Before we do that, I have a big bonus announcement. This is the one that I’ve been waiting for this whole time. The announcement is that the paperwork packets are ready to go. You can purchase them. You can download them. They are all yours. I’ve been working on these packets for months and they are finally available. Today is the first day that they’re available. Podcast listeners get an exclusive, I love that word, exclusive access to the paperwork packets before I push it out to my email list or Facebook group or anything like that.
These packets, there are three choices and you can also get a bundle that has all of them. There’s a report template [00:01:00] packet which has child and adult report template. There’s an administrative packet which has intake forms, disclosure statements, a testing preparation checklist to give clients, and all sorts of other documents. There’s also, and this is the best one, a training packet. The training packet primarily consists of the psychometrist training manual that we use in our practice. It’s got tons of documents in there. There’s a big-picture training checklist. There’s a testing day checklist for how to work through each of the tests and what order to go in. And then there are individual training documents for each of the tests that we administer. There’s tons of good info in there.
Like I said, podcast listeners have first access to all of this. So you can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/paperwork [00:02:00] and check out all those options. And if you enter the code “podcast” at checkout, you can get 20% off any packet or bundle. Happy to offer that to y’all first before anybody else has access.
Let’s get into accounting and how that can be helpful.
All right, here we are talking about things that can help level up your business. This is the idea with the Summer Sprint series. If you haven’t listened to the previous Summer Sprints, you can go back. In the past three episodes, I have done quick tips around building your business; little things that you can address to level up a little bit. I’m going to wrap up the [00:03:00] Summer Sprint series today with a little bit of talking about accounting.
I recently got a question in the Facebook group or a comment more than anything about wondering how people have time to do accounting and I thought, okay, that’s probably nice to talk about that.
I think accounting is one of those things that gets built up in our minds and we think, hey, this is going to take tons of time or going to be lots of effort on my part, and so on and so forth. I want to maybe dispel that myth.
At this point, my accounting is pretty streamlined. I don’t have a bookkeeper like a lot of folks do. I think that they can be helpful, but for me, accounting is pretty simple.
The first piece of this is that I think an accountant is important especially if you do any sort of payroll. If you are classified as an S corp [00:04:00] versus a sole proprietor or an LLC or PLLC, I think an accountant can help with that.
Accountants, granted, can be somewhat expensive, but I think it’s helpful and useful. My accountant, when I switched over to being an S corp, did all of the paperwork required for that and did my business taxes. I think it came out to about $750 for the year. So not terrible by any means and the money that you will save by being classified the right way and making sure your taxes are done correctly is much more than that.
So, first off, I would say find an accountant. You can ask around with your mental health colleagues. You can also look around in your town for an accountant that specializes in small business, or hopefully, someone who specializes in medical practices. That’s how I found my accountant. He’s someone who [00:05:00] specializes in dental practices, small medical practices, and then, of course, mental health practices.
So check that out. I think it is worthwhile to find an accountant. The time involved with this is not too much. Usually, you can do a get-to-know-you meeting or a consultation. That might be a half hour or an hour. And then from there, that person will guide you on how to prepare your taxes as best you can.
That segues into, well, and before I jump into the segue, once you hand over your taxes, then you don’t have to do too much after that. So the time commitment is relatively low. I do meet with my accountant twice a year as things are going along just to make sure that we’re on track and doing some forecasting with the finances and trying to figure out if I need to change anything. I’m considering offering health insurance. [00:06:00] So we need to talk about that. So that’s an example of something that would come up in our intermittent meetings, but otherwise, not a huge time commitment on your part.
Back to the segue to preparing your taxes. I think that even if you are a very small practice, it can be helpful to use some type of accounting software to keep track of things. If you want to keep it free, I think that wave accounting is great. It’s free and does a good job. I think it’s fine. I know a lot of people even with some of the larger practices that use Wave. It’ll get the job done. That’s for sure.
Two years ago, I upgraded to QuickBooks Online. Still relatively cheap. I think it’s $10 a month. I like QuickBooks Online because it seems to sync with everything. [00:07:00] It’s pretty, makes nice graphs, and it keeps track of all the expenses well. It’s easy to integrate with my accountant so you can add that person as a user on your account. You can send information to him and his team. There are a lot of benefits to QuickBooks.
You might say, well, it doesn’t matter. I can do my taxes myself. That’s totally fine. I did my taxes myself for many years. I stopped when we converted to an S Corp and I had payroll to keep track of and all sorts of other things. But even if you are that kind of person, I think QuickBooks gives you some really good info accessibly. You can go in and with just two clicks, you can compare your income month to month, quarter to quarter, year to year. Your expenses likewise.
It gives [00:08:00] you a lot of really good data so you can know, am I spending more than I did last year? Am I making more money? Do I have room to hire? Some folks like some of the folks we talked about back in summer sprint #3, the last episode. I think it gives you really good information right in front of your eyes. You don’t have to do too much work to find it. So if nothing else, that’s invaluable.
So if you want to, I would say, take it to the next level, then you can even look at more nuanced accounting methods. The method that I have gotten into that I’ve mentioned here is the profit-first method. Profit First is a book. Mike Michalowicz, I believe is the author. Profit First has been super helpful for me in reshaping how I think about spending in the business. His whole idea is that [00:09:00] he flips around the formula that your profit equals your income minus your expenses.
Too often, we end up paying ourselves out of whatever’s left after we pay all our expenses. I think that’s pretty traditional for accounting. But what he says is that your profit should come first. So you take out the profit first and then you use whatever is left over to pay your expenses instead of the other way around.
There’s a lot more detail to get into with that. I’m definitely not going to do that here. The book is great. It’s easy to read. He gives a lot of very helpful formulas. He walks you through the whole process of how to figure out what you can pay yourself, what you need to budget for expenses, and so on and so forth. So I would recommend checking that out. And again, that’s one thing that led me to[00:10:00] to employ some accounting software is so I could get the numbers that I needed to drill down in a profit first. So it all dovetails.
Just to recap a little bit, these are very short recaps. There’s not a whole lot of information here, but it’s all important. I think you need an accountant. Look around, ask your colleagues, and find a mental health-specific accountant or at least a small medical practice accountant.
You need accounting software. Even if you’re a do-it-yourself kind of person, accounting software can help out and keep things straight, and it will make things infinitely easier at the end of the year, unless you are already keeping some homemade elaborate spreadsheet or something.
Third, if you want to level it up, consider a pretty nuanced budgeting system like profit first or another means of accounting where you’re tracking and being [00:11:00] aware of where your money’s going and where you want it to go.
All right, y’all. Thank you so much for listening. As always, if you enjoy this little Summer Sprint series, please find a way to let me know. Shoot me an email, at jeremy@thetestingpsychologist.com or leave a comment on one of the episode web pages or in the Facebook group if you’re in the Facebook group. We’d love to hear what you all think about this sprint series concept and would be happy to do more if these are helpful.
I haven’t asked in a while, but if you have a minute, you can subscribe, and rate, and if you have two minutes, you could leave a review for the podcast if you find it helpful. That is one of the best ways to let me know and help the podcast get in front of more folks in iTunes and all the other places that the people get podcasts. So thank you.
And of course, [00:12:00] a little call back to the paperwork packets. Those are available. We’ve got a report template packet, there’s an admin packet, and then there is a training packet. Those are all available, like I said, only to podcast listeners right at this point. This episode should go out on June 11th and podcast listeners will get a full week of access before I send it out to my email list, Facebook group, or anything like that. You can go to thetestingpsychologist.com/paperwork and if you enter the code “podcast” during checkout, you will get 20% off anything that you have purchased at that point. So hope that you check those out. Give me some feedback. Let me know if they’re helpful and I’ll keep working on more products to send out.
[00:13:00] Thank you all as always. I hope the summer is going well. I will be back with you sooner than later.All right. Take care.