're looking at data which is historically out of date as soon

as you look at it in a lot of ways.

Whereas if I look at a live dashboard, for example that's given

me like to the minute information.

Do I need both?

How do they work together?

Because in my head, both are important, but I can see why a lot of people

might go, I've got a dashboard here.

That's fine.

Yeah, both.

All of my companies, we're looking at stuff on a weekly basis.

We're tracking stuff on a weekly basis, but we don't consider any numbers

final until we get the final report.

And there's always stuff missing.

There's stuff like seller board, which I know the founder, it's a good tool, but

Things change, it doesn't replace monthly bookkeeping, so for me it's monthly

bookkeeping you absolutely have to have and then the dashboard or the weekly

reports you might get or whatever it is, that's the add on, it's not the other

way around where you've got the weekly stuff so you don't need the monthly.

Do you agree, Jared?

Definitely and with regards to timing, a hot question is

how soon can you get me my books, right?

And I think I had false expectations, and I think the expectations I'd lay out

for anyone within the sound of my voice right now is that If you're not up and

running with these systems that we're talking about, you're probably going to

have to rely on getting your financials for the prior month, either from the

15th or the 30th of the next month.

It's going to be delayed, most likely.

So I would get to that point first.

And make sure everything's clean, and a well oiled machine, before you start

talking about, okay, how do we close in on that end of month number, and

so I can get those ratios as soon as I can, and actually act upon them.

Any thoughts on that, Nathan?

yeah, one thing we didn't really talk about was just

the setup, like before you hire a bookkeeper, obviously you need QuickBooks

or Xero but also just what banks you use, what credit cards you use.

Jared's not one of these clients, but we've got clients

who are using QuickBooks.

Fantastic.

Fantastic.

Gentlemen, listen, I'm aware of time and I'm aware that we could just carry

on the conversation and just keep going and I've actually quite enjoyed it.

What we've managed to do somehow is take a what is perceived as not a very

interesting topic like bookkeeping and have quite a fun conversation about it.

So I, I tip my hat to you gentlemen.

It's been fun.

Jared, anything in closing from you, bud, on this whole thing?

Man, no, just thanks for your time, I guess if anyone I'm one

of those people that like, now that I know what I know, I want to help others.

So I don't really do consulting anymore, but someone's welcome to email me and

ask me a question and like which one do I use or lay out their scenario.

I'm happy to help.

I feel like that's just what we should do as entrepreneurs.

Every single time I'm going to recommend Nate for bookkeeping

and he doesn't pay me to say that.

He actually didn't even know I was going to be on this show and I'll

make some other recommendations.

Bye.

Bye.

Happy to help.

Fantastic.

Nathan, anything else from you?

It's just, that's perfect timing for him just to go.

Like you said, I didn't know Jared was going to come.

It's always good to chat with him.

And I appreciate the kind words and the trust and everything that goes with that.

And yeah, thanks for having me on.

It's fun.

I was telling Matt before this, anything to make a podcast different

from the other 800 podcasts I've been on is always a welcome change.

hopefully we've done that, Nathan.

Definitely.

Gentlemen, both of you are exceptionally beautiful people.

Thank you for coming on the show.

Really enjoyed the conversation.

Chad, we should do this again sometime, but where we just go and chat to people.

Hey man, if you need a co host, I'm right there, dude.

Excellent, excellent.

We should definitely do that again.

Let me, while I remember, just give another quick shout out to Ben Leonard.

We mentioned it earlier, but the Quit Stalling and Build Your Brand book,

definitely go check that out, Ben's a great guy, I think he's coming on the show

again soon but yeah, I think that's it we will of course link to both Jared and

Nathan in the show notes which you can get on the website at eCommercePodcast.

net, if you're subscribed to the newsletter, they will be coming to

your inbox automatically of course, they will all be in there but yeah,

gentlemen you're both awesome.

Thank you for coming on.

Really appreciate it.

Great conversation.

Wow.

for having me.

Nice.

It's beautiful.

It's beautiful.

Just stay there for a few minutes.

Don't go anywhere while I close out the show.

Thank you so much for joining us.

It's been great, hasn't it?

Now make sure you check out the eCommerce Cohort.

Be great to see you in the Monthly Mastermind.

If you're not in there already, come check it out at eCommerce Cohorts.

Big shout out to the team that makes this show possible, which

includes the beautiful and talented Sadaf Beynon and Tanya Hutsuliak.

Big shout out to Josh Edmundson for the theme music.

And if no one's told you yet today, let me be the first.

You are awesome.

Yes, you are.

Created awesome.

It's just a burden you've got to bear.

Jared's got to bear it.

Nathan's got to bear it.

His five month old kid's got to bear it.

I've got to bear it.

We've all got to bear it.

That's it, eCommerce Podcast is produced by PodJunction,

the new name for Aurion Media.

Find out more about PodJunction, find out more about everything at eCommercePodcast.

net.

But gentlemen, that's it from me, that's it from all of us.

Thank you so much for joining us, it's been fun.

Bye for now.