Twenty hours of bookkeeping per week now under three
Bookkeeper is the app we built to optimize our own accounting. It connects to QuickBooks Online and Everhour (our timekeeping app), and handles the collections, failed payments, paper checks and invoicing that used to take a part-time bookkeeper 20 hours a week.
Twenty hours a week of entry and follow-up
NDIC bills clients every month for hosting and support, and bills project work by the hour. Keeping up with that took a part-time bookkeeper 20 hours a week. Paper checks were keyed into QuickBooks by hand. Late payers were chased one email at a time. A failed recurring payment meant tracking the customer down for a new card and entering that manually into QuickBooks, and every invoice was copy/pasted from time entries.
Four jobs, handled end to end
Collections campaigns
Every overdue invoice opens a collections episode. Bookkeeper sends a series of emails, each matched to how far past due the account is, and flags the accounts that need a phone call.
Failed payment recovery
When a recurring payment fails, Bookkeeper notifies the customer and lets them update their payment method securely online, something QuickBooks Online still can’t do on its own.
Check scanning
Drop in a photo of a check. AI reads it and works out which customer sent it, even when the name on the check doesn’t match QuickBooks. Bookkeeper creates the payment and posts it.
Invoices from time entries
Bookkeeper pulls billable time from our time tracker, proposes the invoices, and creates the approved ones directly in QuickBooks Online.
How it grew
We didn’t build it all at once. Like many custom applications, we started with the essentials and added to it over time. First we created the Collections and Failed Payments modules. Then we added check scanning and posting. We also have things that are very specific to our business, like web hosting sign-ups and domain registration tracking and billing.
Next up: AI collection calls. An AI caller will phone customers whose services are close to being suspended. Some customers just won’t respond to the emails we send, no matter how critical we make them sound. A phone call with a friendly voice on the other end will likely get more response. We’ll see how well people react to an AI calling them from our phone number!
AI-accelerated development
Even as a custom software development company, we never would have built this in the past. We always knew we wanted something like this, but the cost and time it would have taken to develop it were prohibitive, even just paying the raw development costs.
With AI-accelerated development, we could apply our software development expertise, while letting AI do the tedious part of writing the code. The first version took 4 weeks to complete, with all current features completed in under 3 months.
20 hours a week down to under 3
The weekly work that took a part-time bookkeeper 20 hours now takes under 3, a cut of more than 85%. What's left is the judgment: who gets a call, and who gets suspended. We still need a bookkeeper, but that person can spend a lot more time on improving the business's financials, not just doing routine work.
Built for us, useful to you
Bookkeeper runs NDIC's own books, but most of it applies to any small business on QuickBooks Online: collections, failed payments, check deposits and invoicing from time. If those take up your week, let's talk.
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