Community Highlights: Meet Jenny Groberg of BookSmarts Accounting & Bookkeeping

Thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
BookSmarts Accounting & Bookkeeping was started 15 years ago by Jenny Groberg, a wife and mother trying to financially support her young family. With a background in finance and experience as an outsourced CFO for her brother, she began by consulting small businesses to help them improve their accounting processes. She was able to teach at the University of Utah and Utah Non-Profits, which led to more credibility and traction in acquiring more clients.

In 2018, Jenny suffered a devastating traumatic brain injury which resulted in her manager taking over for her. After years of extensive therapy, Jenny is back as CEO with an unquenchable drive for growth and a mission to foster support among co-workers, service to the community, and support of women. Today, BookSmarts employs an ALL-FEMALE staff of 21 who live all over the United States. Everyone works 100% remotely to service over 300 clients who are also located all over the country. In the last 3 years, BookSmarts Accounting has grown 400% and we are proud to be doing over 1.4 million in gross revenue.

Jenny’s focus is on the women she employs and the women in the community around her.

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
One of the biggest obstacles we face at BookSmarts is managing an all-female staff. All of us are mothers and it’s challenging having children and being able to juggle all that comes with raising a family while also working. Another difficulty is bridging gaps in education or training when women try to re-enter the workforce. We have done our best to remedy these issues through teamwork.

Each client has a team of women who are cross-trained on their account. We pay for this extra training cost because if a woman needs a leave of absence or more support, she has an entire team to balance the workload. This teamwork model also helps the client have personalized help from multiple people at any time. We have also developed quite a few training videos and processes to help develop each employee. We also offer paid training for each employee, each month.

Thanks – so what else should our readers know about BookSmarts Accounting & Bookkeeping?
BookSmarts provides high-level accounting services at cheaper prices than CPA firms (yet we employ many female CPAs), because of our remote work model.

Because of the flexible work/life balance at BookSmarts, we can tap into a highly educated, highly skilled workforce that may not otherwise be employed. Because of this increased skill level, we can service a very wide range of clients from very small companies, to multi-million dollar companies. We also offer controller services, analytics, projections, sales tax reporting, budgeting, payroll, bookkeeping, and can support home offices. There is no accounting work too difficult for us to tackle.

There is no other accounting firm of our size that is solely dedicated to employing women. Our focus is women and supporting them in their different roles: personally, professionally, emotionally, and mentally. We pay for and encourage continued education. Every woman has a team and trained counterpart, so regardless of her personal needs, she can take time off and her clients will still be very well serviced. The women can choose their hours and schedule.

We have weekly calls with each employee to check on them and their well-being. We also do weekly team calls to make sure they feel supported with their workload. The culture of BookSmarts is not just that of exceptional work, but also of friendship and support for each other.

What matters most to you?
Strengthening families and our community is the driving focus of BookSmarts. We want women to have employment to support themselves and their families. We want them to be able to work, but be able to have more flexibility by working from home on a schedule that works for them.

Our community matters and we are supporting local high school students by donating $4000 annually in scholarships and then hiring our scholarhip recipients as interns. We want young women to have fewer barriers to entry in business and we are helping to bridge that gap.

We are also proud to sponsor and support local high school athletic teams and have donated $3000 this year alone. We want our communities to know local businesses like us care about each person and child. We want women to know we care about them and support them in their most important roles as mothers.

Pricing:

• $300-500/mo for small businesses
• $1000/mo for mid-size businesses
• $3000+ for large companies needing a controller/full service accounting department

Contact Info:

• Website: www.booksmartspro.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/booksmartspro/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/BookSmartsAccounting

• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/booksmarts/