Case Study - The Electician (Sparky)

I met with a local sparky who had previously worked in a different industry and retrained to become an electrician. He’d set up his bookkeeping himself using QuickBooks and got in touch initially to make sure everything was set up correctly. He also wanted a quick overview of how to use the system properly.

During our first meeting, we kept things simple and just went over the basics.

When you’ve never had to record things like this before, it can be a bit of an overload trying to take in too much at once. He planned to get back in touch if he had any issues or further questions about using the software.

A little while later, around tax return time, he reached out again, having run into a bit of a mess. It turned out he had accidentally signed up for two different QuickBook subscriptions. One was set up directly with QuickBooks, and the other was created when he downloaded the app via his iPhone and subscribed through his Apple account. So, he was paying twice for two different versions of the software!

When we’d first met, we made sure I had access to one of the subscriptions so I could easily jump in if he needed help. At our second meeting, we looked at how he was recording transactions using the bank feed and the mobile app. He’d been using the QuickBooks app on his phone to capture receipts, but we quickly realised that these were going into the version I didn’t have access to. Meanwhile, the version I did have access to only had a few transactions from the bank feed, but those had mostly been incorrectly categorised, landing in “Uncategorised Expense.”

We got the subscriptions sorted out, cancelling the duplicate and keeping the one I could access to make ongoing support easier. His wife was already helping by raising invoices and following up on payments from clients, which was a big help.

We agreed to fix the issues in the system so that we could get the tax return submitted on time. As he’s not VAT registered, it made the process simpler. He provided all his receipts, which we uploaded into the system to ensure everything was recorded properly.

Once the information was ready, we met up again to review everything together and submitted the tax return.

I then suggested using some third-party software, namely Dext, to help streamline the process of capturing receipts and invoices. Dext can handle both sales and purchase documents and links directly with QuickBooks, making things much more efficient.

We took care of the setup for him. Now, many of his receipts automatically flow into QuickBooks via Dext, and we match them up with transactions coming in through the bank feed. He also uploads sales invoices to Dext when they go out, and we make sure the CIS portion is correctly recorded and matched to incoming payments.

This setup has saved him a huge amount of time and stress, especially as he tends to work long days and often weekends.

It’s taken away the last-minute panic around tax returns and means that although he’s still involved with his bookkeeping, we’re in the background keeping everything running smoothly and efficiently.