A small charity with volunteers who change every year, our books were a mess of half finished spreadsheets, and the trustees dreaded the annual accounts. She rebuilt the records in six weeks, trained our treasurer on a single page of notes, and the independent examiner finished in one day instead of three. Our treasurer now handles the monthly work herself, and she calls when something looks odd.

Our year end used to take a fortnight of chasing. This year it took one afternoon.

Photos of receipts go from the van and they are filed by Friday. My VAT return stopped being a weekend job, and I have not missed a deadline since I signed up in March.

Switching bookkeepers frightens most small shops, and I put it off for two years. The handover took one morning. Every old invoice was matched, the stock figures made sense for the first time, and my quarterly cost of goods dropped because she noticed we were being billed for a delivery plan we had cancelled. I now get a call before any payment looks wrong.

Found an invoice we had paid twice in week one. Nothing else needed saying.

Thin margins in a cafe meant I wanted someone who would tell me which supplier was costing me money. She did, in the second month, and we changed one order.

Not cheap, but cheaper than the accountant who charged me by the phone call. I know my bill each month before it arrives and it has not moved in a year.

I did not think I needed a bookkeeper. I run a two chair practice with one part time assistant, and I kept my own books in a notebook for eleven years. Then my landlord changed the lease, my assistant went full time, and I could no longer say what a good month looked like. I booked one call to see what it would cost. Within two weeks she had every bill, wage and lab fee sorted into a clear monthly picture. She flagged that I was underpaying myself against the practice profit, set up quarterly tax pots so nothing surprises me in January, and wrote me a short note on what to watch. I answer one email a month now. The notebook is in a drawer, where it belongs.

Questions get answered the same day, in plain English, with the figure attached.

The monthly report is one page. Takings, wages, what we owe, what is owed to us. I read it over breakfast and I finally know where the business stands.

Three years behind on returns, and expecting the worst. First call, no lecture. She listed every missing piece, gave me a date for each, and by June everything was filed. The penalty came to less than I had feared. She showed me how to avoid the next one, set reminders in my phone for each filing date, and now checks in before every deadline instead of after it.

They moved us off a shoebox of paper onto proper software in two sessions and never once made me feel silly for asking how it worked. Fees are fixed, which helps.

Payroll for six staff used to eat my Thursday evenings. Now it is approved in ten minutes and the payslips go out on their own, correct every time.

When the tax office wrote to us about a mistake from before we joined, they dealt with the whole thing and told me when the reply was sent. I never had to open the letter.