Episode 40: Uplevel Your Year End Client Experience with Serena Shoup

Nov 15

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Alyssa Lang interviews Serena Shoup, a full time educator and CPA who’s the owner and founder of both Ambitious Bookkeeper and Of Course Bookkeeping. Serena Shoup shares how she uplevels her year end client experience, she shares her year end process and tips and tricks to getting year end done smoothly.

In this episode you’ll hear:

How to create a smooth year end process for you and your team
What to include in your year end packets
How to impress your clients with a presentation of their yearly financials
How to stand out from other bookkeepers and impress your clients at year end

Resources mentioned in this episode:

🎙 Ambitious Bookkeeper Podcast

💻 Breakthrough for Bookkeepers & Accountants

⚙️ Asana

⚙️ Loom

⚙️ Notion

🎙 Serena’s Podcast Episode About Balance Sheet Reconciliations

⚙️ Google Drive

⚙️ Canva

✉️ Subscribe to Serena’s Email List

💻 Black Friday Sale (11/20 - 11/30)

*Use code BF23 to receive a discount

**Get the Confident Compliance bundle by purchasing through one of Serena’s affiliate links in the Black Friday newsletter on November 20th!

Listen to the Full Episode here 👇🏼

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As the year comes to an end, bookkeepers like us play a HUGE role in helping businesses wrap up their financials and prepare for tax season. In this episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Serena Shoup, the owner and founder of Ambitious Bookkeeper and Of Course Bookkeeping. Serena is an absolute queen at year-end processes and giving her clients a great experience without putting her team under a bunch of unnecessary stress. It’s the dream, right?

Serena is one of my biz besties, a CPA, and a guest expert in Breakthrough for Bookkeepers & Accountants. (If you’re in my group program already, don’t wait another minute to go watch the session we just added where Serena goes into detail about her recommended year-end process!)

Understanding + Mastering Year-End Tasks

As firm owners and bookkeeping experts, we know how important it is to get each of our clients’ records up to date and as accurate as possible at the end of every year. But the process can feel really complicated and overwhelming, especially if you have tons of clients. Even if you’ve been in business for a while, you might still need to perfect your process so you aren’t totally drained by April.

Year-End vs. Month-End Tasks

When it comes to year-end tasks, it's sooo important to differentiate them from regular monthly maintenance. Serena emphasizes that consistent bookkeeping throughout the year makes year-end tasks significantly less complicated.

Regular maintenance includes reconciling accounts, categorizing transactions, and ensuring accurate financial records. But year-end tasks involve other things you might not need to address on a monthly basis, like reconciling loan accounts, reconciling balance sheets, and preparing for tax-related needs.

Creating a Year-End Tax Package

One of my favorite things Serena shares is the idea of creating a year-end tax package for clients. You can do this yourself by creating a Google Drive folder to house all the documents and share it with your client.

Additionally, Serena suggests incorporating visual presentations that compare current year financials to the previous year, similar to Spotify's "Wrapped" feature. These presentations provide clients with a clear picture of their financial progress and help them visualize their financial goals. You can make a template presentation in Canva and plug in the client’s numbers or customize it however you need to for them.

It’s not 100% necessary, but it really makes the client feel supported and ready to tackle tax season with confidence! And you never know what kind of referrals you could get from

Streamlining 1099 Preparations

Preparing accurate 1099 forms is THE biggest year-end task, or at least it can feel that way. Serena suggests reading IRS publications and documentation if you aren't comfortable with this process to ensure compliance with IRS regulations. It’s okay if you’re not super comfortable with all things 1099 right off the bat, but you’ll need to get comfortable researching information through the IRS. And if you want additional support, Serena has a course to give you even more info.

Creating a process around 1099 prep is so important. Even though a lot of the payment processing softwares will automatically do this for you, there might be others you’ll need to produce for the client. Educating yourself about it is the BEST way to get confident. And starting 1099 preparations in November to give yourself plenty of time to deal with any potential issues or delays.

Effective Communication with Tax Preparers

Want to add extra value for your clients? Serena offers to act as a liaison between her clients and their tax preparer (if they’re not using her for taxes). It makes a HUGE difference for the client because they don’t have to worry about understanding everything that’s going on in the reports.

This collaboration ensures accuracy and minimizes the chances of errors or missed opportunities for deductions. Serena also suggests creating subaccounts to address specific client situations and notifying tax preparers about them proactively.

Implementing Efficient Workflows and Tools

You know this is my jam, so you can absolutely create a project in Asana or whatever project management system you use so that any year-end task you do doesn’t have to live in your head until next year! If you don’t want to create your own from scratch, you can swipe my template (+ over 30 others) inside my signature program, Kickoff with Asana for Bookkeepers & Accountants.

Serena recommends using task management platforms like Asana to track year-end tasks and set deadlines. This helps in organizing information and preventing overdue tasks. Don’t forget to have a system in place for how you’ll do quality control on year-end tasks, even if you don’t have a team.

Dealing with Missing Information from Clients

We’ve all been in a situation where you request documents from a client and they don’t respond. Sometimes this can totally throw off your process and your team falls behind!

I always suggest sending a set number of reminders to the client, and then moving on with the rest of your work if they choose not to respond.

In another podcast episode, I talk about implementing strategies such as adding a snippet in your contract addressing potential inaccuracies due to missing information. Sending regular reminders to clients through email can help make sure they understand what’s needed and helps prevent last-minute rushes. You can even choose to include fees after a client hasn’t responded within a certain timeframe.

It’s so important to have a year-end process in place that supports both you and your client. Setting them up for a successful tax season is going to make it an easy YES to continue working with you year after year.

By following the tips shared by Serena Shoup in this episode, you can streamline year-end tasks, enhance client communication, and provide a valuable year-end tax package. From reconciling accounts to preparing 1099 forms, efficient workflows and effective communication with tax preparers are the keys to an organized and stress-free year-end process!

About our guest:

Serena Shoup is a corporate CPA turned bookkeeping business CEO, mentor for other bookkeepers + accountants, mom of 3, and a closet musician! She built her business as a Sidehustle to motherhood when she left corporate to have her second daughter. She’s passionate about helping business owners become CEOs and take control of their money.

Serena is the owner and founder of Ambitious Bookkeeper and Of Course Bookkeeping and she’s on a mission to change the way the industry operates!

Connect with Serena Shoup:

Visit her website: ambitiousbookkeeper.com

Connect on Instagram: instagram.com/ambitiousbookkeeper

Connect on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/SerenaShoup

Connect on Facebook: facebook.com/serenashoupcpa

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