Why I’ve Avoided Bookkeeping for Almost Five Years in My CAS Firm

Read Time: 2:59 minutes

✋Welcome to The CAS Cache, a newsletter designed to help accounting firms grow their CAS offerings in five minutes or less.

Disclaimer: Some links below support my writing of this newsletter, and some give you a deal.

Issue Sponsor 😎

Hire an Accountant in the Philippines with TeamUp

Did you know you don't need an outsourcing company to hire an accountant in the Philippines? You can hire someone who works for you and only you - no middlemen, no ongoing fees, just you and your team. 

Click here to find out how TeamUp can compliantly and securely recruit someone great for your team.

Want to sponsor The CAS Cache? Reply to this email to get more details.

I have avoided doing bookkeeping in my fractional CFO firm since day one. When I launched the firm nearly five years ago, I knew immediately: I did not want to run payroll, chase bill pay, or get dragged into operational fires that never end. And honestly, most of that stems from burnout in public accounting.

If you have ever run a full-service bookkeeping department, you know exactly what I mean. Bookkeeping is a zero-sum game. Deadlines don’t care about your schedule. Payroll still has to run whether you are sick, on a plane, or in a car heading to Colorado with your family. I know because I have lived that. I once processed payroll on the road because my team was also out, and someone had to get it done.

The margin for error is nonexistent. You cannot miss payroll, you cannot screw up bill pay, and you cannot let things slip just because you finally took a vacation. Add to that the number of “fires” clients create when they ignore the processes you put in place, and you start to realize that bookkeeping becomes its own full-time adrenaline sport.

A few moments from earlier in my career cemented this for me.

There was the day an employee called to admit she had forgotten to run payroll. I was already out of the office, but the client needed those checks. So she printed them, I picked them up, and I literally drove around to different banks depositing payroll checks into employees’ accounts. Not exactly the kind of work you want to anchor your firm around.

Another time, a client bypassed every bill pay control our team had built and requested wires directly from staff. That was their normal behavior. A bad actor noticed, spoofed the client, and the firm ended up wiring over $50,000 to the wrong party. The firm and the client split the loss. It was a perfect example of how messy bookkeeping gets when clients don’t respect the process.

Those experiences stuck with me. They were a big part of why I built a CFO-focused firm that intentionally avoided bookkeeping. I didn’t want the constant cycle of deadlines and risk. I wanted advisory, strategic work, and clean boundaries.

And for years, that model worked.

But now I am reconsidering bookkeeping for one reason: client impact. I have a client whose books are always two or three months behind because their accountant gets pulled into tax season. Their deadlines become his deadlines, and bookkeeping disappears. It slows down my team. It limits the quality of the insights we can deliver. And at some point, you have to ask yourself whether avoiding bookkeeping is actually protecting you or creating bigger problems downstream.

So here I am, five years in, deciding to bring bookkeeping back in a way that aligns with how I want to run my firm. I am not jumping into full service. I am not taking on payroll. I am not repeating the mistakes that burned me out in the first place.

I am approaching bookkeeping the same way I advise clients:

Start simple. Build a model that works. Teach the client what they can own. Layer in tech later. Do not rush to be everything.

In future issues, I will break down how we are structuring this, the tech we are evaluating, and how we are thinking about bookkeeping specifically for MSPs.

But before all of that, I wanted to start here.

With the truth. With why I avoided bookkeeping for so long. And with what finally pushed me to rethink it.

Thanks for reading, Luke Templin!

P.S. There are four ways I can help you grow your CAS offerings when you are ready:

1. Join my How to Start Offering Advisory Services Cohort.

2. Cannot wait until it starts? Check out the pre-recorded version here.

3. Join The Kick C@$ Community to grow your CAS offering alongside others doing the same.

4. Automated white-labeled financial digests for your clients with FinDaily.io