This is the first invizibiz client case study blog showing how our clients eliminated Invisible Expenses™ and business headaches by using our virtual bookkeeping services.

The inviziblog case studies will show what life was like before and after our clients started using The Ultimate Paperless Back Office™. Some of the client names have been changed. 

Life Before invizibiz.biz

Client background: 

• SDC Development, Inc. is a 10- year old Maryland S-corporation formed for the purpose of developing commercial real estate for a long-term hold and lease. All buildings are located on a single property. 
• The shareholders of the S-corp are a husband and wife, Tom and Betty, in their 70's enjoying their golden years while looking forward to a mortgage payoff within a couple years.
• The shareholders travel between 3 houses in 2 states including time shares and other travel. They want to spend as much time with family as possible especially their grandchildren.  
• SDC used a part-time on-site bookkeeper for many years. The bookkeeper prepared the books and a traditional CPA firm prepared the taxes. 

How the Business Operated:

The Bookkeeper 

Mary Sue the bookkeeper worked with and saved every document in paper including bank statements, bills, notices, check copies, check remittances, customer invoices, leases and more. No documents were saved as a pdf. 

Smoke Breaks

She made trips to the bank for deposits and to the post office for mail both dropping off and picking up. These time wasting trips provided her with an all important smoke break which she looked forward to during every work visit. 

Print and Mail 

Invoices were created in QuickBooks, printed and mailed to tenants. All tenants would mail a check, the only method of payment offered, to the company office located in the same commercial building as the tenants. 

Personality Bonus

Mary Sue had carte blanche access to the passwords, bank accounts and the QuickBooks desktop file. In addition, she had a management intensive personality for no extra charge. Tom and Betty got disgusted with the situation and wanted to fire her but they were dealing with a classic case of where's my QuickBooks file. Fortunately, Mary Sue had just provided the QuickBooks file to the CPA one month prior so worst case scenario one month of activity would have to be recreated. 

Unbilled Services

The bookkeeper was fired and the same CPA firm starting do the bookkeeping on-site with NO changes or recommendations to ANY of the business processes put in place by the bookkeeper. They did everything the exact same way. SDC and the CPA's agreed on a monthly price of $500 for services. Everything was status quo for a year until the CPA's gave SDC a $6,000 bill for "unbilled services". 

Losing Sleep

There was nothing unbilled because there was a monthly fee agreement. The CPA's claimed they billed for the time accrued which was inconsistent with a monthly service fee. Billing for time and charging a monthly fee are generally mutually exclusive. Tom went ballistic to put it mildly and lost sleep over the matter for a couple weeks. 

The Owners' Life:

Multiple Bank Trips

During the CPA firm days, Betty made multiple bank trips for check deposits as rent checks trickled in over several weeks. As with all real estate, some tenants pay on time and some don't so 3-4 bank trips per month was ordinary. At least the smoking bookkeeper took care of the bank deposits. 

The Travel Delay

Tenant rent checks were deposited 1-2 weeks later or almost 30 days after the due date on occasions when Tom and Betty returned from traveling. Meanwhile a hefty mortgage payment is always due on the first regardless of when rent checks are received or deposited. 

Paper Panic 

Just like clockwork Tom and Betty would be on a trip and suddenly remember an urgent bill or letter needing attention. They suffered from the paper mail blues preventing access to anything in paper form. No access means no resolution until you and the paper are in the same place together.  

The Dreaded Return

Tom and Betty dreaded returning home, fumbling through stacks of paper and dealing with urgent issues. They ended up with anxiety instead of relaxation which is predicable in a paper-based business. This doesn't include the bonus of opening a new pile of mail after a long trip and discovering new things to deal with. 

The Swap

Notice how Tom and Betty paid more for bookkeeping and had more work to do after replacing the high maintenance personality bookkeeper with the CPA firm. They swapped an unworkable situation for a more expensive solution that mirrored Mary Sue's and did less work. 

911

Tom and Betty knew there had to be a better way. They dialed 911 for online bookkeeping services and invizibiz came to the rescue. We made the following observations about SDC Development, Inc., Tom and Betty.  

• Peace of mind was not present with either Mary Sue or the CPA firm.
• There were lots of headaches.
• There were lots of Invisible Expenses™.
• It's an extreme paper intensive business.
• The business wasn't a travel friendly model. 

 Life After invizibiz.biz:

1) Created 2 stealth emails for site logins only i.e. Last Pass, QuickBooks, etc. (Learn why stealth emails are critical here)

2) Set up Last Pass password manager using the stealth emails and moved passwords from paper

3) Migrated QuickBooks desktop to QuickBooks online and added credentials to Last Pass

4) Set up a Bill.com account and synced with QuickBooks for managing vendor and customer payments

5) Created a virtual mailbox with a virtual address

6) Added bank accounts, credit cards and other vendors' site credentials to Last Pass

7) Linked bank accounts to QuickBooks online and Bill.com

8) Set up a Receipt Bank account to virtualize paper receipts and connect the backup docs in the accounting system

9) Created a SDC Development, Inc. business vCard with virtual mailing address, bill.com vendor/customer email and fax

10) Set up a box.com account to save all files electronically 

11) Created a unique business vCard, a cheat of sorts, for all critical business info i.e. virtual address, bill.com email, etc. 

Virtual Printing

Tom wants tenant invoices printed and mailed. Since our virtual bookkeeping service, The Ultimate Paperless Back Office™, doesn't use paper we simply click the mail button in Bill.com to send paper invoices via the mail. Just because other stakeholders still enjoy fumbling with paper and wasting resources doesn't mean we have to participate. Letting vendors and customers dictate how you do business is one of the Classic Invisible Expenses™.

NOTE: Tom spoke to and requested email addresses from all the tenants who stated they did NOT want to get invoices via email. In true invizibiz fashion we reminded Tom that you respectfully explain your new way of doing business to your customers and vendors. Emailing invoices instead of mailing them is only a revolutionary business process when stakeholders initially refuse to change their very bad paper habit. 

De Facto Electronic Deposit

With Bill.com both invoices and epayments invitations can be sent via email. In the meantime, tenants are still paying by paper check, but paper check deposit fumbling has been eliminated. We gave SDC's bank address to the tenants as the new mailing address.

ZERO Time

Even though the tenants waste time and resources with paper checks invizibiz always finds a way to eliminate client waste. The time to manage this has been reduced from 3-4 bank trips and 3-4 hours to month to ZERO time. The bank gets tenant checks and deposits them into SDC's bank account. Betty NO longer does the following:

1. Drive to the office
2. Open the mail 
3. Recycle envelopes and letters
4. Wonder what to do with paper bills
5. Fill out deposit slips
6. Drive to the bank
7. Makes check deposits
8. Drive back to the office
9. Wonder what to do with paper deposit slips

Realization

Tom finally realized the power of processes stating he believed the tenants would embrace invoice emails and therefore eventually accept an epayments invitation to pay via ACH through bill.com. This would further streamline accounts receivable management by:

• Eliminating the de facto electronic deposit method
• Cutting down the "checks in the mail" time delay from 7+ days to 1-2 days. 
• Automatically matching payments with invoices
• Eliminating manual deposit postings in QuickBooks

Magical Virtual Mailbox

SDC Development, Inc. does business with national vendors such as electrical and plumbing supply houses. Bigger businesses are not immune from bad paper habits and their size prohibits some of them from sending invoices by email. If they send paper invoices to thousands of customers, they won't make an exception for SDC. We simply give them SDC's new virtual address and all paper invoices become magically available online as a pdf. The Ultimate Paperless Back Office™ strikes again. 

Old mailing address:

SDC Development, Inc. 

345 Main Street

Smalltown, MD 67890

New mailing address:

SDC Development, Inc. 

678 Chestnut Street

Suite 34567

Smalltown, MD 67890

Commingling Violation 

Tom used his personal credit card for both personal and business purchases. Commingling transactions is one of the most egregious violations in business because it triples the accounting work. Tom stopped the madness by getting a business debit card only for business purchases.  

Paperless

We couldn’t have a case study without mentioning all files are now saved as a pdf to a shared box.com account. As with everything invizibiz all documents (and now all components of SDC business processes) are accessible by Tom, Betty and invizibiz.

Dashboard

The heart of the invizibiz.biz model provides the same transparency and access to both Tom & Betty and invizibiz. The Last Pass password manager provides a business dashboard for SDC Development, Inc. so the right people have access to the right stuff. 

Rent Elimination 

As with many bad habits in business, SDC Development, Inc. was renting an office space in one the buildings they sold in the prior year because that's all Tom had known in decades of being in business. Tom and Betty cleaned up the paper chaos during the invizibiz transition process and suddenly realized they didn't need a $600 per month office space. The Ultimate Paperless Back Office™ by invizibiz.biz eliminated all of the old paper processes and the $600 office space which already pays for the $497 invizibiz monthly subscription. Learn how virtual bookkeeping services eliminate headaches and get started with invizibiz today.