About the firm
Twenty-eight years is the whole pitch
Founded in 1998, Bookkeeping Etc., Inc. has operated continuously for twenty-eight years. In a field where clients are choosing who to trust with money and compliance, longevity is not a vanity number — it is the evidence.
01 Who you work with
Joe Martin, President
I started this business because multiple non-profit and for-profit organizations were reaching out to me to solve specific problems. They understood my skill set but did not need me full time.
I have been helping two of them for over 28 years, and helped numerous others solve their problems. For the last 18 years I have assisted organizations with solutions involving Federal grant compliance in Workforce Development programs. I am always willing to learn more.
Founded 199818 years — Federal grantsNGMA member
02 The firm
Built on the unglamorous work
The work that built this practice is the kind nobody puts on a conference agenda: closing the month, reconciling the accounts, running the payroll, keeping the file straight. Clients stayed. That is most of the story.
Over the past decade the practice deepened in a specific direction. Grant-funded clients kept bringing me problems that were not really accounting problems — they were compliance problems wearing accounting clothes. I learned that side of the work properly: eighteen years on Federal grants, first on the fiscal and compliance side, more recently on the program side as well.
That combination is now the center of how I grow. Not because it is fashionable, but because very few firms can sit in both chairs, and the gap between those chairs is where my clients were getting hurt.
03 How I work
How I work
Open discussion
Nothing useful gets solved around the edges of a conversation. I would rather talk plainly about what is actually going on.
Honest feedback
If the books are worse than you thought, or the exposure is real, you hear it from me early — not six months in.
Identify the problem
Most of what lands on my desk is described as an accounting problem. Half the work is finding out what it actually is.
Find solutions to problems
Naming the problem is not the job. Fixing it, and leaving behind a process that keeps it fixed, is the job.