Who is Backyard Bookkeeper?

It’s been a long time since last we introduced ourselves.

When you start your business, you are in the habit of telling your story all the time to new connections, prospective clients, and so on. But when you have been in business for 13 years, you often forget to tell your story, and when someone asks you for your story at a networking event, you are stunned by it. So this blog post is a refresher for our readers, clients, and prospective clients about who Backyard Bookkeeper is.

Backyard Bookkeeper was established in 2008 when at the time, Julie DeLong, one of our founders, was more in love with QuickBooks than Facebook, which was up and coming at the time. Her best friend Alex, who is a European badass entrepreneur, said to her, “Hey, you are so obsessed with bookkeeping; why don’t you take on some clients as a contractor, and let’s see if we can turn this into a business?” Alex, our other founder, has always been obsessed with building and creating things to help others.  As you could probably tell, she also has a knack for business and connecting people, so it was a no-brainer that she would do the networking and the business development, while Julie would tackle the accounting field and learn as much as possible about how to help entrepreneurs with their bookkeeping needs.

After so many years in business and learning so much about different industries, the most important job that we have at Backyard Bookkeeper is to educate young entrepreneurs and more experienced business owners that bookkeeping is NOT just data entry. Bookkeeping is the core of good financial health. We have seen so many businesses fail because of a simple mistake: they started making money but didn’t keep good track of where their money went. And voila, they woke up to a nightmare, a very avoidable nightmare.

In 13 years of business, we have learned that the best way to avoid those nightmares is to make your bookkeeper your best friend. Yes, your CPA, who you only see once a year, can save you a lot on taxes, but only if the data you provide them with is accurate. A good bookkeeper won’t just enter your data and organize it but will talk to you about it, warn you if they see something out of ordinary, and provide you with statements that show how healthy your business is. Think of it this way: your vision and your passion are the “heart” of your business, but without a “brain” – in other words, the data and numbers – your business won’t and can’t function well.

And this why we are not just bookkeepers at Backyard Bookkeeper; we want to become your best silent partner in your business. This is why there is no client too small for us because we love seeing our clients grow. We often get the question: You are such a big and reputable company, why don’t you charge more, and why don’t you go for bigger fish? Why are you fishing in the pond when you could fish in the sea?

The answer is straightforward. Everyone wants to catch big fish, but big fish are limited in numbers, while the small fish have plenty of room to grow, and if we are lucky and good at what we do, the small fish will take us with them as they grow.  On top of that, we are a women-owned business with hearts of gold and we have no intention of growing faster than we can run; our mission is to build jobs and a culture where our employees are first, their families are second, and our business is third. We were one of the first businesses in Utah to let our employees work remotely from home as early as 2009, and we never even considered giving up our family-oriented culture for the prospect of “big fish” clients. Do not misunderstand; we love big clients and we have quite a lot of big names working with us, yet we will never say no to a small project because we love helping our clients grow most of all.

We are who we are; we love what we do and get excited when we can forge new connections and new friendships with our clients. But most importantly, we are here to help, so let someone else do the dirty work, and you focus on growing!