An ordinary small business, with the real-life messy situations that go beyond a textbook file. All the answers and none of the risk.
Grand Gate Gardens is a fictional Ontario garden centre, followed from registration day through its first quarter-end: three and a half months, 192 source documents, and a verified answer key. See what is in the file.
Everyone gets their own access, at a lower price per person.
Each person on your team gets their own access to the simulation: the documents, the bookmarked walkthroughs, the spot check questions and the answer key. They work in QuickBooks Online or anything else at their own pace, and you can see exactly where each of them differs from the key.
Access to the full simulation for your team. Every tier includes the firm owner at no additional cost.
The same, and I review each finished file against the key. Everyone gets a note on what they missed and why it matters. You get a summary of where each of your people actually landed.
Optional access customization. There are two sets of documents, one that has Nomi Notes with suggested categories and sometimes hints. For firms who would prefer only the set of documents without the Nomi Notes, or without the answer key, that can be offered also.
Two firms count as one group. If you are pairing with another firm in the Firm Exchange, both teams count toward the same tier. Two firms of four are eight people, not two fours.
Eight weeks, facilitated by me.
Your firm only. Everyone in the cohort works through the documents, and then we meet weekly and review what happened: what people entered, where they diverged, and why the right answer was the right answer.
Three people minimum, eight maximum. Six is the sweet spot, because the value is in hearing someone else describe the call you were unsure about.
All purchases include firm owner access at no additional cost.
The file surfaces exactly the questions a firm has to have answers to. How mixed-use expenses get treated. What onboarding needs to capture and what it costs you when it does not. Where a review actually catches something, and where it never would have.
Being in the room means you give the final word on how your firm handles the judgment calls, and whether that answer is firm-wide or client by client. You hear what your juniors ask, which tells you what they know. You also hear what they do not ask, which tells you more.
And working through the file alongside them is where your SOPs get discussed and built. You can hand someone a document of procedures, but people learn by doing, and a rule they helped decide on with the document in front of them is the one that sticks.
Facilitation is a flat fee however many of you there are, so bringing yourself does not change the price.
Facilitation only. Simulation access is purchased separately.
Two ways through it, depending on whether you are adding to a team or making your first hire.
Adding to an existing team is a different job from making your first hire. When you are adding to the team, your firm’s SOPs already exist and this is about getting one more person onto them. When it is your first hire, this is your chance to build your growing firm on a solid foundation.
For a firm that already knows how it wants the work done and needs this person billable. They work the file full time, I check the previous day’s entries before we meet, and every session starts from what they actually did rather than what they meant to do. It works just as well for a junior already on your team, when what you want is to invest in their development.
Suggested schedule: eight sessions across two weeks, or weekly over eight weeks if they are still carrying clients.
This is more than just about the hire. A first hire is when a solo bookkeeper finds out that everything they know is in their head and nowhere else. You are both in the file, we meet weekly, and every judgment call gets settled out loud with the document in front of you. By the end you have an onboarded bookkeeper and the first draft of your firm’s SOPs, pressure tested against a file where being wrong cost nothing.
Suggested schedule: eight weekly meetings, so you can keep running your firm in parallel.
The schedule bends. Tell me the start date and what else they are carrying, and we will fit the sessions around it.
Two firms training their teams to think like reviewers, together.
Two firms cannot compare work on a real client file. Confidentiality ends that conversation before it starts. Grand Gate Gardens is neutral ground: a client neither of you has, with an answer key neither of you wrote.
Both teams work through an eight-week schedule, and we meet weekly to discuss progress and challenges. The interesting part is never who was “right.” It is discovering different approaches and uncovering house habits, learning new efficiencies you may never have considered, and strengthening your team’s analytical skills along the way.
This one is new. You are invited to take part in the pilot. The simulation is the foundation of it, but the firm collaboration idea is not mine. It came from two firm owners who spoke at QuickBooks Connect and CPB Ignite about how their teams meet regularly and apply a “See-Do-Teach” approach to training their staff. I heard that and thought it was a perfect way for firms to support each other and build each other up, and that the simulation is exactly the file that would let me facilitate it.
PS. Group pricing counts both firms together, so pairing up lands you in a better bracket than either firm reaches on its own.
Three ways to reach me.