Learn how effective bookkeeping, accounting, and proactive financial strategies can transform your small business from the inside out.

Ever wondered if bookkeepers are just folks with pocket protectors and stacks of green paper? Julie Smith and Glenn Harper bust that myth wide open, talking through how bookkeepers do way more than just punch numbers. They’re the ones making sure your money is in the right places, your expenses actually make sense, and no one’s accidentally (or not-so-accidentally) shopping for themselves on the company card.

They also dig into what happens when business owners wait till the last minute to figure out their finances (hint: it’s not good). And why getting proactive with your bookkeeping and working with accountants all year can help you actually grow instead of just stressing every tax season. Glenn Harper shares insider tips on turning those “write-offs” into real savings. No weird “girl math” or sitcom-level confusion required.

Whether you’re googling bookkeeping for the first time or trying to level up your systems, this episode breaks everything down in a way that’s easy to get, with plenty of laughs along the way.

This episode is brought to you by PureTax, LLC. Tax preparation services without the pressure. When all you need is to get your tax return done, take the stress out of tax season by working with a firm that has simplified the process and the pricing. Find out more about how we started.

In this episode, you’ll learn:

• The core functions of a bookkeeper versus an accountant, and when you need each
• Why internal controls are essential for protecting your business from errors and fraud
• The real story behind business write-offs and how to maximize legitimate tax deductions
• The pitfalls of once-a-year bookkeeping and how monthly financial statements empower better decisions
• How investing in professional advice can dramatically improve your company’s financial health

Moments

00:00 Delegating financial tasks in a company

05:21 Maximizing tax write-offs in business

08:27 Importance of proactive bookkeeping

10:34 Understanding the value of feedback

Running a business doesn’t have to run your life.

Without a business partner who holds you accountable, it’s easy to be so busy ‘doing’ business that you don’t have the right strategy to grow your business.

Stop letting your business run you. At Harper & Co CPA Plus, we know that you want to be empowered to build the lifestyle you envision. In order to do that you need a clear path to follow for success

Our clients enjoy a proactive partnership with us. Schedule a consultation with us today.

Download our free guide - Entrepreneurial Success Formula: How to Avoid Managing Your Business From Your Bank Account.

Glenn Harper, CPA, is the Owner and Managing Partner of Harper & Company CPAs Plus, a top 10 Managing Partner in the country (Accounting Today's 2022 MP Elite). His firm won the 2021 Luca Award for Firm of the Year. 

An entrepreneur and speaker, Glenn transformed his firm into an advisory-focused practice, doubling revenue and profit in two years. He teaches entrepreneurs to build financial and operational excellence, speaks nationwide to CPA firm owners about running their businesses like entrepreneurs, and consults with firms across the country. Glenn enjoys golfing, fishing, hiking, cooking, and spending time with his family.

Julie Smith, MBA, is a serial entrepreneur in the public accounting space. She is the Founder of EmpowerCPA™, Founder of PureTax, LLC, COO for Harper & Company CPAs Plus, and Co-host of the Empowering Entrepreneurs podcast. 

Named CPA.com's 2021 Innovative Practitioner of Year, Julie led Harper & Company's transition to an advisory-focused firm, doubling revenue and profit in two years. She now empowers other CPA firm owners nationwide through consulting and speaking, teaching them how to run their businesses like entrepreneurs. Julie lives in Columbus, OH with her family and enjoys travel, coaching basketball, sporting events, and the occasional shopping spree.

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Copyright 2026 Glenn Harper

Mentioned in this episode:

Brought to you by Harper & Company CPAs Plus

Running a business takes vision, grit… and the right financial partner. At Harper & Company CPAs Plus, we don’t just crunch numbers—we empower entrepreneurs. From proactive tax strategy and accounting to business advisory services, our team helps you keep more of what you earn and scale with confidence. Whether you’re launching, growing, or preparing for exit, Harper & Company is in your corner with expert guidance built for business owners like you. Visit www.harpercpaplus.com to book a complimentary discovery call today - or call us at 614-456-7222.

Brought to you by Harper & Company CPAs Plus

So Glenn, what is the function of a bookkeeper? Oh,

that's a great question. It can vary depending on— Do they wear a pocket

protector? I'm just curious. You can if you want to be really good at it.

You would wear that. With the green paper. Very important. The

multi-ledger paper and a 10-key is imperative. And if you don't have those things, you're

probably not serious about your job. Let's just be honest. If you want to see

your doctor and they don't have the stethoscope, they're probably not doing their job,

right? Correct. Guarantee it. So what ends up happening is in a company,

the owner generally is the person in charge of, hey,

this is what we're going to bill this customer. This bill is okay to pay,

and they're going to pay those bills. So the owner is the

person in authority to supervise or to approve

the money leaving the company and the money coming in. The

bookkeeper's job then is to account for that money and put it where it needs

to to be in the right categories. Like we talked a little bit earlier on,

the function of a bookkeeper is to put it in the right accounts and do

that. At some point, the owner is going to be too

busy to approve all these expenses. Like,

how can they do this, right? There's just so many things an owner's doing. Like,

they're not going to want to be bothered if we got to go to buy

postage for $50, right? So usually they'll give the

credit card to the bookkeeper. or to the office manager to say, hey, these

are further expenses for the company. Try to keep them under a certain amount. You

can go pay for those expenses. So the authority then changed

to the office manager or to the internal bookkeeper or to

whoever to go buy these things. Well, now the owner doesn't really see what

happened. It's now incumbent on the bookkeeper to make sure they account for it in

the right place. Okay? And so there's this

disconnect then. Well, somebody's stealing my money. Like, I'm not— I gave somebody authority,

but I can't see what they're doing. So you always worry about that. So you

put in these things called internal controls about who is authorized to do

what for how much money. And it makes it very nice to make you sleep

well at night because people are always trying to steal from everybody and that's just

the nature of it. But you put in these controls and those odds of somebody

stealing from you are way minimized. And so

the bookkeeping's role is to kind of maybe pay for some things, check something

down. We would say, hey, what's this check to ABC Company? They put it in

office expense. We don't recognize that as the external account at Harpo. We're like, what

is ABC Company? They would though go track down, oh, ABC

Company was actually something, a vendor for

our cost of goods sold account for our production facility. Okay, great. We'd move

that from office expense back up to this other account. So

they are the boots on the ground finding what these things are for. Or

the owner writes a check somewhere, writes a credit card. We don't like, What is

this company out of California? Oh, that was something personal for me. I

bought it for my wife and I just used the company card by mistake.

Great. So the bookkeeper's job is to try to find out where

these transactions were to and from so they can put 'em in the right category.

And then as the accountant's job over here, we want to just kind of confirm

that that's probably what that is. So that's the first step of a bookkeeper. So

from— I know you're probably going to ask this, but what is Harper's role in

this? Well, our role then is to kind of double-check and confirm

that these places where the bookkeeper and maybe the owner put these

transactions, that's where they really belong, okay? And if we see

something weird, we've done bagajillions of

transactions, we kind of know where things are supposed to go and what it should

probably look like. And we can sense pretty good, see something that looks kind of

funny, what could that be? Is there any strategy to that? Of

us being able to sniff it out? That's just experience. No, no, no, I mean

strategy in regards to, you know, I feel like maybe a bookkeeper

sees it very black and white, Does Harper ever see the gray in that?

I love the gray, obviously. Great question, Julie. And I meant this

perfect. So what ends up happening is everybody comes,

when you start a business, it's the greatest Seinfeld episode. Well, Jerry, it's a write-off.

Well, it's, what is a write-off? Like, I don't even know what a write-off— I

trust Jerry. Yeah, exactly. Well, it's Kramer. Kramer wants to write off and Jerry. But

what ends up happening is people think when they own a business, everything's a write-off.

They get to expense it off, meaning you deduct it from your company's

profit. So you bring in $100 and you go get yourself a

write-off. That means you spent money and it makes your $100

get smaller. Your profit gets less and less and less because you're ultimately

taxed on your profit. So everybody says, I want write-offs.

Well, I mean, we all would like to have a write-off, but I don't want

to spend money to get a write-off if I don't need it. That's

what I think we call— what did we discuss yesterday? Girl math?

Am I getting a headache? This was a big dinner discussion last night is

girl math. No, no. So it's sort of like the goal is to make

as much money as possible. Generally, if you're going to put effort and time into

something, you want to make money at it. So the goal is to spend the

least amount of money, quote, write-offs, to make the

most amount of profit. That's the goal. If I'm lucky

enough where I just literally call on my cell phone,

make a sales deal, and make $1 million, my only expense is my

cell phone. I just made $1 million minus my

$30 cell phone bill. That's a pretty good deal. We gotta find some of those.

But if I got a company where I gotta go make $1 million, but I

gotta pay 20 employees, I gotta pay building

expenses, I got machinery, and I go bring in $1 million. And by the time

I get done with my write-offs, I made $50. Which company

would you rather have? The one that made you $50 or the one that made

you $1 million? So having a write-off doesn't mean

that you are good or bad at your job. It just means you want to

have as least of them as possible because you want to be as profitable as

possible. The key we do at Harper is

if you're going to spend money, how can we make it a write-off?

Right? That's the key. It's not, hey, I'm just going to spend some

money over here business-wise and it's probably all write-off. Then I'm going to go over

here and spend money personally. Well, did you know that if

you were to do this in a certain way, this money you're spending personally, if

you do it a certain way to make that related to the business,

that's money you spent that's now a write-off? Okay.

It's important to know the difference between the two. And that's our job is to

help coach and teach people that, hey, something you would

think would be a personal expense because you don't know how to do it and

how the test you have to have to make sure that it becomes a write-off.

People don't know that. We help teach them that. There's nobody's supposed to pay any

more tax than they're supposed to pay. And you don't even, there's no cheating involved.

This is black and white stuff. I know you like the gray, but black and

white stuff, low-hanging fruit that just people just don't know when you have a business,

'cause nobody's ever taught 'em. So our job is to work with the owner, work

with the bookkeeper to say, hey, if you're going to spend these things,

this is how you should do it. And then before you go buy something, if

you're unsure about it, Call us and we'll say,

oh, you know, if you do it this way, I can't write it off. But

if you do it like this, we can take the write-off. Ooh, I just heard

something really important. Good. So it sounds like

I shouldn't bring you a box of bank statements to

look over my bookkeeping. I'm going to join you. On

March 12th, when my tax return's due March 15th. Does that

seem like a great idea to you? No. And this is the

curse of the small business owner that

doesn't understand the value of getting their

bookkeeping, accounting, financial statements complete timely,

and somebody advising you proactively as you go.

You come to me in March and give me everything that you did for last

year, we're dead in the water. We're just typing in data and there's nothing I

can really do for you but in a category. You bring that to me every

month, we can do some cool stuff. So you as a

business owner, if you are doing this once a year, you know, that's on you,

but you don't know any better, right? 'Cause that's what you've been told or that's

what you do. But I'm telling you now, don't do that. Do your books,

close out your books and your financial statements every month. Get yourself a good bookkeeper,

get yourself a bookkeeper and an accountant, or just an accountant and not the

bookkeeper. You may or may not need one. We'll help you evaluate that. and have

somebody like ourselves advise you through that process, you get the best result.

So I feel like I asked this question at one point, but I'm going to

go back and ask it and maybe answer it for you. If

someone's Googling bookkeeping, bookkeeping services, bookkeeping

and accounting, what's the one thing you'd want them to know? Me as an

entrepreneur, I want to know, I need to know that

I cannot wait till March 12th to bring you I joke about

a box, but things aren't quite like that. It's very digital now, but I can't

wait to give you all my information on March 12th and expect the best outcome.

I need to be engaging with someone like yourself a

year prior. I need to make sure that I'm staying in my lane and getting

those things done so that you can, you

meaning Harper CPAs, can use their strategy and not

just be data in and data out is kind of what it sounds like.

It sounds like we've got to have somewhat of a proactive approach in our

foundation of our bookkeeping to get the best result for the best health of the

company. I'm hearing what you're saying. You're saying

I'm awesome at what I do. Is that what you're hearing? You're okay. No,

what I'm, what I'm hearing you say is, as whatever

business you're in as an entrepreneur, you're selling widgets, you're doing whatever,

The pride and passion you take in selling your product or

service, and you know it's going to help your customer

so much. That's what they're paying you for, to do these things. And you know

that you do that so well. If you can put that same

mentality to getting your

bookkeeping, accounting, taxes, if you put that same passion to

that and hire the same professional that you're selling to, hire somebody to do that

for you like us. That will solve

probably 90% of your money problems that you're having at your business.

It is monumental change, exponential change. So

hire that professional like ourselves to come in and help you set that up,

the accounting system, work with your bookkeeper, augment your bookkeeper, come in and

do the accounting, do the advising side. That money you

invest in that, not spend, you're going to invest in it. You're going to get

a bajillion return on that. And you're going to have a really nice looking

company to know what you're doing, what you're doing right, what you're doing wrong. Just

like when you go help your customers and they hire you to do something, you

know, you're making an impact for them. That's why you're selling them what you're selling

them for. So you want to look at this piece as something that's

critical to your business. Sounds great. It does.