Reconciled Solutions

05/27/2026

I have a theory about complexity in small businesses.

Most of it isn't strategic. It's accumulated.

A tool was added to solve a problem. A process was created to fix an exception. A workaround was built because no one had time to fix the root issue.

And then someone hired to manage the workaround.

Sound familiar?

Simplicity scales. Complexity fails.

That's our theme at Reconciled Solutions this year, and I think about it every time I walk into a new client engagement and see five software platforms doing the job of one, or three approval layers for a $50 expense.

The goal isn't to strip everything down to nothing. It's to be ruthless about what's actually earning its place in your business.

What's one thing in your business right now that you know is more complicated than it needs to be?

05/26/2026

Concierge doctors and DPC practice owners: you built a model designed to create freedom.

But if your revenue is going straight into one operating account and you're paying everything from the same pool, you don't have a freedom model. You have a cash flow guessing game.

This is exactly why I love Profit First for service-based practices.

https://loom.ly/ZHoK7-U

The concept is simple: pay yourself first, allocate by purpose, and constrain your spending to what's left. It removes the noise and forces your business to become leaner and more intentional, without requiring you to become a financial expert.

For DPC and concierge practices specifically, the membership revenue model is ideal for Profit First. Predictable income. Defined overhead. The math works.

The problem is usually that no one ever set it up.

If you're in concierge or DPC medicine and you've never run Profit First through your practice, I'd genuinely love to talk.

What's the biggest financial stress in your practice right now?

You chose DPC or concierge medicine to bring humanity back into healthcare. N ow learn how to pay yourself like a doctor while doing it.

05/21/2026

Spring is moving fast!

A webinar with FlexPoint on the mistakes MSPs are making with their books. A stage at the NAWBO Chicago Women Mean Business Conference. A booth with sticky notes and one question that 30+ women answered honestly.

And in the middle of all of it, a mental health conversation I think every business owner needs to have.

Did you know that entrepreneurs are twice as likely to experience depression as the general population? Or that substance use risk runs three times higher? These aren't personal weakness statistics. They're occupational risk statistics. And they deserve more airtime than they get in business spaces.

This month's newsletter covers all of it:
— The financial patterns that showed up on those sticky notes (and what to do about them)
— A common QuickBooks mistake that quietly wrecks your reporting
— The mental health research that reframes burnout as a structural problem, not a personal failing
— A free webinar on June 19th for DPC and concierge medicine practitioners who feel like accidental entrepreneurs

If any of that hits close to home, this issue is for you.

Get it all here: https://loom.ly/YkMWt-E

What's the hardest part of running your business that nobody talks about? I'd love to hear.

More than thirty women shared the hardest financial part of business, and what came back was illuminating. This article breaks down what those answers reveal, and what you can actually do about them. Next, there are plenty of small QBO errors that are annoying but fixable. Miscategorizing transactio...

05/21/2026

If you have employees in Illinois, this is your May reminder:
Your team can use their paid leave for mental health.

No diagnosis required. No explanation owed to you. Any reason, including "I need a day."

The Illinois Paid Leave for All Workers Act has been in effect since January 1, 2024. It entitles most Illinois employees to up to 40 hours of paid leave per year, usable for any purpose.

Mental Health Awareness Month is a good time to make sure two things are true at your company:

First, that your policies actually reflect the law; not an older version of your handbook that predates it.

Second, that your team knows the leave exists and feels genuinely free to use it. A policy that exists on paper but comes with unspoken social penalties isn't really a policy.

I've linked to our breakdown of the Act in the first comment. It covers what employers need to know, including the Chicago ordinance and what compliance looks like in practice.

And if you're the business owner reading this: the law applies to your own wellbeing too. Not legally, but practically. You can't pour from an empty cup, and nobody is going to hand you a mental health day. You have to build that permission into your own structure.

That's not soft advice. It's business continuity.

What does your company do to normalize mental health support, for your team and for yourself? I'm curious what's actually working.

If you own a business in Illinois, make sure you are prepared for the Paid Leave for All Workers Act. Start with these quick facts.

05/19/2026

May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and here's something that doesn't get said enough in business spaces:
Running a company is hard on the person running it.

Not just the long hours or the financial uncertainty, though those are real. It's the "always on" feeling that never fully switches off. The way your brain doesn't stop doing the job even when you're technically somewhere else.

A 2023 Gallup poll found that 29% of U.S. adults have been diagnosed with depression at some point; up from under 20% a decade earlier. Business owners aren't immune to that number. In a lot of ways, we're more exposed to it.

What I've found, both personally and in the work I do alongside business owners, is that the best financial decision you can make for your business is also one of the best mental health decisions: build it so it doesn't require your constant presence to function.

When you delegate intentionally, when your systems run without you touching everything, when you can step away and trust that things won't fall apart, that's not just good business design. It's also how you protect yourself for the long haul.

If you're feeling stretched thin right now, I wrote something I'd like you to read. It covers the real warning signs, what actually helps, and why caring for yourself is part of the job description.

Link in the first comment.

What's one thing you've done, or wish you'd done sooner, to protect your own wellbeing as a business owner? I'd genuinely love to hear.

05/13/2026

At Reconciled Solutions, we run every hiring decision through what we call our Immutable Laws. They're not job requirements, they're non-negotiables. Things like: Do they have the heart of a teacher? Do they do what they say they'll do? Are they someone who takes responsibility, or someone who finds someone else to blame?

Technical skills can be trained. Character can't.

When you hire toward your values instead of just your workload, something shifts. Your team stops being a list of tasks and starts being a culture.

And culture is what your clients feel, even when they can't name it.

Who is someone on your team who genuinely embodies your company values? Give them a shoutout below.

05/12/2026

You think you know your numbers. But there's one mistake in QuickBooks Online that silently distorts everything, and most business owners don't catch it until serious damage is done.

It's not a missed invoice.
It's not a duplicate entry.

It's miscategorized transactions.

When you assign expenses to the wrong category, or lean on catch-alls like "Miscellaneous" or "Uncategorized Expense", the ripple effect is real:
→ Your Profit & Loss report lies to you
→ Your tax return has errors before your accountant even touches it
→ You think you're more (or less) profitable than you actually are
→ Your planning and decisions are built on faulty data

And here's what makes this mistake so insidious: it compounds over time. You can't always see it happening. But you will feel it eventually: at tax time, when you're trying to make a growth decision, or when you go looking for a profit that should be there and isn't.

The good news? You don't have to start over. A 60–90 day lookback for obvious errors is a solid first step. Clean up the duplicates. Fix the wrong categories. Stop letting transactions pile up in "Ask My Accountant."

Your books should be a clear window into your business, not a funhouse mirror.

Are you confident in how your transactions are categorized right now? What's one area where you've caught an error that surprised you?

I wrote about the most common categorization mistakes in QuickBooks Online, and what to do about the, in my latest blog post. Read it here: https://loom.ly/4JuW-zM

05/09/2026

Let me tell you what "I'll pay myself what's left" actually means.

It means you're the last expense in your business instead of the first.

It means you're subsidizing your clients, your team, and your overhead with your own financial security.

It means the business doesn't actually work, it just looks like it does.

One of the first things we do with new clients is establish what their Owner's Pay target actually should be. Not what's comfortable. Not what's left. What is required to make this business worth running?

Then we work backward.

That's the Profit First approach. Revenue minus profit minus owner pay equals what you have to operate on. And if that math doesn't work, we fix the business, not the owner's expectations.

What would your business look like if you were the first expense, not the last?

05/08/2026

MSP owners: you know how to solve technical problems. That's not the issue.

The issue is knowing which business problem to solve next.

I see it constantly. A managed services firm hits $1M in ARR and immediately starts building out a sales team, when the real bottleneck is operational chaos that will swallow new clients before they can be onboarded.

Or they invest in a new PSA platform when the problem is that no one is reviewing margins on existing contracts.

Mike Michalowicz's Fix This Next framework gives you a hierarchy. You don't skip to sales and marketing if your financial foundation is shaky. You don't build systems if you can't make payroll.

Every business has a next most important problem. The work is identifying it clearly, and not getting distracted by what's loudest.

If your MSP is growing but something feels off, I'd bet the bottleneck is financial visibility.

What stage is your MSP in right now, and what's your biggest operational headache?

Learn more about how we provide MSP owners with financial clarity: https://loom.ly/MsioUUk

Fractional bookkeeping for MSPs and IT service providers. Better visibility, stronger margins, designed for the way your business works.

05/06/2026

Most MSP owners didn't start their business to become accounting experts.

But here's what I've seen after working inside a lot of MSP books: the mistakes that hurt margins the most aren't dramatic. They're quiet. Recurring. And completely fixable.

Tomorrow, May 7th at 2PM ET, I'm joining Meg Berberich from FlexPoint for a free webinar: Top Mistakes MSPs Are Making with Their Books.

We're talking about:
✅ The bookkeeping errors most likely killing your margins (and the straightforward fixes)
✅ How to get real cash flow visibility even when revenue looks fine
✅ A repeatable process so month-end is never a guessing game again

If you've ever looked at your P&L and thought "the numbers should feel better than this," this session is for you.

Register here 👉 https://loom.ly/2p9HCd4