Decoding the Financial Secrets of a Profitable Painting Business

So today I have a very special guest , daniel Honin , with Bookkeeping for Painters , and we are going to discuss a rather unsexy , boring topic that could not be more important to the success of your painting business , and that is the financials . So , daniel , first of all , thank you for being here , man , I really do appreciate your time today .

It's like an internship where you learn to run a painting business , similar to College Pro .

So I did that in a pretty , pretty exciting experience , learned a lot , very difficult probably up into that point in my life , the most difficult thing I had experienced running my own painting business and then , after college , got a degree in accounting , went into the military for a while and then , when I got back from one of the deployments and doing the

civilian world , I wanted to use my degree in accounting and my MBA to help small business owners and , reflecting on my experiences I had run that painting business , had grown up on job sites , so I thought it would be cool to help painting business owners . So I started bookkeeping for painters back in 2016 .

And , yeah , since then we've helped hundreds of painting businesses know their numbers and what they mean and save big in tax .

But I feel like most guys think they know their numbers , but numbers can be scary and when you open up your financials and look at them , a lot of guys just try to close that book and try to outsell their problems , which we know is not scalable or smart . So let's start with a really easy question 30,000 foot view . I own a painting business .

What should my financial benchmarks look like ? How much money should I be spending on material production , marketing and , ultimately , what should my profit look like there ?

That's your top line revenue . And then you subtract out your direct labor , so your painters , and your direct materials , so any paint , caulking , whatever you've purchased for that job . So you subtract out those costs . What's left over is what is called gross profit , so your gross profit margin percentage . The average is 40% gross profit margin .

So basically , if you have a $10,000 project and you spent , you know , $6,000 in direct costs for labor and materials , what would be left over is $4,000 . So that would be 40% . So that's if you look across the painting industry , 40% is pretty much the average , and that does .

We do internal benchmarking with the painting businesses we work with and 40% is pretty much the average . Now , obviously , folks listening probably are not shooting for average . So we typically recommend to shoot for 50 or higher as a percentage for gross profit Because that's going to really open up your profitability in general .

So that typically looks like , you know , 35 to 40% for labor and around 10 to 15% for materials , and so when you add that together , subtract it from 100% , you get about 50% gross profit . So that's kind of what we recommend folks to do .

And if , looking at the metrics , like the benchmark data , the top you know 10 to 15% of painting businesses have 50% or higher gross profit margin .

You know , basically , what are you making out of your business ? Ebitda , you know , I think it's fine . It's just maybe not as precise of a term and that's fine . But what I think matters to most folks is what cash are they bringing home ? You know , what are they actually making their business , which is discretionary earnings or cash flow to owner .

So that number , you know the average painting business , if you look at the benchmark data , is somewhere between 15 and 18% for the painting industry , which is pretty low . We definitely don't recommend to shoot for that . And it also kind of depends on what you're doing in your business . So you know some painting business owners .

They're doing sales or doing production management . Some are still on the job site actually painting as well . So what you are making in your business depends on what your roles are in the business .

So just let's say that you're a painting business owner but you are completely passive , meaning that you , you own the painting business but you are actually not doing anything in the business . You someone else runs it during the sales , you're doing production management , doing the painting . You're just kicking back and getting the profits .

In that scenario we recommend to shoot for 15% discretionary earnings or cash flow to owner . So so really that's the average that a painting business owner makes , but we recommend 15% if you're passive . Now , if you're actually working in the painting business which I imagine most listening are you know you might be doing sales and production management .

So for the sales , you want to be making somewhere around 8% of revenue , 8% of what you sell . So if you're selling everything , 8% of revenue . So if we add that on to the 15% , that's 23% . And then for production management , if you're doing that as well , that should be around another 5% to 7% for production management .

And so if we just say 7% , add 7 on the 23 and that's 30 . So if you're doing sales , sales , production management and you're the business owner , your discretionary earnings or cash for the owner should be about 30% of revenue .

But what we usually recommend is looking at your marketing costs , try to get somewhere at least a 8x return , which would correspond to somewhere around 10% of your revenue would be going to marketing .

There is the cash flow , because you are potentially working on a lot of longer term projects and you're getting paid less frequently .

So the thing that is really , from a financial perspective , to pay attention to for those folks that are working under GCs or general contractors is cash flow and to really actively pay attention to that and figure out what you can do to fix those problems . For residential , cash flow is less of an issue . It can be an issue , but most folks are .

You know you go to the , you complete the job , you do a walk around , you collect the check like it should be a pretty straightforward thing . You should not be struggling with cash flow . As a residential painting contractor , your cash flow should be awesome . If you're having cash flow issues , there's something definitely wrong . Commercial is a different story .

You definitely have to pay attention to that .

But you should be making a lot more money in your business , especially if you're working on the job site too . I mean , your cash flow to owner or discretionary earnings should be , you know , above 30% . You know , maybe , if you're working on the job site all the time , maybe it's even 60 , 60% or 70% because you're doing everything right .

So you should actually be making a lot more money , you know . So if you're just doing 200,000 , but you're doing like everything , you could make six figures . So you know , that's that's kind of the big when we're looking at financials there . It's what are you doing in the business and you should be .

Your margin should be a lot higher because you're probably doing a lot more . Once you get to 500,000 above that level , you know , you're probably , you know , somewhere around 751 million , you're probably gonna be capped out on doing the sales and production management yourself At this point . You probably have crews that are working under you .

So you're you know you're probably doing that 30% . I had mentioned where you're doing sales , production management , any of the business owner so you should be shooting for 30% profitability . But at this point you probably need higher a production manager or salesperson to take the load off of you so you can focus on growing your business to the next level .

And so this is a key hire right . Your first big hire , obviously you're you've hired painting crews before , but getting someone to

manage those crews or getting someone to represent your company and your sales process is a big hire . So getting that hire right is important . And also the compensation structure which a lot of people need help with . Like , how much did I pay a salesperson ?

So that goes back to what I was talking about before , which a salesperson should generally get paid somewhere around 8% of what they close .

Now that can be strictly commissioned , like 100% commission could be , you know , 90% commission and maybe a low base salary , but it's typically pretty high in commission , cause you want a salesperson that's going to be motivated by money and wants to close work for you .

The production management side , like getting a production manager they're probably you could still do commission and bonuses for gross profit , maintaining gross profit margins as a common one , and maybe also a bonus based off the net promoter score , like which is the basically a question you would ask to your customers after you complete a project hey , how likely are

you to refer to friends of family ? Yeah , and they give you a score of one to 10 , 10 being highly , highly likely to recommend you . So it's a lot of folks do like a bonus based off of gross profit margin .

Hey , production manager , if you keep production gross profit above , you know , 50% and you also keep in a net promoter score of at least 80 or whatever you know , you'll get an X bonus or a percentage of the revenue . So you can do maybe a bonus , but a lot of times production managers kind of get a salary with bonuses . Is it more of an even split ?

So the key for the production manager is that they're making somewhere between five and 7% of what they produce , whereas salespeople sum around 8% of what they sell .

So getting that key higher when you're between 500,000 and a million , or maybe a million and a half , depending on your situation , getting that first hire is super important and then also setting up the compensation for that person , so that they're motivated and their interests are aligned with yours , is set up right . So that's that phase .

And then you know , above a million or 1.5 million , you're maybe still doing the sales or maybe still doing production management and you're the business owner . So at this point you know you should still be getting that 15% profitability plus whatever you're still doing in the business . So maybe you're still doing sales . That's usually the common thing .

You're still doing sales , you have a production manager and you're the business owner . So at that point you should be getting cash flow to owner or discretionary earnings of about 23% , 15 plus eight . And so at this point you're the CEO and you're the salesperson .

Now some folks also get it to the next level where they get rid of sales as well , and so now they're just the CEO . So at that point you know that you'll need to make room in your P&L for another 5% for CEO .

So if you're a CEO , if you have a sales team and a production management team , you should be making around 20% discretionary earnings , cash flow to owner .

Yeah , so that's kind of the progression of how things would change and shift and it's , yeah , kind of the pain points in the first phase for them is getting help just on the job site , you know , and making sure their pricing is right , because a lot of times smaller painting businesses they don't get their pricing right and they don't have margins .

And then the second phase is like okay , I've got my pricing right and I have crews , but now I need someone to help me to get to the next level .

So they make that first big hire with production manager or salesperson and then the next phase is doing it again with the other side of either production manager or sales and then you're just running the business as like kind of the CEO and having a processes in place and a constant marketing campaign that you're feeding your company with and also constant recruiting

process to get folks in the door . So those are kind of the challenges on each growth phase .

And that's the trap that I think a lot of us business owners fall into is , as you start to scale and you grow and you start to build out your employee base or your team , that profitability number shrinks . It goes from 50% down to 20% and the important distinction here is it's 20% of a larger number . Would you agree with that ?

You know if you really want to be that CEO role , it's a smaller chunk of a bigger pie . I love it and I'm curious what do you recommend as far as bank transfers go for owner take home pay ? I know some guys just do straight up payroll . They get taxes over there . Do you have any particular strategies that you recommend ?

You file it with your state so by default , the LLC is taxed on your personal tax return as a schedule C , or if your partnership will be taxed on the partnership 1065 return . So what that means basically is an LLC tax . Disregarded taxation is what it's called .

Every dollar that the business makes you're getting taxed on self-employment taxes 15.3% and then you also get hit with your tax bracket tax , whatever tax bracket you're in .

So if that is you , if you're an LLC disregarded where you're an LLC tax on your personal return or LLC tax as a partnership , you're getting that 15.3% self-employment tax applied on all your profits . So in that case you would just pay yourself with the business register , write you a check , it do a bank transfer to you , whatever is easiest .

The downside of this entity structure is that once you get , once you start having profits of over $60,000 Generally speaking now this is implied to everybody because some states it does not make sense .

But once you get $60,000 or more in profit per year , you're paying a lot in self-employment taxes at 15.3% and it might start making sense to being taxed as an escort , which is a different type of taxation . You can keep your LLC structure , but then you would elect for an escort status .

Taxation there Doesn't always make sense in every case , but generally speaking it's probably 80% of folks that would make sense . And so the escort In that if you're an LLC , taxes on escort or a corporation taxes an escort that when you're in that situation , you would actually be on payroll and you'd run payroll for yourself Up to with the reasonable amount .

So which is very ambiguous , yeah , so yeah , the game here is that you , you don't want to pay yourself more than you have to on payroll because it costs extra Money . It costs you extra payroll taxes , but you do have to run a reasonable amount . The IRS says , like you said , austin , it's very ambiguous .

What we do , a bookkeeping for painters will do a Sell analysis of what you do in your business , do a salary analysis of where you live , what do people get paid to do those things ? And and so we'll generate .

Okay , based off your , the fact that you do sales , you do production management , you should pay yourself , you know , 42,000 dollars based off your area Accelerated . So we take that and then that's your , which you should run through salary , through payroll , and that will keep you protected .

So if the IRS challenges you on that reasonable officer salary , you'll have that data to back you up and you'll be fine . And then the rest of it . The rest , if you still want to get paid more than the 42,000 you ran through Through payroll , you would just write a check from the business to yourself to pay yourself as a distribution .

And the benefit again here is that your escort tax , the escort entity , you can really lower your , your , your payrolls , your self-employment taxes , by thousands of a dollars every year Once you get over that $60,000 profit profit mark usually , so that if you're over that amount of $60,000 in profit , you might want to consider electing the escort status .

So if you're trying to really scale and get more people involved and and get a lot of investors , c Corp might make sense . You know , as far as saving on taxes , it usually doesn't make sense in most cases . There are some things that might apply in some scenarios that it makes sense , but Overall usually the C Corp is .

It's higher in tax , generally speaking , but it can be beneficial in other ways . So kind of depends on the situation .

I think that model makes the most sense to deal with the seasonality of the painting industry . Do those , let's say , the 50% profit margin ? Does that apply to those who are either hiring subs or W2's , or are those numbers Gonna look a little different in either case ?

Hopefully , yeah , you shouldn't be managed , that you should not be managing them as closely , because they should have their own tools , their own training , their transportation , you know , and they should kind of handle things on their own a little bit better . And it's also for subs .

Another advantage is that you can kind of manage your cash a little bit better , because you could set up an agreement with a lot of folks do this where they set up an agreement with their , with their subcontractor , and say , hey , you don't get paid till I get paid , and so , whereas employees you usually have to pay them bi-weekly or weekly depending on your

payroll cycle , with subs you can kind of Manage your cash flow and say , hey , you get paid when I get paid . So that kind of alleviates your cash flow issue there love it and Diving into payroll , that's .

It has a good interface so and it's also very the support is very strong , like their customer support . So we usually recommend them . I mean QuickBooks payroll QuickBooks online payroll is also another

option . It can work very Similarly . Just , I think the support is not as good as guest-os , but you know we also do payroll as well . If you feel like you need some extra support but also maybe want to implement something like performance pay , we can help you implement that .

So things like health , health insurance , health care .

Now , I know you can do that through Gus , though , but is there a particular point in a company's journey from zero to 500k , from 500 to a million , that you typically see people start offering benefits to attract that higher quality talent , because that obviously doesn't make sense from day one for most companies to start doing .

You can , you can frame those Interest , sell those to , to the folks that you want to bring on board .

So , for example , advances you know we might not think of that as a traditional benefit , but it's very beneficial to employees , especially if they're , you know , if you're doing a Bi-weekly payroll cycle but you have a benefit of , hey , you can get it in advance up to , you know , 20% of your , your pay or whatever it is .

You know some sort of policy in place that that can be attractive to potential new hires . So the fact that they know that , even though they're getting paid every two weeks , but they can get an advance on that pay , you know , can be attractive . So Don't , don't discount the , the , the no cost benefits there .

But then there's , you know , before we even get to the health care , there's some some low cost benefits as well . So you could have Something called the qualified small employer health reimbursement arrangement to Sarah . So this is a reimbursement for healthcare costs to your employees .

So this is basically where , instead of paying for their health insurance right out , what you're basically Establishing as a policy like that says hey , we don't cover your , we don't pay for your health insurance , but Any healthcare costs that you accrue will reimburse you tax-free Up to two hundred dollars per month , or whatever dollar amount you want to establish .

And the benefit to the company is one that's tax deductible to the company , so it's a tax write-off for you . It also is tax-free reimbursement to the , to the , to the employee . So it's not when you put it through payroll doesn't get those payroll taxes applied to it . And then it's a health benefit , healthcare benefit , you know .

So you , you have some level of healthcare , even though you might not have the full-fledged Healthcare insurance . It's a healthcare reimbursement program , so that that would be like a low cost benefit you could implement .

And then you have the , the higher cost ones that I think everyone's more familiar with , like Full-fledged healthcare insurance , a 401k , those , those type of things . And so , in terms of when that those are implemented , I typically see them implemented . You know , typically see them implemented .

You know , when folks are above a million for sure , probably maybe even 1.5 and higher , where they start implementing like a 401K or something like that . But even before you get to that level , let's just take the 401K like a retirement plan you might wanna do a simple IRA first , because that's less expensive , it's a little bit more simple .

So that might be your first step . Do a simple IRA , because a 401K is a little bit , it's kind of expensive , and it can make sense for the business owner to do a 401K if you want to . If you , the business owner , wants to put a ton of , put a ton of money into a 401K for tax purposes to lower your tax bill , that could make a lot of sense .

But if you're not doing that or you're not ready to do that , then 401K usually doesn't make sense because it is kind of expensive to have someone administer for you , whereas a simple IRA it's pretty cheap .

What , on average , do those percentages look like when we're breaking that part of that number down , or that slice of the pie ?

Like , obviously if you're doing a lot of exterior brick repaints or if you're painting a lot of brick or something or stucco , that's just sucking up a lot of product , that's obviously gonna cost more in materials than if you have to go in and just do a lot of painting of railing or something like , where it takes a lot of labor but it's not as much for

the product . So you're gonna have those differences there . So you definitely wanna pay attention to your material costs . Make sure you're getting with your Sherwin's wrap or your Benjamin Moore Benjamin Moore store and making sure you're getting those discounts if you're having an account set up with them and stuff like that .

But I would say , if so there can be efficiencies made there . For sure that doesn't need to be paid attention to , but the key is getting the overall gross profit kind of dialed in .

So I would say I wouldn't pay attention to the materials until you have the labor figured out , cause that's usually like the biggest thing that folks struggle with is just their pricing and then their labor . For being efficient .

Once you get those two things figured out your pricing and then your labor then you can start looking at your materials for seeing how you can either be more efficient or get the best pricing from your rep .

What should that pyramid look like in terms of who you're paying for in different positions of your company ? Just on average , typical million , million and a half company ?

So if you're doing a million in revenue , that's a $50,000 to $70,000 salary for them , or maybe it's 40,000 base with bonuses that they can get up to 70,000 , something like that . And then for the salesperson , you typically wanna do that all commission . If they can sell a million in revenue over a year , you would wanna do most of it commissioned .

So if you did a total commission , that would basically be hey , you get paid 8% of whatever you close and so that you can make up to $80,000 if you book a million . So those are the two key hires there . And then going to the , you also might have an admin person .

So or maybe a virtual assistant , and really that's usually just paid kind of hourly $20 , $25 an hour for some sort of admin support there . And then for the crews , you have your painter , junior painter , maybe a senior painter , crew leader . The way you can structure that is basically Most folks are doing this on an hourly basis .

So a typical painter I'm seeing right now like paying folks starting out somewhere around $20 an hour , and then a senior painter might be paid $25 , $30 an hour , maybe even a little bit more , depending on your skill level and how they're performing . But the key is , I think , for them is going back to the 35% of revenue .

So the way you get there is basically price off of production rates , meaning that for each project that you bid on , you should generate a budgeted hours like hey , this project is budgeted for 100 hours of labor and so that estimate . You take that and change it into a work order , which some softwares do this automatically , like paint out .

So that work order will have a breakdown of okay , here's all the things that are gonna be painted and here's the budget hours for each of those items . You give that to your crew lead and say hey , here's the budgeted hours and you hold them accountable . Hey , you need to get this project in by 100 hours or less .

Now you can't do some sort of performance pay system using that structures . Basically , I'm gonna pay out X amount of dollars in labor , even if you do it under budget so it's an opportunity for them to basically make more than their base rate . You can do some sort of bonus program like that to kind of incentivize those matters .

So that's what I would look at , especially if you're struggling with those folks keeping under budgeted hours . It's the first thing really gets your pricing down so you generate budgeted hours .

Then getting a work order to your crew so they know the expectation and what's expected of them to paint this project , what's the timeframe looking like , and then , once you get those two items down , then you can look at maybe doing some sort of performance pay or bonus system to incentivize those painters to beat budgets .

So we do follow a seasonal trend , depending on the holidays , time of the year , all that kind of stuff , the weather . How do most painting companies stay financially sound with all of the seasonality in this industry ? Do you have any strategies that you recommend on that side ?

You know customer reactivations , doing some sort of deals at the end of the year when you know things are gonna slow down to try to reactivate your customers .

I've seen a lot of clients have success with that , whether you know , having some sort of some sort of compelling offer in those slower times to kind of generate , you know , interior work or whatever the case might be , or even having another service line .

Some folks have started doing a Christmas tree , or not Christmas tree but a Christmas lighting to kind of have that service line . That offsets , you know , the fact that they're gonna be kind of if they're doing mostly exteriors , they're gonna be kind of not have that much work to do in the winter , so they offset that with some sort of additional service .

But yeah , I think , especially for the folks that have been around for a while to see a lot of pain businesses they've been around for years . They have a huge customer list of like hundreds of people they've worked with , but they're not like re-engaging those folks on a periodic basis .

I get creative with your services . I love those solutions . So let's say that I'm a painting business owner and I open up my books and get all my numbers plugged in and they're way off from the numbers that you're proposing here , right ? I'm sure this pops up more often than you think . So all my numbers are in the red .

Where do I put my time and energy first ? What number or what slice of that pie should I be working on improving first ? That'll help get all those numbers moving towards the green in the future .

So that's the step one is just make sure you're working off of good data before you try to make any analysis on what's happening by having somebody that knows what they're doing . Take a look at , verify everything's been reconciled and categorized appropriately . That's definitely step one .

And then step two assuming that that's done and you look in and everything's read . Usually the first step let's just say your profit , your bottom line profit is super low . It's probably a gross profit thing . Your gross profit's probably super low .

And so the first thing to look at is pricing . Like , how are you pricing correctly ? Are you marking up things basically 100% right ? Cause if you're going for a 50% profit margin , you need to mark everything up by 100% , cause you need to basically charge the customer double what it takes you to produce it . So that's step one is looking at your pricing .

How are you arriving at your price Once that is figured out , if you've determined that either you're doing that correctly or you fix that and your gross profit is still low . It might be because efficiency . So what are your ? Are your crews painting efficiency ? Are your crews painting efficiently ? That would be the next thing to look at .

Are they abiding by the budgeted hours that you give them ? Are you giving them budgeted hours to work off of ? And so that would be the next place to look . And then , once you've done that , if your profitability is still low , then you look at your overhead costs . What are you paying for on your overhead ?

You know and this might be sometimes it's not necessarily overhead costs , it might just be your revenue's not high enough . Maybe you just need to get more work , turn on the marketing more , so it's kind of a depends on what's going on there . It could be that it's not often that people are just paying a lot in overhead costs unnecessarily . It does happen .

But you know , go through . I would say , go through and develop a budget . You know , line by line . What are you paying for for overhead costs ? Do you need it to run your business ? And then you know it . Also consider advertising . What are you spending on advertising ?

Maybe it's just that you need to grow your business and that's what , and that overhead costs being a high percentage of your overall revenue will . That problem will disappear if you just increase your revenue and so yeah . So that's basically the run out .

Look at your pricing , look at your efficiency for your jobs your jobs then look at your overhead costs and marketing which you're putting into your marketing and then that should hopefully resolve your profitability issues .

Then , if you're still having issues there , if your profit on your P&L says you're good , but you're having cash flow issues , like no cash on the bank you look at your profit and loss , it's like , oh , it looks like I'm doing good , but I don't understand because my cash is super low Then it might be some sort of a collection issue where you're maybe

invoicing your customers but you're not actually collecting from them . This is especially true for a commercial , but it also can be an issue with residential if they're just sending an email but not collecting right after the job is done . So , figure , making sure you're collecting from your customers as quickly as you can .

And then also look at how are you paying your bills ? Are you paying your bills ? Are you basically delaying your bills as much as you can to optimize your cash flow ? Because the whole game with cash flow is get paid faster from your customers and then delay cash outflow from everyone else . So this is a game you can play there to improve your cash flow .

And then from there , Cash flow can be an issue for the commercial side of things , and it's just basically understanding how to play that game of cash flow getting paid faster , slash , delaying outflow of cash .

And then there's some other hacks that you can do , like with your Sherwin-Williams pay it down with your credit card to extended another 30 days , those kinds of things making sure you have a Sherwin-Williams credit account to begin with and then stacking it with your credit card . So there's certain tactics you can do to improve cash flow there .

And then the third thing I think would be marketing . A lot of folks are sometimes scared to put money into marketing . I don't know if scared is the right word , but hesitant to put money into marketing because they think it's too expensive . But as long as they're getting that 8x return , it's definitely worth it .

So there's a , I guess , a kind of a hesitance to put money into marketing . But as long as you should be definitely cautious , making sure you're getting that ROI , you can track it to make sure you are , but you shouldn't just like not try it .

If you are aggressive growth , you're looking to scale , you're looking to reinvest maybe 10% , 12% at most . And so if we're looking at a company let's say you're doing a million a year should be roughly about $4,000 to $8,000 a month , about $50,000 to $100,000 a year . Do those numbers align with what you typically preach to your clients ? Hey , absolutely .

You know , if you're doing Facebook ads and you're only getting a 4x , a 4x return on investment or 3x return on investment , it's like something needs to change there . It's not very profitable . So , you know , if it's over 10% definitely needs to be . You know , dug into to see what's going on there . But yeah , that's pretty much what we look at as well .

about expectation setting . I think that's the hardest part about anybody's job looking at numbers , right ? So I do have a few more questions for you here . First , are there any tax incentives or tax breaks that you like to inform your clients of ? I'm thinking of things like purchasing a car at the end of the year .

So you're not , let's say , instead of giving your money to the government , you're reinvesting that back into your company . Are there any easy , low-hanging fruit that you like to preach to your clients ?

And then , once you have the S-Corp set up , another low-hanging fruit would be making sure you have an accountable plan , which is just another way of saying a reimbursement plan , so that you're getting reimbursed for all the things that you are using on your personal side .

You're getting reimbursed from the business , not only for you , but you can also do this for your employees . But basically , you know everyone's using their cell phone that's probably yours , but you're not getting reimbursed from your business . You're probably using your vehicle that's yours , but you're not getting a reimbursement from your business .

You're probably using a portion of your house for either a shop or maybe a home office , so , and you might not be getting reimbursed from your business . And so those reimbursements are not only reimbursements but also tax deductions to your business , and that's where the tax savings come in .

So it's a low-hanging fruit S-Corp election when it makes sense , and then an accountable plan set up in the S-Corp to take advantage of those personal use items and then other low-hanging fruit .

I mean there's a lot of other tax strategies out there that kind of get more and more complex , but those are two that are just like pretty much most people can easily take advantage of .

And it's not just numbers . You also have the strategy behind it , which I think a lot of people overlook when they're looking to just hire a bookkeeper which they look at . You know , hey , let's make sure my numbers are online .

The benefit of hiring somebody like Bookkeeping for Painters is you guys actually understand the nuances of the painting industry at a very granular level . So if somebody's interested in potentially looking at how you can help them , where would they start ?

And then also , if it makes sense to work together , we can also talk about that . And you know , basically it's a three step process , you know . We first identify what do we need to track on the business , what decision , what information do you need to make decisions ?

And then , step two , we deliver that information to you so you can make decisions in your business to get to the next level and then open up . That will hopefully open up your profitability . And then step three is to protect those profits through proactive tax planning . So you're , you know , getting your tax liability as close to zero as possible .

So there's a lot of different services in there , but just as a rough rule of thumb you can say expect to pay between one and 3% of your revenue for those types of services .

So you're protecting them from being audited , which we all know how fun that it can be .

We have several clients who are using his services today that have personally reached out to say that they would not be in the position they are today if it weren't for them . So we can vouch for his services . Thank you , daniel , again , for your time today . Guys , cheers , thanks .