# How to Automate Accounting Workflows

> A NachoTuesday interview — the C-Suite Insights series from NachoNacho, the B2B SaaS and AI
> marketplace. In conversation with Darell Brown, Founder, ProProject Bookkeeping.

- **Page:** https://nachonacho.com/nachotuesday/video/how-to-automate-accounting-workflows
- **Guest:** Darell Brown, Founder, ProProject Bookkeeping
- **Guest on LinkedIn:** https://www.linkedin.com/in/dbrown2013/
- **Recorded:** 2026-05-05
- **Watch:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsZaz5OF1yk

## Summary

In this NachoNacho interview, Darell Brown explains how project-based businesses can improve financial visibility by aligning their accounting systems with their actual operational workflows. He discusses common issues like overreliance on spreadsheets, inaccurate project tracking, and poor cash flow forecasting, while highlighting how customized accounting workflows, automation, and project-level reporting can help companies make smarter decisions, improve financial discipline, and avoid costly surprises. Most accounting systems are built for tax compliance, not operational decision-making. Poor project tracking often causes cash flow problems and inaccurate reporting. Customized workflows and project-based accounting improve financial visibility. Overusing spreadsheets creates delays, errors, and disconnected systems. Better financial controls and reporting help companies operate more efficiently and attract investors.

## Full transcript

Host: Good afternoon, everybody, and welcome to another Nacho Tuesday. Today I have Derell here with ProProject Bookkeeping. Without further ado, we'd love it if you could introduce yourself and your company. Derell Brown: Hello, my name is Derell Brown. I am the founder of ProProject Bookkeeping, which started in 2017. ProProject Bookkeeping helps project-based businesses get financial clarity. We provide virtual bookkeeping and project accounting to companies with project-based revenue streams. This could include consultants, real estate developers, event planners, and production companies—basically, anyone that has high-volume, project-based income needs. What we do is help clients streamline their bookkeeping processes, establish financial controls, and connect their financial reporting to how their business actually operates. Host: Great. Tell us a little bit more about your background. How did you get around to starting this company? Derell Brown: For the 12 years prior, I worked in various types of accounting and project accounting. The bulk of that time was actually spent working for a movie studio, which was run by a real estate developer. All that is to say that I just have a wide range of experience with project accounting, working with different systems and different processes. After that, I worked for a lighting designer for a couple of years and then started freelancing. That went pretty successfully, so I decided to start my own business. Host: There you go, bringing it all together into one. Why do so many businesses feel like their financial reports don't actually reflect how their business operates on a day-to-day basis? Derell Brown: For the most part, I feel like when you open an accounting system right out of the box, it's meant more for tax compliance. It's not really meant to help you make day-to-day financial decisions. Unless you really take the time to customize it to your needs, you're going to have a lot of reports that don't tell you much about your business. It will give you a general overview, and your CPA will be able to file taxes with it, but it won't help when you're trying to figure out why—if you grossed a million dollars and had $500,000 in expenses—you don't actually have $500,000 in cash. To understand that, you need to delve into those numbers and figure out what's going on. Host: Definitely. At what point does this misalignment between systems start to really hurt the decision-making process for companies? Derell Brown: The first thing most business owners notice is the cash flow part of it. They see that they have a lot of net income on paper, but when they look at their bank account, they only have about half that amount. They try to figure out where the discrepancy is, and that's when you need to delve into each project. Let's say, for example, you have three projects that are wrapping up. You look at the Excel sheet that a project manager is keeping, and you see that one project just netted out—it didn't lose any money, but it didn't make any money either. Then you look at the next one and see that you actually lost a bit of money, but unfortunately, you didn't find out until after the project wrapped. Maybe you did okay and made a little money on the third one, but those first two are really going to cost you as far as cash flow goes. Host: Do you have any tips in terms of what businesses could do to stay ahead of this, or any rules of thumb that you would recommend for companies to avoid some of these financial pitfalls? Derell Brown: I would definitely recommend establishing better workflows and better systems. Set up your accounting system to actually reflect how your events or projects run. Make sure your P&L (Profit and Loss statement) uses your actual business terminology so that when you run a project P&L report, you can see exactly where each expense went, where your income came in, and where the gaps are. In addition to that, you want to make sure you're looking at these reports while a project is ongoing. I usually suggest reviewing them weekly or every two weeks, depending on how intense the paperwork and volume are. That way, if a cost looks off or if you're spending too much, you can catch it while it's happening as opposed to after the project has already wrapped. Host: Great. What does the process look like when you get involved with companies? Where do you typically start with your clients? Derell Brown: I start by learning what is currently going on with their company. I have a specific workflow review process. I get a sense of their current workflows in terms of how bills get into the system, how they get approved, how they get paid, and how they are categorized. If they have spreadsheet budgets, I look at how they are categorizing items there. Then, I try to take what they're already doing and design their accounting system around it. If they're using certain terminology in their budgets, I make sure it is an actual line item on their P&L so they don't have to guess. Once I do that, I put that system to work and ensure everyone is trained on it. Once the system is running, everyone knows what happens from start to finish. They will know that once a bill comes in, it gets entered into the system, sent to the correct project manager for approval, and then I will initiate payment. Finally, the owner knows that their final approval will send that payment out. Host: Great. So you're more than just a traditional bookkeeper; you work a lot more on the strategic side, setting up processes and helping them clean everything up. Derell Brown: Yeah, it's really about making sure their project workflow doesn't have any hiccups. The worst thing is being in the middle of a project when something goes wrong and you have to make an emergency payment because no one knows what's happening. If someone is on the floor at an event, they don't have to wonder what I'm doing because we already have an established process in place. Host: Great. What other common mistakes do you identify when you first come across these companies? Derell Brown: The main thing is honestly the overuse of spreadsheets. If your accounting system isn't built properly, I understand why people use spreadsheets to fill those gaps, but those spreadsheets often cause severe delays. To use the same example, you won't know that a project is over budget because you haven't had a chance to look at the actual transactions and identify them as belonging to that specific project until it's already done. People unfortunately get a little too married to that manual system. They don't quite understand what a good accounting system can do for them, so they end up stuck in that loop longer than they should. Another example that isn't necessarily project-related is invoicing. In some instances, people use an Excel template and keep a manual Excel list of all the invoices they've sent out, tracking when they followed up or when the payment came in. A very simple fix I implement is creating the invoice directly in the system and sending it out to the client. I make sure the appropriate project manager is BCC'd, and they also get an automated weekly report giving them the status of the invoice. If it's unpaid, they see it's unpaid; if it's been paid, they see exactly when. They get that report weekly so they don't have to guess, make a spreadsheet, or wonder what's going on. Host: Do you have any tips around the cash buffer a company should keep when managing multiple projects like this, especially if they have disconnected systems and aren't getting real-time information on inflows and outflows? Derell Brown: It really depends on your specific project flow and the company, but I would generally say maybe 20% to 30% of your project budget. However, that truly depends on how your inflows and outflows work, especially if there is a gap in timing. My advice is to look at the full cash flow of the project right from the start and map out with your client when you will need those payments to come in so they aren't spread too far apart. Host: Having all these spreadsheets and disconnected tools really creates an illusion of control. Do you have any tips for automations or workflows that clients could set up, or that you possibly help them with? Derell Brown: Establishing solid workflows in general is my main focus with all of my clients so that we never have to guess what the other is doing. Once I see a contract go out, I know I need to create that deposit invoice. Once that deposit invoice is created, we know that payment will come in within a week to 30 days depending on the client, and we can plan the next steps from there. I would say always look closely at your company's project flow and use that to create a realistic workflow so there are no hiccups. Host: What happens operationally when leaders can't trust their numbers? How does that show up? Derell Brown: I feel like this is happening a lot lately, especially with layoffs or companies looking for investors. Imagine you are pitching to an investor and you hand them your P&L. The P&L isn't inherently bad, but it shows margins that don't make sense simply because the data wasn't put into the right bucket. For instance, when starting with a new client, I frequently see things booked as general operating expenses that are actually direct project expenses. Because it's not rolled up into the correct project bucket, an investor looks at the operating expenses and says, "Wow, why are your operating expenses 50% of your income? That doesn't make any sense." Then we have to go back and trace what happened. An investor is not going to want to sit around and wait for you to sort that out. What could have been a lucrative investment is now lost because the books didn't reflect the truth of how your business runs. Host: What other kinds of red flags do you typically find, or what might an investor notice that an operator might miss? Derell Brown: It's really about disconnected systems that cause discrepancies in the numbers. The overall annual numbers might be correct when you file your taxes, but when you look at the data on a month-over-month basis, the highs and lows look completely off. Take a company that deals with deferred revenue, for example. You have to track that on a month-to-month basis. If it's a product company shipping items out, they need to verify what actually shipped and recognize that revenue in the correct month. If you aren't doing that properly and only recognize revenue every three months, an investor is going to look at those empty months and say, "They didn't make any income during these months; this doesn't look like something I want to invest in." You can try to explain why you operate that way, but it still might scare an investor off. Host: Yep, it all comes down to financial discipline at some point. Derell Brown: Exactly—financial discipline and financial controls. Host: You can have a great company, but if it's not being run correctly financially, that's usually a red flag that it's not going anywhere. Derell Brown: Absolutely. You'd be surprised—I primarily use QuickBooks in my practice, but I've also worked with ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning systems). These systems handle a lot of company-wide operations beyond just financials. I often see companies that haven't built them out to their full capabilities. When they are properly utilized, they are amazing systems that offer incredible detail in financial reporting and customization. But to get there, you really have to sit down, think about how your company runs, determine what could be done better, and translate that into the system. Host: What is project-based accounting, and how is it fundamentally different from standard bookkeeping? A lot of people just set up QuickBooks, keep it semi-updated, and call it a day. Derell Brown: The funny part about working with QuickBooks is that I often start with clients who have distinct project accounting needs, but they aren't utilizing the system for it. The first thing I realize is that the project accounting module in QuickBooks isn't even turned on. The very first thing I do is literally go in and turn it on, and they notice the difference immediately. With regular bookkeeping or general financial accounting, everything just rolls up into a neat, general bucket. It gives you the overall numbers for the company—your total income, general cost of goods sold, and operating expenses. Where project accounting differs is that it shows exactly how you are performing per project. You still enter the same information, but on your bills or income statements, there is a specific field to assign that transaction to a project. Over time, you can run detailed reports against that specific project. I usually set it up so I create that report once, and then it automatically generates and emails it to the project manager or stakeholders every week so they have actionable data. Host: From a high-level, 30,000-foot view, what does a well-aligned system actually look like across tools like QuickBooks, invoicing, and project tracking? How do you wrap all of those together? Derell Brown: In a tool like QuickBooks, that integrated project reporting is the most important piece. You want to ensure everything rolls up beautifully into a project P&L report that can be sent to any stakeholder—whether that's the project manager, the company owner, or the client. With most of my clients who have high-volume project accounting needs, we have to perform a financial audit at the end of every consulting project or event. We have to deliver a project report, a transaction report, proof of all payments, and copies of the bills themselves. Having an accounting system that automatically organizes this information into easy-to-read buckets makes that process immensely easier. Something that could easily take someone a few months to piece together manually can be generated in just three to four days with a good system. I connect a few different systems for billing and payments, so when it's time to close out, it's very simple to go in and extract all the necessary data for the audit. Host: Once these systems are live, how does that change how operators or founders think about their finances in general? Derell Brown: They quickly realize they have far more visual access to their information. A lot of times, if an owner is solely looking at a final report, they might not understand the operational context behind the numbers. One practice I like to implement is ensuring the owner has final approval authority before payments are sent out. Just going through that workflow right before a bill is paid provides a lot of insight they wouldn't otherwise have. For instance, they can look at a payment, see every bill attached to it, see which project manager approved it, and see exactly which project it is being charged against. Host: In your experience working with clients, what is the biggest "aha" moment when they realize they finally have accurate financial visibility and can change how they operate? Derell Brown: The number one thing is usually cash flow—specifically, being able to accurately tell someone exactly what their cash situation will look like several months down the road. We are in May right now, and I can tell a client what their September is going to look like. Many business owners don't find out what September looks like until August 20th, and then they wonder why they are just finding out. I can look at their current project flow in May and warn them if September is going to look tight. That is usually the moment where they say, "Wow, we actually have real systems and organization now." In addition to that, you want to make sure you're looking at these reports while a project is ongoing. I usually suggest reviewing them weekly or every two weeks, depending on how intense the paperwork and volume are. That way, if a cost looks off or if you're spending too much, you can catch it while it's happening as opposed to after the project has already wrapped. Host: Great. What does the process look like when you get involved with companies? Where do you typically start with your clients? Derell Brown: I start by learning what is currently going on with their company. I have a specific workflow review process. I get a sense of their current workflows in terms of how bills get into the system, how they get approved, how they get paid, and how they are categorized. If they have spreadsheet budgets, I look at how they are categorizing items there. Then, I try to take what they're already doing and design their accounting system around it. If they're using certain terminology in their budgets, I make sure it is an actual line item on their P&L so they don't have to guess. Once I do that, I put that system to work and ensure everyone is trained on it. Once the system is running, everyone knows what happens from start to finish. They will know that once a bill comes in, it gets entered into the system, sent to the correct project manager for approval, and then I will initiate payment. Finally, the owner knows that their final approval will send that payment out. Host: Great. So you're more than just a traditional bookkeeper; you work a lot more on the strategic side, setting up processes and helping them clean everything up. Derell Brown: Yeah, it's really about making sure their project workflow doesn't have any hiccups. The worst thing is being in the middle of a project when something goes wrong and you have to make an emergency payment because no one knows what's happening. If someone is on the floor at an event, they don't have to wonder what I'm doing because we already have an established process in place. Host: Great. What other common mistakes do you identify when you first come across these companies? Derell Brown: The main thing is honestly the overuse of spreadsheets. If your accounting system isn't built properly, I understand why people use spreadsheets to fill those gaps, but those spreadsheets often cause severe delays. To use the same example, you won't know that a project is over budget because you haven't had a chance to look at the actual transactions and identify them as belonging to that specific project until it's already done. People unfortunately get a little too married to that manual system. They don't quite understand what a good accounting system can do for them, so they end up stuck in that loop longer than they should. Another example that isn't necessarily project-related is invoicing. In some instances, people use an Excel template and keep a manual Excel list of all the invoices they've sent out, tracking when they followed up or when the payment came in. A very simple fix I implement is creating the invoice directly in the system and sending it out to the client. I make sure the appropriate project manager is BCC'd, and they also get an automated weekly report giving them the status of the invoice. If it's unpaid, they see it's unpaid; if it's been paid, they see exactly when. They get that report weekly so they don't have to guess, make a spreadsheet, or wonder what's going on. Host: Do you have any tips around the cash buffer a company should keep when managing multiple projects like this, especially if they have disconnected systems and aren't getting real-time information on inflows and outflows? Derell Brown: It really depends on your specific project flow and the company, but I would generally say maybe 20% to 30% of your project budget. However, that truly depends on how your inflows and outflows work, especially if there is a gap in timing. My advice is to look at the full cash flow of the project right from the start and map out with your client when you will need those payments to come in so they aren't spread too far apart. Host: Having all these spreadsheets and disconnected tools really creates an illusion of control. Do you have any tips for automations or workflows that clients could set up, or that you possibly help them with? Derell Brown: Establishing solid workflows in general is my main focus with all of my clients so that we never have to guess what the other is doing. Once I see a contract go out, I know I need to create that deposit invoice. Once that deposit invoice is created, we know that payment will come in within a week to 30 days depending on the client, and we can plan the next steps from there. I would say always look closely at your company's project flow and use that to create a realistic workflow so there are no hiccups. Host: What happens operationally when leaders can't trust their numbers? How does that show up? Derell Brown: I feel like this is happening a lot lately, especially with layoffs or companies looking for investors. Imagine you are pitching to an investor and you hand them your P&L. The P&L isn't inherently bad, but it shows margins that don't make sense simply because the data wasn't put into the right bucket. For instance, when starting with a new client, I frequently see things booked as general operating expenses that are actually direct project expenses. Because it's not rolled up into the correct project bucket, an investor looks at the operating expenses and says, "Wow, why are your operating expenses 50% of your income? That doesn't make any sense." Then we have to go back and trace what happened. An investor is not going to want to sit around and wait for you to sort that out. What could have been a lucrative investment is now lost because the books didn't reflect the truth of how your business runs. Host: What other kinds of red flags do you typically find, or what might an investor notice that an operator might miss? Derell Brown: It's really about disconnected systems that cause discrepancies in the numbers. The overall annual numbers might be correct when you file your taxes, but when you look at the data on a month-over-month basis, the highs and lows look completely off. Take a company that deals with deferred revenue, for example. You have to track that on a month-to-month basis. If it's a product company shipping items out, they need to verify what actually shipped and recognize that revenue in the correct month. If you aren't doing that properly and only recognize revenue every three months, an investor is going to look at those empty months and say, "They didn't make any income during these months; this doesn't look like something I want to invest in." You can try to explain why you operate that way, but it still might scare an investor off. Host: Yep, it all comes down to financial discipline at some point. Derell Brown: Exactly—financial discipline and financial controls. Host: You can have a great company, but if it's not being run correctly financially, that's usually a red flag that it's not going anywhere. Derell Brown: Absolutely. You'd be surprised—I primarily use QuickBooks in my practice, but I've also worked with ERPs (Enterprise Resource Planning systems). These systems handle a lot of company-wide operations beyond just financials. I often see companies that haven't built them out to their full capabilities. When they are properly utilized, they are amazing systems that offer incredible detail in financial reporting and customization. But to get there, you really have to sit down, think about how your company runs, determine what could be done better, and translate that into the system. Host: What is project-based accounting, and how is it fundamentally different from standard bookkeeping? A lot of people just set up QuickBooks, keep it semi-updated, and call it a day. Derell Brown: The funny part about working with QuickBooks is that I often start with clients who have distinct project accounting needs, but they aren't utilizing the system for it. The first thing I realize is that the project accounting module in QuickBooks isn't even turned on. The very first thing I do is literally go in and turn it on, and they notice the difference immediately. With regular bookkeeping or general financial accounting, everything just rolls up into a neat, general bucket. It gives you the overall numbers for the company—your total income, general cost of goods sold, and operating expenses. Where project accounting differs is that it shows exactly how you are performing per project. You still enter the same information, but on your bills or income statements, there is a specific field to assign that transaction to a project. Over time, you can run detailed reports against that specific project. I usually set it up so I create that report once, and then it automatically generates and emails it to the project manager or stakeholders every week so they have actionable data. Host: From a high-level, 30,000-foot view, what does a well-aligned system actually look like across tools like QuickBooks, invoicing, and project tracking? How do you wrap all of those together? Derell Brown: In a tool like QuickBooks, that integrated project reporting is the most important piece. You want to ensure everything rolls up beautifully into a project P&L report that can be sent to any stakeholder—whether that's the project manager, the company owner, or the client. With most of my clients who have high-volume project accounting needs, we have to perform a financial audit at the end of every consulting project or event. We have to deliver a project report, a transaction report, proof of all payments, and copies of the bills themselves. Having an accounting system that automatically organizes this information into easy-to-read buckets makes that process immensely easier. Something that could easily take someone a few months to piece together manually can be generated in just three to four days with a good system. I connect a few different systems for billing and payments, so when it's time to close out, it's very simple to go in and extract all the necessary data for the audit. Host: Once these systems are live, how does that change how operators or founders think about their finances in general? Derell Brown: They quickly realize they have far more visual access to their information. A lot of times, if an owner is solely looking at a final report, they might not understand the operational context behind the numbers. One practice I like to implement is ensuring the owner has final approval authority before payments are sent out. Just going through that workflow right before a bill is paid provides a lot of insight they wouldn't otherwise have. For instance, they can look at a payment, see every bill attached to it, see which project manager approved it, and see exactly which project it is being charged against. Host: In your experience working with clients, what is the biggest "aha" moment when they realize they finally have accurate financial visibility and can change how they operate? Derell Brown: The number one thing is usually cash flow—specifically, being able to accurately tell someone exactly what their cash situation will look like several months down the road. We are in May right now, and I can tell a client what their September is going to look like. Many business owners don't find out what September looks like until August 20th, and then they wonder why they are just finding out. I can look at their current project flow in May and warn them if September is going to look tight. That is usually the moment where they say, "Wow, we actually have real systems and organization now." Host: Yeah, I feel like a lot of people run their businesses playing from behind. Because their accounting isn't up to date, they are forced to make last-minute, reactive decisions while waiting on data. Derell Brown: Exactly. You end up scrambling to react to those situations, whereas knowing months ahead gives you the runway to plan out your strategy and make proactive adjustments. Host: What is your core ICP (Ideal Customer Profile)? What type of client is your ideal customer? Derell Brown: For the most part, it's anyone with project-related income needs. Most of my project-based clients are service or contract-oriented rather than product-based. For example, I work with a real estate developer who doesn't hold physical inventory; everything for a given project is contracted and sourced specifically for that build. I have another client in event production where everything is contracted out to execute that specific event. I also have several consultants across a variety of fields, from marketing to sustainability. Ultimately, it's anyone who has high-volume project accounting needs and needs to bring order to the chaos. Host: If you could give one piece of advice to a growing company whose systems are currently a total mess, where should they start tomorrow? Derell Brown: Just sit down and don't even think about the software or systems yet. Really think about how you actually work on a day-to-day basis. What do you do from start to finish—from opening a sale to closing that sale? Map out that workflow, document the process, and then you can start translating that operational flow into a system-related structure. Host: And, of course, give you a call too, because they might need a little help. Derell Brown: Yes, of course! I forgot the pitch. Host: Don't worry, I got you covered. What's next for ProProject Bookkeeping? Any exciting projects or new service lines you are looking to add in the future? Derell Brown: I'm always working on exciting new projects with clients, though I can't disclose specific details. I'm always looking for ways to customize reporting and am currently exploring some specific AI features. I'm not looking at AI in a generic sense; I want to customize it for each client's unique workflow, and I'm currently working intensely on that with a client right now. They have spent a long time researching software, but their needs are highly specific because they deal with multiple currencies across multiple countries. We are building a tool to help centralize all of this into one neat system, and I'm really excited to see how that builds out. Host: Great. Is there anything else the audience should know about your business, and where can they go to learn more? Derell Brown: You can visit proprosbooks.com. If you want to chat about your books, you can schedule a consultation directly on the website, or use the contact form located at the bottom of every page if you have any quick questions. Host: Awesome. Any final thoughts on why a company should reach out to you today? Derell Brown: We specialize specifically in project accounting, and there aren't too many accounting services out there that focus strictly on that niche. If you have high-volume project accounting needs, please get in touch. Host: I'd have to agree. A lot of providers just do basic, standard bookkeeping. It sounds like you are doing deep, structural workflow setups, which a lot more companies need than they realize. Well, Derell, thanks for coming on today. It was great learning about your business, and I look forward to doing more with you guys. I really appreciate you coming on. Derell Brown: Thank you. Thank you.

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