Bookkeeping by Alli, LLC

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Bookkeeping by Alli, LLC I help business owners reclaim time and increase profits through accurate and timely financial data. Contact me for a free review of your books!

Spend more time building your business or enjoying life by hiring a bookkeeper. With accurate financial data, you can make sensible decisions and see at a glance where your money is going and where you may be leaving money on the table. But bookkeeping is its own skillset, and not one that is every business owner’s greatest strength. If you already work in QuickBooks Online, I can clean up your books and ensure you are current and ready for the year ahead. If you're new to QuickBooks Online, I can get you all set up so we can get to categorizing. In all cases, I provide ongoing monthly financial reporting so you always have a current picture of the financial health of your business. A good bookkeeper saves you an average of 10 hours per month. That's 120 hours per year to put toward what matters most to you – whether that’s growing your business or spending more time with your family. Entrusting your bookkeeping to me can help you realize the following benefits:

- Have all transactions categorized so you can see exactly where your business is most profitable, where there is room for growth, and where your money is going each month;
- Receive monthly reports so you can make sound, timely decisions based on current data for your business;
- Have a clean set of books to give to your tax preparer, which can help you realize tax savings;
- Avoid late fees and penalties for missed deadlines;
- Manage payroll with ease, knowing that an expert is ensuring proper calculations of wages and deductions. I began my professional career as an office assistant at an estate planning law office, doing bookkeeping, payroll, and client services, before taking an administrative role at the University of Iowa. After 13 years as a department administrator, I decided to return to bookkeeping to use my skills in a different way while gaining more flexibility to spend time with my husband and three children. I would be thrilled to apply my love of organizing and categorizing to your financial data so you can focus your time and energy where it matters most to you. Contact me now for a free evaluation of your books!

10/06/2026

Recently, I lost a prospect because I live abroad.

Yeah, I was disappointed.

Everything seemed like a great fit. For once, I would be inheriting pristine books, and there was even an opportunity for some overlap with the retiring bookkeeper. It felt like one of those rare situations where everything lined up beautifully.

But the prospect is in financial services, and ultimately their broker said they couldn’t engage someone who lives outside the U.S.

So… not a fit.

There are lots of reasons a prospect might not be a good fit for your business. Sometimes it’s the client’s needs. Sometimes it’s your capacity. Sometimes it’s pricing, communication style, industry, or the services they need.

And sometimes, for me, it’s the fact that I’m living abroad.

Would I give up this adventure with my family for the sake of one additional monthly bookkeeping client?

Absolutely not.

It’s actually a good reminder of why transparency matters so much.

I’m very upfront with prospects about where I live. I’d much rather find out early that there’s a dealbreaker than get deep into the sales process, build a relationship, make plans—and then discover that we can’t actually work together.

Not every prospect is meant to become a client.

The real skill is recognizing the misalignment early, saying it out loud, and respecting the boundary without apology.

Clarity upfront saves everyone time—and protects the kind of work and life you actually want to have.

09/29/2026

A day in my Georgian life 🇬🇪

People sometimes ask what working remotely from Georgia actually looks like.

Really, it's a lot like working from anywhere else—with a few fun differences.

My typical weekday looks something like this:

☀️ Somewhere between 6–7 AM: Wake up with the toddler. Feed him, make coffee and breakfast, say my prayers, and squeeze in a quick workout.

🐕 Around 8: Take the dog for a walk.

📚 9 AM–12 PM: Homeschool my kids.

🥗 12–1 PM: Lunch, then get the toddler down for his nap.

💻 1–4 PM: Bookkeeping time. This is my main focused work block.

🌊 4–6 PM: Outdoor family time. We might head down to the beach, go to the park, rollerblade, or just wander around town.

🍽️ 6–8 PM: Dinner and more family time—or, because I'm working with clients in the U.S., sometimes client meetings. My evening is their morning.

🌙 Then it's the bedtime shuffle: toddler to bed, dog out for another walk, big kids to bed.

And if I still have a little work left to do, I'll spend another hour catching up before calling it a night.

It's definitely not a traditional 9-to-5.

But that's one of the things I love about running my own bookkeeping business. I get to build my work around my family rather than trying to fit my family around my work.

And right now, that means doing bookkeeping from Georgia while raising and homeschooling three kids—with the Black Sea just a short walk away.

Not a bad office view. 😊

09/22/2026

One of the things I've learned the hard way in my bookkeeping business is that clear communication about pricing and scope is actually part of doing good work.

My very first proposal included a discounted cleanup fee because I was assuming the client would also hire me for ongoing bookkeeping.

They didn't. 😅

They wanted the cleanup and nothing else, which meant I ended up doing a substantial amount of work for less than I would have charged if I'd been clearer about the terms of the discount.

I chalked that one up to experience.

And then I did it again. 😂

A little later, I had a proposal where the client was deciding whether to keep a particular service in-house or have me take it over. I hadn't explicitly said that outsourcing it to me would increase the monthly fee.

So naturally, they said, "Yes, we'd like you to do that."

And I couldn't exactly come back afterward with, "Oh, by the way, that costs extra."

The communication failure was mine, so I ate that one too.

I've gotten a LOT better at this.

My recent proposals include a pricing grid that shows exactly how the price changes depending on what the client wants me to handle, what they want to keep in-house, and whether they're hiring me for cleanup only or ongoing bookkeeping.

No assumptions. No hoping we'll figure it out later. No awkward conversations halfway through an engagement because we had different ideas about what was included.

And honestly, I think this is a lesson that applies to a lot more than bookkeeping:

If the price changes depending on what someone chooses, they should be able to see that difference before they say yes.

It can feel awkward to spell everything out. Sometimes you worry you're being too particular or making the proposal unnecessarily complicated.

But clarity isn't being difficult.

Clarity is part of the service.

09/15/2026

Cleanup work is fun.

There’s something genuinely satisfying about taking a set of books that are a complete mess and turning them into something that actually makes sense. I love the detective work, the problem-solving, and that glorious moment when everything finally reconciles.

But if I’m being honest… I’m also really looking forward to the day when my monthly recurring revenue is nice and steady, everyone’s books are ticking along smoothly, and there are no mysterious transactions from 18 months ago waiting for me to untangle. 😂

There’s a particular kind of business-owner peace that comes from knowing exactly what’s coming in each month and knowing your clients’ books are being maintained consistently.

So yes, give me the cleanups for now. I’ll happily solve the mysteries.

But by next year? I’d really like to be bored. 😆

09/08/2026

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what I actually want from my business.

It’s really easy, especially when you spend a lot of time around other small-business owners online, to get caught up in the numbers. There are bookkeeping influencers constantly talking about hitting $250k, $500k, adding employees, building teams, scaling, etc. And sometimes I catch myself thinking, Am I not thinking big enough? Should my goals be higher?

But then I stop and think about why I started my business in the first place.

I want to make a good living.

I want our family to be comfortable.

But I also want to have time with my kids. I want to be able to take a Tuesday afternoon off if we want to go somewhere. I don’t want to spend 40+ hours a week working just so I can turn around and use that money to pay someone else to do the things I didn’t have time to do.

So I’m starting to think that maybe $120k–$150k in annual revenue is actually a pretty ambitious goal for the life I want.

If I can get there while working 15–20 hours a week, with clients I enjoy, enough financial cushion to breathe, and plenty of time for my family, why would I automatically need to keep pushing for $250k?

Maybe someday I’ll decide I want to build a bigger business. And that’s fine. But I don’t want “bigger” to become the goal just because that’s what everyone online seems to be measuring.

There is a point where you’re no longer building the life you want.

You’re just building a bigger business.

And those aren’t necessarily the same thing.

My goal isn’t to see how big I can make my business.

My goal is to make it just big enough.

09/01/2026

I finally bit the bullet and switched to Teams.

I have been a Zoom diehard since my University of Iowa days. It was the first video conferencing platform I used, so it’s the one I got comfortable with. And I hated the Teams layout.

But since starting my own business, I haven’t been able to justify paying for Zoom, which meant I was stuck with 40-minute meetings.

For a while, I had a workaround. When Zoom kicked us out at 40 minutes, everyone could just click the meeting link again and we’d start a new meeting.

It was annoying, but it worked.

Until my last meeting.

At the 40-minute mark, Zoom kicked us out, as usual. I told everyone to click the link again—and then Zoom told me, the host, that I had to wait NINE MINUTES before I could start another meeting.

😂

Okay, fine. You win. I’ll stop using your platform.

I’m already paying for Microsoft anyway. I’ve just been stubbornly refusing to use Teams because I didn’t like it.

So here I am, officially on Team Teams.

And honestly? I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

What technology have you finally given in and adopted after resisting it forever?

08/25/2026

A bookkeeping mystery turned into an unexpected side quest this week. 🐉🗡️

The original mission: figure out why a Square clearing account had a suspiciously large balance.

Simple enough, right?

I started digging. I traced deposits, reviewed transactions, and pulled Square Sales Summary reports to compare everything against the journal entries I had recorded.

And then…

🎵 Dun dun dun… 🎵

The side quest appeared.

The historical Square journal entries didn’t seem to match the freshly pulled reports. Cue the moment every bookkeeper knows:

“Wait. Did I mess something up?” 😳

So I did what bookkeepers do best: followed the trail.

And the culprit was something I absolutely did not expect…

My computer’s time zone. 🤦‍♀️

Since moving to Georgia, my computer had switched from Central Time to my local time zone. Apparently, even computers need a little “where in the world are we?” adjustment when you move across an ocean.

Once I fixed that, the reports lined up again. The side quest actually proved that the journal entries were correct!

Back to the original mission: the large clearing account balance was caused by a few deposits that had accidentally been categorized directly to income instead of flowing through Square clearing.

Mystery solved. Books cleaned up. Detective hat retired… until the next accounting adventure. 🕵️‍♀️

This is one of the reasons I love bookkeeping. It’s not just entering numbers — it’s investigating, asking questions, and figuring out what the numbers are trying to tell you.

(And yes, sometimes the answer is “check your computer settings.” 😂)

08/19/2026

A conversation with a client has been on my mind lately.

We're working through a pretty complicated bookkeeping cleanup together, and I joked, "Don't worry—we're making good progress. Pretty soon we'll be in maintenance mode, and you won't have to dread my phone calls anymore."

He laughed and said,

"I only dread your phone calls because this stuff makes me feel so stupid."

I don't think he realized how much that sentence stuck with me.

Because here's the thing...

I've never once looked at a client's books and thought, "Wow, this person is dumb."

What I usually see is someone who's been busy running a business.

Someone who's been taking care of customers, managing employees, solving problems, putting out fires, and trying to keep everything moving.

Bookkeeping is just one of the many hats a business owner wears.

Some people enjoy it.

Some people tolerate it.

And some people's talents simply lie elsewhere.

That's okay.

I don't know how to repair a furnace or rewire a house. I don't know how to design a logo or build a website. I happily call someone whose talents lie in those areas.

Bookkeeping happens to be one of my talents.

So if your books have gotten behind or become more complicated than you expected, please don't let embarrassment keep you from asking for help.

My goal isn't to make anyone feel bad about where they are.

It's to help them get to a place where they can stop worrying about it.

And honestly, that's one of my favorite parts of this job.

08/12/2026

Confession:

I'm a bookkeeper who never really liked math. 😄

Growing up, my favorite subjects were English literature and foreign languages. I was the kid who wanted to read novels and figure out grammar rules in a new language.

So how did I end up becoming a bookkeeper?

It took me a long time to realize that what I love isn't numbers.

It's patterns.

That's what fascinated me about languages. At first they seem full of random rules, but eventually you realize there's a beautiful logic underneath. Once you see the pattern, everything starts to make sense.

I loved the same thing about literature—seeing themes emerge and making connections that weren't obvious at first.

Bookkeeping turns out to be exactly the same.

When an account doesn't reconcile or a balance sheet looks strange, I don't see a bunch of numbers.

I see a puzzle.

There's a reason the numbers don't make sense. There's a pattern hiding underneath them, and I genuinely enjoy finding it.

Once you understand the pattern, the numbers tell the story of the business.

So no, I don't actually love numbers.

I love bringing order to chaos.

The numbers are just the language.

First day working in Georgia! The kitchen table is a temporary work area, as we’re still working out a few kinks with th...
08/04/2026

First day working in Georgia! The kitchen table is a temporary work area, as we’re still working out a few kinks with the WiFi to get it to catch reliably in my office space down the hall. Happy that all other tech seems to be working as expected and it’s business as usual for my clients.

Do I look a little jet lagged still? 🤪

Address

Iowa City, IA

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 3pm
Tuesday 9am - 3pm
Wednesday 9am - 3pm
Thursday 9am - 3pm
Friday 9am - 3pm

Telephone

(319)3182321

Website

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