September 12th is an auspicious date at Luma because it is our official “birth date” of the Portland Oregon bookkeeping and accounting firm based on our original registration with the Oregon Secretary of State. Let’s celebrate with a highlights reel of the first full year of our small business bookkeeping firm, shall we?
September 2024
- Luma Accounting becomes legally OFFICIAL, providing bookkeeping, accounting, job costing, and financial clarity services to small businesses across the U.S.
- Working to bring Fox Hills Accounting and Raw Books systems together
October
- lumaaccounting.com goes live
- Set up an official CRM
November
- Attended our first Professional Women in Building (PWB) event
- Implemented Lanterns (pods) where Lantern Leaders (client managers) are responsible for specific Lightkeepers (bookkeepers) – client work is shifted between Lightkeepers to avoid cross-Lantern work
December
- Experience an operational emergency (* more on this below)
- Took on a client with unique needs that really expands our technical prowess (** more below)
- Held the first Luma strategic planning session and The. Strategic. Plan. is born
- Distributed the first branded merch (t-shirts!) to #TeamLuma
January 2025
- Hosted a live session entitled “To Partner or Not to Partner” in an accounting online community
- Processed 1099s for Luma (1st time) and Raw Books and Fox Hills Accounting (last time)
- Became a Ramp accounting Partner
February
- Joined the Home Building Association (HBA) of Greater Portland, along with the Professional Women in Building council
- Attended the Portland Home & Garden Show for the first time as HBA members
March
- Got interviewed on the South Offices podcast
- Claimed victory on Luma’s first year end process!!
- Onboarded our first HBA client
- Became “Train the Trainer” certified by Ramp so that we can onboard clients ourselves
April
- Added Lantern Leader team member #5
- Presented “Don’t Paint Yourself into a Corner!” at the Painting Contractors Association of Portland
- Completed the “Unreasonable Hospitality” program to dive deeper into ensuring BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER.
- Partnership operating agreement is signed
May
- Attended the 1st annual WAVE conference in Seattle
- Got interviewed on the “Bookkeepers On Fire” podcast
June
- Added Lightkeeper team member #6
- Released the “Luma Launchpad” – a video series designed as a reference for newer team members
- Created a “social media strategy” document and started to (somewhat) follow it
- Was a panelist at one of the Ramp Partner Summit sessions
- Attend the Woodard Scaling New Heights conference for the 2nd year in a row
July
- Added an Operations team member
- Attend Jason Staat’s AI Summit conference in L.A.
- Hosted a Compensation Roundtable for an accounting online community
August
- Made first charitable donation on behalf of Luma – supported the Home Building Foundation’s Building to Scale Pre-Apprentice program
- Created guidelines for expectations of Lantern Leaders and Lightkeepers
- Published the first post of Luma Musings blog
September
- Hosted a 2-day meeting with PNW women accounting peers
- Added an Operations Manager (“Luminator”) team member
- Attended the CatalystPDX conference in Portland
Looking back on the year, September through November 2024 signaled the end of “merger mania” tasks that consumed everyone’s time for almost a year and a half… and then December 2024 through March 2025 provided the challenge of the first year end as a combined firm which included significant review, then testing, then tweaking of all the year end task templates pulled together from the original firms.
Spring and summer provided a respite as no major deadlines were looming and everyone got to fall into a rhythm with normal client work – everyone was able to start thinking about any efficiencies that might be gained.
With the addition of an Operations Manager (the “Luminator”!) in September, some responsibilities that resided with the Luminaries (Partners) began to shift over which allowed them to focus more on efforts designed to attract new clients and new team members alike. A whole new level of fun begins!
* Keeping in the spirit of a diary-style blog, it is worth noting that we had a significant hiccup happen in December 2024 – one Tuesday it became apparent that the onboarding of a new client had not gone as planned. This caused the team to hold a series of meetings with the client to assess what had gone wrong and make a plan to get everything back on track ASAP. We were able to save the relationship with the client, and we reassessed – and changed – our client onboarding process to ensure that there were multiple eyes on every client onboarding to truly ensure BEST. EXPERIENCE. EVER.
** We got approached by a potential client that had an unusual situation where they own many assets that are leased back to the parent company. For 30 years the tracking had been done by spreadsheets and Quickbooks Desktop and the entire process was completely manual. We looked for existing software that might provide the functionality that was needed, but anything that came close also came with a fairly huge price tag. We had heard about AirTable and decided to try setting up a custom database that could then utilize automations to make payments and send invoices, as well as hold all of the information needed to distinguish each asset. Fast forward to present and all asset information is easily retrieved, loan payments are sent at the touch of a button and the invoices to the lessee go out the door via email automatically. Technology for the win!!
Need reliable bookkeeping, accounting, or job costing support for your Portland or U.S.-based business? Head on over to Luma Accounting today and fill out our form to schedule a free consultation. Want to continue to follow our growth? Follow Luma Accounting on LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram.
