Top 100 Proadvisor Vote Counts
Editor's Note: This is another installment in our ongoing series highlighting this year's Insightful Accountant's "Top 100 ProAdvisors." Over the remainder of the year, we will introduce you to our winners, getting their insights on a wide range of topics, including what it is like to be a leader in their profession, how to stay on top and what the future holds.
The next generation of QuickBooks ProAdvisors. If you're looking for the best way to describe
Caleb Jenkins RLJ Financial
what Caleb Jenkins brings to the table, start there. With deep product knowledge and a commitment to give back to others, Caleb continues to be a leading voice in today's ever-growing accounting profession.
It started early. At age 16, he was the youngest QuickBooks ProAdvisor in the global ProAdvisor program to become certified. He never looked back.
Starting his career at RLJ Financial in 2009, Jenkins, CQP, is the leader of Cloud Accounting, and a Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor and QuickBooks Ecosystem Advisor. He also handles business taxes, individual taxes and accounting QuickBooks services.
In addition to his accounting and tax work with RLJ, Caleb also has worked with Christian Aid Ministries’ SALT microfinance program abroad, helping to setup a specialized QuickBooks accounting system. Today, he continues to bring innovative technologies and ideas to help solve workflow problems and increase effectiveness for those in the field.
Over the years, Caleb has been featured in Accounting Today, CPA Practice Advisor, Insightful Accountant, Modesto Bee, Central Valley Business Journal, Intuit "Firm of the Future," Karbon Editions and Receipt Bank.
What does it mean to you to be recognized out of more than 200,000 ProAdvisors in the world?
It is a tremendous honor to be recognized for the second year in a row as one of the “Top 100 ProAdvisors” out of 200,000 global ProAdvisors. I don’t know how the “Top 100” is calculated each year, but it is incredibly special to be in this group. The rest of the Top 100 ProAdvisors are some of the most advanced QuickBooks consultants and business advisors in the world.
Your first thoughts on getting news of the honor?
I was encouraged and honored to receive this award again. I wasn’t sure whether or not to expect receiving it again, so when I read my name on the list, I immediately wanted to congratulate all the other winners.
How has your ProAdvisor practice changed or evolved over the last couple of years?
In the past few years, like most other firms, we have embraced and begun the journey to the Firm of the Future. We were a traditional accounting firm doing tax, accounting, payroll, business planning and business consulting. We completely billed by the hour and didn’t offer packages of services to our clients.
Most of our applications were on the desktop and all of our clients used QuickBooks Desktop. Now, we have transitioned to a mixture of Value Pricing and Fixed Fee Pricing. All of our new clients are using QuickBooks Online. We have been transitioning our QuickBooks Desktop to QuickBooks Online, and we offer more than just after-the-fact bookkeeping and year-end tax work. We try to be the trusted advisors who make a difference in our clients’ lives.
Why is continuing to enhance your skills and acumen critical to staying one step ahead of the curve?
In the world of cloud applications, the speed of change is rapidly increasing. It is imperative that we continue to learn new practices, refine existing processes and workflows, and be trusted advisors who are difference makers or the machines will displaced us.
What do you do?
This is a hard one to answer. I primarily lead the outsourced client accounting services for our firm. I meet with all of our new business clients and diagnose their needs, determine a prescription to help them, and then create pricing packages to offer to them. Once they accept our proposal, I work at onboarding them by setting up all the different applications and setting up their workflows within our firm. I then work with another team member to do their accounting services for the first few months.
I do a lot of business consulting on entity selection and help transition a lot of sole-proprietorships to S-Corporations. I will meet with the attorney and help them get setup as a new corporation. I also do a lot of QuickBooks & Accounting training via Zoom meetings, which are all recorded and emailed to my clients for their use after-the-fact. During tax season, I meet with a number of individual and business tax clients and help with their tax filings.
Give us a snapshot of today's accounting landscape.
Everything is being disrupted. What used to be done two to three years ago has now been replaced either by third-party applications or advancements in the core technologies. Most clients today are wanting to move to cloud applications versus two to three years ago, where I had to do an hour sales pitch every couple months to try to convince them of the benefits of working with QuickBooks Online.
However, I still see a lot of internal business bookkeepers that still like QuickBooks Desktop better because it’s what they are comfortable with. Most business owners want to see relevant information to help them determine what business decisions need to be made in their business.
In the world of cloud applications, the speed of change is rapidly increasing. It is imperative that we continue to learn new practices, refine existing processes and workflows, and be trusted advisors who are difference makers or the machines will displaced us.
What was the best piece of advice you ever received?
Be a difference maker. Intentionally invest value into others – whatever the cost.
What is the story that best describes how you help your clients?
One of my clients gave me permission to share the following, "When I first started out, I had no idea what I was doing on the accounting or bookkeeping side of things. The accountant that I was referred to did not get back to me on whether they would or even would not be able to help me. After speaking to Caleb that changed. I started from scratch and in a short amount of time; Caleb was able to get me up to speed and understanding the QBO system inside and out. Caleb always provides more value than he takes in return.”
How do you create balance in your work and personal life?
I don’t have the answer to this question. I like what Joe [Woodard] teaches, that instead of balance you need harmonization. I know that I probably work too much, but my personal life is also really full. I spend a lot of time on the side volunteering with the Christian Aid Ministries SALT program doing general business and life teaching in Haiti and other countries, as well as helping with their accounting systems.
I also am involved in a prison ministry here in California, working with Chaplains throughout the state.
Finally, I’m very involved in my church group and I lead a group of individuals around the country managing our national denomination’s church website.
What's are your to-do list thru the rest of 2017?
I’ve got three more teaching presentations to prepare for my next trip to Haiti. I would love to get my EA license (although think that’s more likely to happen in 2018). I want to spend more time reading strategically. And I want to be a difference maker who loves others unconditionally.