Far too many entrepreneurs waste time on accounts instead of making money.

Help with bookkeeping was something I had benefited from as an entrepreneur. In the video from July 2012, I explain why receipts and accounts drained both my time and energy, and discuss Agera, which I helped found.

Getting help with bookkeeping instead of doing everything yourself

When I opened my computer games shop, I could handle many practical tasks myself. But bookkeeping didn’t interest me, and I worried about making mistakes.

I found that doing something others were much better at left me irritated and with a knot in my stomach. That was my starting point for getting help.

You also had to be able to afford it

I couldn’t pay someone else to do every task when I was just starting out. Later, I also got help with other things when the finances allowed it. Read also Iværksætter til jeg dør for my experiences of prioritising work as an entrepreneur.

My consideration was what I could do with the time I freed up. Among other things, I describe being able to work on my business while a driver took me to speaking engagements.

The prices, time commitments and income in the video are my examples and estimates from that time. They aren’t current offers or a guaranteed saving from getting help.

I had my own interest in Agera

I openly explain that the post also had an advertising element. I helped found Agera, which at the time connected clients with professionals including bookkeepers.

As I explained it, the business model was that professionals paid for the opportunity to get work. We worked on checking the enquiries so their time wouldn’t be wasted.

The story dates from 2012. My point was to consider what you were good at yourself and what it cost to spend your time on everything else.

Help with bookkeeping and the things I was bad at

For me, getting help with bookkeeping was about more than getting rid of receipts. It was also about spending time on something I was good at and avoiding the knot in my stomach that came from struggling with accounts. That was my experience as an entrepreneur, and by July 2012 it had also helped inspire a company I co-founded.

I said from the outset that the post could be seen as an advertisement. That was partly true. But it was also something I believed in and had experienced first-hand.

I could mop the floor, but the accounts made me miserable

When I started as an entrepreneur around 1993–94 and opened my PC games shop on Falkoner Allé, I tried to be honest about what I could and couldn’t do. I could mop the floor, wash coffee cups, make coffee and clean windows. There were plenty of practical things I could handle.

The bookkeeping was another matter. I found it boring, and I was afraid of making mistakes that would cost me money. When I was doing something others were much better at, I became irritable and got a knot in my stomach.

Collecting receipts, entering them correctly, keeping track of debits and credits, and making the accounts balance wasn’t something I wanted to do. On top of that, there was the task of keeping up with VAT rules. I knew I wasn’t good at it and feared I was costing myself money by getting it wrong.

You can’t pay someone else to do everything from day one

In 2012, I tried to pay others to do the things I wasn’t particularly good at. Of course, I couldn’t do that when I opened the shop. You can’t just hire a window cleaner and a cleaning company when you’re starting out and don’t have the money.

You have to be realistic. I got help with cleaning and windows as soon as I felt I could afford it. There’s a difference between a task you can do but later choose to get help with, and a task you’re bad at and worried about from the start.

Bookkeeping had never really interested me. My wife also told me about her father, Jan, who had run his own painting business and was now retired: when his VAT return was due, he was impossible to be around for two or three days. I recognised that feeling.

What does doing without help really cost?

At the time, I mentioned bookkeepers charging from around DKK 180 an hour at the cheaper end to perhaps DKK 500. Those were my price examples from 2012. My point was to compare them with the time you might spend and the mistakes you might make doing the work yourself.

If you have a hundred receipts, for example, you can spend many hours getting them sorted. If there are mistakes, your accountant may later need to redo the entries and correct the accounts. In my experience, an accountant costs more than the cheapest bookkeeper. So what you thought you had saved could end up being paid again at year-end. I was also worried about tax problems if things weren’t in order.

I estimated that a professional bookkeeper could do the work two or three times as fast as someone who didn’t do it for a living. Something I spent an entire evening on might take a bookkeeper one or two hours.

In my example, some people could get the necessary work done in eight to ten hours a year. At DKK 250 an hour, I was talking about a few thousand kroner a year, perhaps two, three or four thousand. Of course, it depended on the number of receipts, how complicated the work was, and whether you had collected and organised the paperwork properly yourself.

I thought you should consider the alternative: if I spent five or six hours one evening saving around DKK 800, perhaps I could instead write a good newsletter to customers and earn much more. The figures were my examples at the time, but the important question was what else the time could be used for.

A driver gave me time to work in the back seat

When I was giving lots of talks, I hired a driver at one point to take me around in my own car. I remembered the price as around DKK 220 an hour. That let me sit in the back seat and work on my business.

I used an example where the trip cost me around DKK 2,000 in driver wages, while I could earn DKK 15,000 by writing a good newsletter and selling my services. I also got home without being stressed by the driving. That was my experience and my calculation, not a promise that everyone could earn those amounts.

That’s why I helped start Agera

Based on my own experiences and what I saw among other entrepreneurs, I helped found Agera with some young guys. By July 2012, we had been running since 1 January and had gradually built up the business.

The idea at the time was simple for the customer: you went to the website and described the job, such as how many receipts you had and what needed doing. Three bookkeepers could then get back to you with quotes by email or phone. I also mentioned getting quotes from accountants and lawyers.

You could say yes or no. If none of the quotes interested you, as I described it, you had spent a few minutes but no money. Several of the bids I saw then were so low they surprised me. The professionals could make a business of it because they were efficient and worked quickly.

To me, paying, say, DKK 3,000 a year and avoiding sitting down with receipts several times a year sounded attractive. I knew the feeling of the deadline approaching, having to gather the paperwork and never quite getting the figures to balance. That was the time and bad mood I wanted to avoid.

The bookkeepers paid for the opportunity to get work

I also explained what we got out of connecting customers with quotes free of charge. The bookkeepers paid to bid on the jobs. In other words, they paid for customer enquiries rather than having to find them themselves through Google AdWords or Facebook, for example.

The people I had started the company with were good at that side of things. We had around six people working on the business full time. It looked simple from the outside, but making it work was more demanding.

We had to find good bookkeepers, explain the model, attract enquiries, find the right prices and make the finances work. Every enquiry was checked so we didn’t pass spam or people who had filled in the form just for fun on to the professionals.

If we wasted the bookkeepers’ time, we couldn’t attract the serious, skilled ones. Then customers would be disappointed too. So it wasn’t simply a matter of setting a computer to forward information.

Yes, in a way it was an advertising post. But it came out of a conversation with the team the day before, which reminded me how much time I had wasted on bookkeeping in those first months. I thought you could do both yourself and me a favour by looking into getting help. That was my suggestion, with my own interest in Agera openly disclosed.

Read also about making room for the important work.

Historical advertising reference from 2012: The original link about three quotes within 24 hours now leads to Ageras’ page about help with bookkeeping. The terms mentioned date from the old post.