Pratical Accountant - Practice Profile
The Invisible Accountant
By: Stuart Kahan

Log onto www.invisibleaccountant.com, sit back, and watch the show unfold. To the strains of “The Pink Panther” theme, you will see an animation that starts with a squeaky door, a self-typing computer, a cup of steaming hot coffee, a runaway clock, a mouse jumping into a waste basket and, of course, the proverbial footsteps.

This is all the brainchild of Danielle Hewitt, director of tax and business consulting for Keyhan Hewitt Accountancy Corporation of Irvine, Calif. Hewitt launched the company, Invisible Accountant, Inc., in 2001 by incorporating the QuickBooks Online Edition so that all client work would be done over the Internet.

But, let’s back up a bit. How and why did this come about?

Recognizing a Need

“I worked for 25 years in public accounting and in government employ,” says Hewitt, “and I’ve seen a lot of unpolished work and untrained professionals in the accounting departments of many businesses. This emanates from the owners trying to do the accounting work themselves or having less than professional office managers doing it.” She notes that for the most part companies don’t know how to hire accountants or those qualified to do accounting work. “As a result, I have witnessed incredibly bad work coming out. Naturally, you can’t even start doing the audit and tax work until you clean up the accounting work. Many CPAs have to do that first before handling the tax work and it’s costing the client more money.”

Hewitt says that companies were paying for useless information. She started looking at this in great depth and trying to think beyond the usual tax and audit work. She felt there was something missing in getting this area straightened out. “I went to a seminar that spoke at length about using the Internet and I decided to do something completely online to harness applications to the small business concerns. The technology is already available to make a bridge with the small business client. Moreover, it is mutually exclusive for both tax and audit work and, in fact, we can do this for any client of any accountant without infringing on that relationship in any way.”

Testing the Waters

Hewitt says that she first approached her own tax clients about doing some accounting work free for a few months to show what could be done. “Free was the controlling word, and the clients quickly jumped on board. It was obviously a win-win situation but there was a reason to my madness.”

She hired staff and invested the time and money just to make sure it would work. “We ironed out the kinks and we set up electronic fax lines to be viewed on a screen. Each computer in our office has a dual monitor entered in real time. The left-hand monitor receives daily faxes and e-mails from clients. Information such as deposits, cash receipts, and invoices is faxed or e-mailed to us and appears directly on our computer screen ready for input into the accounting software. Accounting software is accessed on the second or right-hand monitor where the information is entered and filed electronically, available on a 24/7 basis. The historical data can then be exported to the Internet application and automatically converted.”

The Invisible Accountant works in tandem with a client’s current CPA by keeping the fundamental accounting books in order. “In effect, we fill the gap that can exist between a bookkeeper or owner-prepared financials,” says Hewitt.

Her firm charges a monthly fee similar to the costs that would be incurred for a contracted bookkeeper or employed accountant. Cost savings occur in various forms, she notes. “One potential area would be the omission of office space allocation on the in-house accountant such as desk, telephone, and computer. Another would include accounting software upgrades/purchases and related hardware upgrades, not to mention employee training, turnover, and downtime.”

All of the firm’s software application service providers use the latest encryption technology and state-of-the-art firewalls plus triple server backup, which are stored in a secure, offsite location. The security aspect is a big draw for the client. Hewitt cites one client, a company that installs sound systems for concert shows. “The client goes all the way around the world and is on tour for three to four months at a time. He sends in the payroll to us online and he can check his accounting wherever he is and whenever he would like. It just so happens that on one trip his office at home was broken into and everything was taken including all hardware, software, and files. But his accounting did not come to a grinding halt because we were the backups.”

Getting Known

Hewitt points out that her firm does a lot of heavy networking. “We get the bulk of our business through referrals. We don’t do too much in advertising although we have invested in our Invisible Accountant Web site and that has received a wonderful response.” She also does a lot of speaking engagements and has penned her name to many columns that are published in a wide array of professional and business publications.

Clients range from small to medium size companies, both closely held as well as publicly traded. “They may be service based, restaurants, real estate firms, non-profit organizations, and retail distributors,” she notes. “We function in a capacity as small as a part-time bookkeeper to a full-time accounting department.”

That is indeed quite true. The sister company, Keyhan Hewitt Accountancy is a full-service audit and tax practice. Invisible Accountant operates through the use of Internet-based accounting applications, coupled with qualified trained accounting professionals. “Several levels of service are available,” Hewitt adds. “For example, a client can have an online billing program where only the client has authorization to sign the checks that we prepare on a system set up by us.”

Freeing Clients

To Hewitt, outsourcing accounting functions alleviates stress and allows a business to focus on its core competencies. Invisible Accountant, she says, has a staff that is trained to do the day-to-day bookkeeping “behind the scenes” for the client. “In this way,” remarks Hewitt, “those clients don’t have to be bogged down with accounting issues and can focus their time on their own customers.”

She maintains that the accounting industry took a long enough time to embrace technology and feels that the Internet is the wave of the future. Her original idea three years ago was to leverage it for her own business and that of her clients. That squeaky door is now smoothly open.

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