We recently connected with Elizabeth Tkachuck and have shared our conversation below.

Elizabeth, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today To kick things off, we’d love to hear about things you or your brand do that diverge from the industry standard.

I’d like to approach this topic as if there are two different standards: a corporate standard and an industry standard. When I first started working with small businesses, I was under the impression accounting was being done in a manner similar to the way I had been doing in the corporate world. A naive assumption, as so it turned out.

Corporate companies enter transactions on an audit ready level. There is always backup documentation for every transaction that’s entered. When I started this business that’s all I knew and how I ran my firm. It was strange to me many small businesses didn’t do things this way, due to lack of time, resources, and/or awareness. As I obtained more clients I continued to encourage and provide this standard to our clients to keep their books organized with backup documentation.

Fast forward to the last year, many of our more recent clients that have hired us have used other firms, larger firms, or firms that specialized in taxes. One particular situation was the day-to-day transactions were being miscategorized and were inconsistently categorized in different categories, which if hadn’t been caught, could’ve cost the client a large amount in additional tax liability. I cannot share details, due to confidentiality reasons, however I earned my keep the day I made our client aware of that error. Although transnational entry is completely fine and typical, so I have found, I feel it does the business owner an extreme disservice. All reasoning aside, from an accountant perspective, to be able to analyze where money is being spent and where they can grow, along with providing transactions with burden of proof, is 100% worth it.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I’ve been in the accounting industry, in one way or another, for 23 years. I have my bachelor’s degree in accounting, and I’ve worked in every accounting related department most companies have in the corporate world, from data entry to financial reporting, and everything in between.

I started working for small businesses on the side to earn extra money allowing me the flexibility to work around my full-time job and my family life. I discovered my passion for working side by side with small business owners and helping them with their accounting needs was very rewarding and the direction I wanted to force my career on.

Our biggest focus is providing transparent bookkeeping and accounting services to our clients. Document organization, financial consulting and analysis etc. Each of our clients have their own needs, are in different industries, and we combine their way of doing things with our process and procedures to create a cohesive workflow.

Our goal is to give our clients peace of mind. Take a task off their plate and make tax season less stressful. Since we provide services all year long, it takes the tax time “shoe box” out of the equation in most circumstances.

What’s been the best source of new clients for you?

Referrals have been the best source of new clients for us. About 95% of our clientele, past and present, have all been referrals from other clients or other sources we network with. Thank goodness, since marketing is not my strong suite.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start your business?

My initial funding was derived from good old-fashioned savings and a LOT of discipline. I quit my corporate job in early 2019, I had been working part-time with small businesses for almost 4 years at this point. I had a financial goal in mind, initially, that I wanted to reach and once that was accomplished, it was like the universe nudged me and said, “it’s time to make a decision”. I was working a lot between my full-time and part-time job. It started to impact my quality of life, because most of my free time was spent working. I remember sitting in front of my computer, late at night, probably on a weekend, and decided to make a plan. Once I saved enough to live off of for a 6-month period, I would quit, one or the other. From that moment forward, every penny of my profit went into savings. I had 4 clients when I opened my door full-time and don’t regret my old-fashioned ways one bit.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.fullcircleacctg.com
• Instagram: @fullcirclebookkeeping

Image Credits
Laeti Photography LLC