Today we participated in the event "Enlightened Entrepreneurs," sponsored by the Community Foundation of Utah. The purpose was to give local nonprofit organizations a chance to network and learn from entrepreneurs. I hadn't thought of myself as much of an expert, but I believe I was able to help a few people today. (You can read the twitter feed here and the official news bulletin here.)
 
The advice I gave tended to fall into two categories: bookkeeping practices and social networking. Here's a summary.

We have a few announcements to make.
 
First, thank you to all who applied for the bookkeeping position. We enjoyed the interviews immensely, and look forward to next time.
 
Second, welcome to our new bookkeeper, Shantel! You can read about her on our About Page. She joined us a week ago, and so far her work has been excellent.
 
Third, our free Quickbooks setup/audit program has been a success so far. We didn't make any money (that wasn't our intent), but we formed some great new relationships, and I scored some really wonderful soap. 

We really do believe in free resources (see our earlier post about this here), and we want to do everything we can to help small businesses succeed. Accordingly, we are offering free Quickbooks setup or a free review of your existing Quickbooks file.

One of the most wonderful things about the world we live in today is that knowledge is free. Anyone can go to the library and check out books on accounting, taxes, or Quickbooks. Anyone can go online and research a particular question or problem, and if the answer hasn't already been published somewhere, you can pose the question on a public forum and have it answered by experts within days or even hours. This is why no one at Backyard Bookkeeper will ever treat our knowledge as proprietary.