Patrice Diana is a QuickBooks ProAdvisor with over 20 years of bookkeeping experience. Patrice’s clients are entrepreneurial-minded business owners who are juggling many things. Serving these clients across state lines requires communication, collaboration, approvals, and of course, accurate bookkeeping. Patrice was frustrated by the status quo of mainstream accounts payable tools (she had been using BILL) because simple tasks were taking 3-4 hours per week.

Now, thanks to MakersHub, Patrice is completing these same accounts payable tasks in less than 30 minutes. She has more time to spend on higher-level tasks for clients and enjoys rather than dreads bill processing. Instead of manual data entry, tedious workarounds, and double updating, Patrice can smoothly and easily get accurate bill records into QuickBooks in seconds. MakersHub has a two-way integration, which means updates in QuickBooks are reflected in both systems. Patrice discovered other key features that saved time and improved accuracy - keep reading for the full story.

91 bills

in 30 minutes

Recently, I entered 91 bills in 30 minutes. Now I don’t dread my Tuesdays, I don’t even worry about it.

Patrice’s journey to bookkeeping

Patrice has a diverse professional background, from waiting tables to being a paralegal and then running her own businesses. Bookkeeping went from being part-time to her main focus in 2010. Many of Patrice’s clients are hands-on, service-oriented businesses working with residential homes. Electricians, plumbers, landscapers, construction, etc. Patrice has a special affinity for this sector, perhaps because she used to work as an electrician in her 20s. ‘I was interested in learning the trade, I called every electrician in the phone book but none of them wanted to take on a girl. Finally, someone gave me a chance and I ended up being his main worker for years.’ 

This tenacity and ‘can do’ attitude reflects Patrice’s character and her holistic approach to working with clients. Patrice’s personality is different than what most people expect of bookkeepers: She has a great sense of humor, positive outlook, and is a tireless cheerleader for her clients. The most satisfying aspect of the job for Patrice is seeing her clients succeed and their bank accounts grow. It’s clear just how much her clients love her from her testimonials page.

Helping business owners succeed

Patrice describes her clients as independent, entrepreneurial, and always managing many things at once. ‘They want to provide the best services, reliably make payroll, save some money, and of course, grow their business’. Patrice likens her role to tidying up, ‘I make sure everything is in the right place’. Her contributions go beyond mere record keeping, however.

• Day-to-day bookkeeping: Getting everything into the books accurately - bills to be paid, bills that were paid, receipts, and coding costs to the right customer or job.

• Eagle-eye overview of the books: Making sure no detail is missed, all accounts are linked, no missed filings, etc.

• Business co-pilot: Watching business drivers like costs of goods, and bringing changes to the client’s attention.

“As business owners, my clients are juggling so many things. My job is to make sure the books are accurate, giving them better visibility.”

Patrice Diana

QuickBooks Pro Advisor

The challenge: Staying on top of accounts payable 

In order to fulfill her co-pilot role, Patrice needs an accounts payable tool to work in conjunction with QuickBooks. Having used both BILL (bill.com) and HubDoc in the past, Patrice is no stranger to the landscape. Some of her requirements for an accounts payable tool: 

• Enhances visibility of bills (before they have been processed or approved) and a place to collaborate between multiple users.

• Adds context to the bill i.e. is it valid and good to pay, and information on where items and expenses should be coded to.

• Removes manual data entry, making it faster to get the bill details into the system.Seamlessly integrates with the accounting system, with no double updating.

Despite having used some of the biggest names available, Patrice remained unsatisfied by the state of the industry. No tools were able to check all these boxes, and Patrice considered the software clunky and antiquated.

The solution: MakersHub

“MakersHub can do everything more accurately, faster, and it’s more intuitive. There used to be lots of little pain points, I don’t have any of that now, I don’t feel like I have to climb a steep hill every week to get the work done.”

Patrice Diana

QuickBooks Pro Advisor

Patrice now completes AP tasks in a quarter of the time, and has moved several of her clients away from BILL to MakersHub. Instead of a couple of hours, she now completes AP tasks in 30 minutes. ‘If I had to go back and use BILL again it would be so painful, I’ve seen how much faster things can be with MakersHub.’ She describes her biggest frustrations with BILL as double updating, difficult to mark bills as paid, and limited data capture from the bill. ‘After uploading an expense into bill.com, I had to go back and mark what was paid already, and if it was done on the QuickBooks side, I had to go back and update bill.com as they don’t have 2-way sync.’

“I think the 2-way sync is a huge benefit of MakersHub, I don’t have to worry about it, if a bill is paid in QuickBooks then MakersHub will update.”

Patrice Diana

QuickBooks Pro Advisor

The comparison: MakersHub vs. BILL

Patrice’s overview of the MakersHub features that made the biggest differences to her.

“These days I think of Bill.com as a bit clunky, it’s like an old model car versus the Lamborghini I’ve got in MakersHub.”

Patrice Diana

QuickBooks Pro Advisor

Business level improvements with MakersHub 

While MakersHub saves time for bookkeepers and accounting staff, there are wider benefits to the organizations they serve. Patrice describes these higher-level benefits to her clients as visibility and accuracy. 

Visibility: The MakersHub central inbox for bills and receipts provides visibility for everyone working with the financials, from the CFO to bookkeepers. This inbox also means multiple people can be forwarding bills and receipts with ease. For staff that aren’t on the financial team, MakersHub allows granular access for approvers to only see bills that are allocated to them. Because it’s so fast and easy to get bills into MakersHub, this increases the visibility of the business's payables, rather than a couple of weeks passing before a paper bill or email is entered into the system. 

MakersHub can also give visibility in the form of approval flows, with single or multiple approvers in a flow. Approvers can add context by adding notes or attaching documents. Being the final approver at the bill or payment stage can give business owners peace of mind and complete visibility of all payables.

Accuracy: MakersHub ensures no bills or receipts are missed - even if they’re inside an 8-page scanned document. The books are more accurate when line item details are being coded to the right job and it allows profitability to be accurately tracked. Makershub will recognize and create separate bills from multi-page documents or scans. Overall more detail is pulled into QuickBooks, line item details, accurate item and expense coding, a link to the original bill document, and additional contextual notes or docs from the approval flow.

About Patrice Diana Bookkeeping

Patrice started her bookkeeping service in 2001 by helping two business owners in different fields grow their organizations. She has continued from there and now specializes in and enjoys helping small businesses. Patrice is a certified ProAdvisor (QuickBooks Desktop & QuickBooks Online Advanced)

Work with Patrice for:

• Specialty in QuickBooks setup and training

• Bringing calm to the crisis

• Streamlining your process

• Helping you understand the numbers

• Preparing for tax season

• Letting you focus on running the business

Learn more and get in touch with Patrice

www.pdbookkeeping.com

(949) 422-6012

patrice@pdbookkeeping.com