We have been making some changes for back-end operation matters recently so I thought I would share. For last 5 years I have been using desktop version of Quickbook for Baum-kuchen book keeping. I knew literally nothing about accounting when we started the shop 5 years ago but by now I have learned enough to navigate the business and make thoughtful decisions. But this meant I was manually typing every single order receipt, keeping up with expense tracking, recently added Payroll stuff... and just whole a lot of data entry work to make sure that we were up to date. It's fine for now but my gut feeling has been that I could not be the bottle neck for Baum-kuchen's operation when it is ready to grow little bit more. So I looked around and decided that it was time for us to give a shot at cloud accounting using Quickbook Online. The benefit I was looking forward to was being able to sync our bookkeeping with our orders on e-commerce. (we use Shopify and its app ZapStitch together) so I only needed to update our inventory in one place and didn't need to manually input every single receipt.
When I came back from Japan, I knew it was time to invest some time to transition into a new system and so it happened. It took some late night data entry throughout the week, figuring out the actual system and logistics and frustration that came with it because I just couldn't figure it out for a while... and spending more time in data entry... but I am so glad to share that our online accounting is up to date and I will be able to spend more time in creating creative contents, sharing inspiration and focusing on making sure that customer's voice is reflected on what we do.
It might seem minor but getting through this entire process was a big deal to me. It was a process I needed to go through to grow up a little.
Change is scary but it is a good sign that we are continuing to evolve and are not afraid to see what's ahead of us.
I hope you are having a wonderful long weekend (if you are in the States:) I have more updates to share about our lovely Baum-kuchen open studio our friend Madalena hosted at the studio/shop this afternoon... our ongoing work on Baum-kuchen love letter with Angie... and much more.
xoxo
-wakako
