In my three years of experience at Shay CPA, I’ve worked with many different tech companies and founders, from newly formed start-up companies to large publicly traded corporations. Working with these different companies allowed me to observe and learn about the tech business world and how they function financially in the accounting aspect.
With a newly formed start-up company, we sometimes assist with setting up Quickbooks Online accounts to help get things started. And starting from here, as we help maintain the books on a timely basis, I get to observe how the company is impacted by each of the founder’s decision-making. Whether it’s fundraising, merging or selling the company, or acquiring another company, I can learn how these decisions impact the companies’ financials and how to proceed in action in the accounting manner.
Working with a larger company can sometimes be challenging. I could be dealing with a large number of transactions and more complexity when working on bookkeeping. This would call for more caution and sometimes consumes more time as I would need to do more cross-checking and analysis to make sure things are done right. But as time goes on and as a team, we can find other ways to be more efficient and accurate at the same time.
Each of the tech companies I’ve worked with is unique and, at the same time, similar to each other. Sometimes I would have to do research to help our clients with their unique situation, and sometimes I can apply what I’ve learned from one company to another in a similar manner. The maintenance of each company’s books is the same concept. While the main process of maintaining books is similar, some companies may require a unique workflow. One may require the usage of certain Quickbooks functions that others rarely use, a third-party software, or require certain calculations to be done on an excel worksheet.
One thing I find quite helpful when working with all these different tech companies is by making a breakdown procedure. This is something that Akshay has recommended to me, and then I’ve also recommended it to my other colleagues. It is a detailed, step-by-step breakdown of the workflow that we do for each of the companies. Not only can it help us make sure we don’t miss anything when working on bookkeeping, but it can also act as guidance when another person is assigned to work on the company. For clients with a larger workflow, we also create a monthly checklist to make sure we don’t miss anything.
It is quite interesting learning about each tech company, what they do, how they work, and how they grow. Even though it’s been three years working with many different tech companies, I find myself still learning new things almost every day.
Written by Grace Tsou