Black Bird Bookkeeping

The owner had spent more than twenty years doing bookkeeping and payroll for an employer who was liquidating his companies and retiring; he pushed her to start her own, and in 2008 she did. It grew on referrals alone, one client at a time, and she kept the list deliberately small for the first five years. Then came a downtown Solvang office in 2013, the neighboring suite absorbed in 2015, and assistants added as the work arrived. A second office opened in Oakhurst in 2018 to reach Madera County, did not survive the pandemic, and was packed up in the summer of 2020, leaving everything in Solvang.

The work is full-charge bookkeeping, from payables and receivables through to profit and loss and balance sheet reporting, with sales tax returns filed monthly, quarterly or annually. Some of it is the unglamorous end of a back office: checks written and mailed, collection calls placed, prior-period books cleaned up. Payroll is the other half, taken through federal and multi-state filings. All the accounting is done at the firm's own office.