As a double major in business and business informatics at Northern Kentucky University, Katie Bunschoten isn’t a typical student. Along with raising her daughter and going to school part-time, she also runs
KHBOffice, ltd., a company that helps businesses create more efficient and affordable accounting and data tracking processes.
Much of what Bunschoten does is education about Intuit’s accounting software, Quickbooks. This can mean anything from teaching a business how to use the software to helping a business owner integrate a CRM (customer relationship management software) with it.
After freelancing in Quickbooks advising for several years, Bunschoten knew many local businesses had a need for affordable integration of accounting functions and operational software, such as plug-ins used to track sales, leads or customer support.
These days, she gets calls with requests ranging from, “I’ve had Quickbooks for a month just sitting on my desk,” to “I’ve been using this for a few months, but I’m not sure what to do with it at this point.”
“We want to be really good at bookkeeping, and we want to keep it affordable,” Bunschoten says. “A lot of people who use the software [Quickbooks] would be put off by a CPA’s high rates.” Accordingly, she says she often helps entrepreneurs understand how to be more strategic about using their most important resource: time.
Bunschoten is also quick to say that she’s not a replacement for a CPA. Instead, she says, “We try to be an avenue of communication between people and CPAs. We want to have a CPA in the project as well, but we don’t want them to spend their time on a lot of minutiae we could be taking care of.”
So, how does someone with a family, a job and a university course load manage her own time? “My three-year-old daughter, Abby, tells me when it’s time to shut down,” Bunschoten says. “Ice cream time at the end of the day is mandatory.”
By Robin Donovan
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