Well after going through (let’s see, I counted them off the other day) 5-6 bookkeepers in the last 3 years, I FINALLY have to write about it.
Of course being in Canada I wanted to hire a Canadian bookkeeper, but after going through 5-6 of them & having nothing but terrible experiences, I have switched to an American.
Quality of work, reliability & someone who knows what they are doing is worth more to me than being able to drop off the paperwork by driving over there.
I found even the ones I never hired were overpriced, & had a TERRIBLE attitude.
Several of them would literally e-mail me after reading my hiring ad just to tell me I was full of it asking for all those skills (I guess wanting a bookkeeper who knows what they are doing is asking too much which does speak volumes) for only 1-2 hours per month.
What does it matter how many hours it is??? Skills are skills.
I believe one is listed on this blog because she got me soooo angry.
Oh & one of them was an accountant, but then again, I had one guy tell me he was an accountant, & after he got angry at me & threw a temper tantrum, I found out he lied because I called to check his accreditation, so even when they tell me they are an accountant, I no longer believe them.
There was another one, who also lost his temper because I told him it’s not my job to tell him what he should list as an expense, it’s his job to tell me. I said that after he had done this 2 times already.
I realized after going through several of these, that almost all of them had deep seeded emotional issues.
None of them did the job according to what I told them to do, which was to categorize expenses.
I had one who didn’t calculate the GST properly, AND this last one just cost me a terrible amount of money because she screwed up everything she touched.
Because I’m not going to go pull every single person’s info (you can e-mail me if you really need me to pull it for you), I will just relay this last person, Marlene Jones from Brampton, Ontario (Quest Bookkeeping). http://www.questbookkeeping.ca/ mjones@questbookkeeping.ca & jonesbookkeeping@rogers.com
Her site is no longer active because she said she was quitting bookkeeping (I wonder why) & was getting her teacher’s degree by going back to school.
After the work she did, god help anyone who hires her, because I don’t trust her anymore. Even her phone numbers (home) are not working anymore last time I tried calling. She said it was just a glitch, but now I’m beginning to wonder if she’s in trouble.
I didn’t want to have to post her here, but after everything I went through & all the money I lost paying her to do work she had no business doing in the first place, people need to be forewarned.
I found her through the Yellow Pages, which just goes to show you, it doesn’t matter if the person is in the Yellow Pages, that doesn’t mean they know what they are doing.
My current bookkeeper (the American one) is telling me that the Canadian one Marlene, screwed everything up, I’m very very upset.
She now has to do 2007 all over again after I already payed Marlene.
I started to notice there was something wrong several months ago when the P & L statements she sent me looked all wrong.
Turns out she did have them all wrong. The amounts weren’t even close to what my items sell for. She was supposed to redo everything, but never did, saying she had to take paying clients first.
Well, I DID pay for the work, & she did it all wrong.
I just thought she had mixed up the products because I have a few, now I’m find out differently.
She didn’t know how to work with Quickbooks, or if she did, she didn’t care, because she posted everything in the General Journal instead of individual categories.
I purchased a computer in 2007, that isn’t even in there & I remember specifically asking Marlene if she included it in the GST.
She never even questioned the merchant account statements that had amounts that didn’t add up to the charges I told her I should have been paying. I’m finding out now that I paid $600 in merchant account fees for one account that wasn’t active & she didn’t notice this at all & question it, like this current bookkeeper did.
Then there was the other merchant account with tons of fees that she had no idea about because I didn’t even know there was a $9.95 months service charge, & did she question that? Nope.
We thought we could get away with just redoing the sales, but now my bookkeeper is noticing double entries when paying my website coder, amounts that were taken out of my account ($1,300 & I’m guessing what the amount was for) & it was NEVER put back into Quickbooks.
Then she posted expenses for Guru under office expenses when they aren’t. I had explained to her clearly how things worked, & this his how I pay independent contractors. She obviously didn’t listen at all.
Marlene’s attitude had attitude at times, & once I was furious at how she talked to me.
Instead of her telling me when to drop off the paperwork because clearly I’m a very busy person, she expected me to remember everything & be her assistant in this matter.
She also didn’t respond to my e-mails about 75% of the time.
I would have to chase her to get any answers from me & then she would act like “oh didn’t I respond to that e-mail?”That happened many times, not just once or twice.
She finally started responding after she quit bookkeeping.
Then when she sent me the Quickbook files, I didn’t even receive a password from her which should be a given when you send over files.
Also she required a $100 retainer (she must be a lawyer lying in wait) when I first hired her. When I asked her for the money back & to use my last invoice of $47.70, she only gave me back $50.80.
While that may seem like pocket change to some, for me it’s a lot, especially when I now have to pay this person to redo all the work Marlene did.
As of today 03-08-08, I am furious. I feel totally violated feeling like she got all this money from me, & ripped me off because she had to have known she had no clue what she was doing.
In the end I will end up forking over $1,000 just to redo the work that MARLENE JONES was supposed to have already done.