Meet Your Private Tutor
Hi. I'm Lake (short for Lake Girl)

6 years employed part-time as bookkeeper for small business and/or accounting technician private client services and/or seasonal tax professional at H&R Block

6 years part-time self-employed specializing in Canadian sole proprietor bookkeeping and tax preparation

3 years part-time estate executor experience settling estates and distributing the property to beneficiaries

3 years part-time financial caretaker experience for seniors providing assistance in managing their personal day-to-day monetary affairs

3 years full-time self-employed public Canadian small business experience in bookkeeping, management accounting/reporting, and basic tax preparation

20 years corporate head office experience in budgets, forecasting, financial planning, general accounting




Bachelor of Commerce, University of Calgary

CPB Certified Professional Bookkeeper Member, Institute of Professional Bookkeepers of Canada, Prince George Chapter (see Code of Conduct)

Senior Member, Canadian Bookkeepers Association (see Code of Ethics)

Member, National Bookkeepers Association (U.S.)

Past Member, National Association of Certified Professional Bookkeepers (U.S.)

Member, American Institute of Professional Bookkeepers

Member, QuickBooks ProAdvisor Program - Canada

Self development - numerous economics and professional accounting courses through the University of Calgary, CGA Association of Alberta and H&R Block

In the media, 5 Tips to Manage Your Books Yourself, Mompreneur Magazine, January/February, 2010, p. 18-20 www.themompreneur.com

Monthly In The Forum column for IPBC's Topics and Tips Newsletter beginning December 2010. In February 2011, I was invited to be the editor of IPBC's newsletter. :0) I accepted ... and then forgot to include my February column in the newsletter! :0(

Whew! Now that's over with, we can have a chin-wag. ;-)



As long as we are chatting ... you should know that I dislike shopping ... I find it exhausting ... and I like to rearrange furniture a few times a year.

I'm telling you this because I don't want you to be upset when I continually move the navigation buttons around on you ... it's just what I do ... I can't help myself ;0)

Here's how I see it. The navigation buttons on the left hand side of this site are like store front windows or store displays. No store would leave the same display year after year, season after season. So during the summer, I will likely move "The Questions" button towards the top ... and towards the bottom during tax time or if I'm busy. The same goes for "The Tax" except in reverse. You get the idea, don't you?

You can also expect information to move around on different pages sometimes. Why? Two reasons.

First off, I really don't like sites that put just a small amount of information on a page and make me keep clicking to continue reading the article ... I know it keeps search engines happy which is important ... but so are the visitors to my site. Many of my pages are long because I discuss what I have to say on the topic all on one page ... no clicking.

Second, I have grouped like information together on a page ... and add to it as I find information on the subject. After a while, there is too much information on one page ... even for me. When this happens, I pull a certain segment of information and give it its own page.

Right now I've just switched the site from a two column format to a three column format. :0( I apologize if you don't like change and tinkering. :0( ... but sometimes I just can't help myself. Just think of my quirky habit like the weather. It changes all the time ... and you can't control it! :0)

Why do I have pictures depicting lake life or teacups on this site ... instead of pictures that relate to the topic of money and bookkeeping?

An important website design concept is to have images that match your topic ... but here's the thing. We bookkeepers often have our noses buried in numbers.

We forget to lift our heads up and take in our surrounding environment.

We work from home so have less interruptions in a day ... and interaction with other people.

When you come to visit my website, I want you to feel like you've had a good chat, a cup of tea (or coffee) and a bit of break to boot ... Of course I want you leave with whatever information you dropped by for too!

I also want you to feel like you've actually met me ... as opposed to those web sites where you have no idea who is behind them.

Pictures of lake life help me to exhale and relax ... and keep my goal of semi-retirement and living at the lake alive. I've finally accepted the reality that I am unlikely to be able to fully retire in my sixties.

Pictures of tea cups remind me to take a "Tea Break" ... because I actually use this website as my reference "goto" site too!

Submit pictures of your goals ... or your favorite tea cup

If you have a picture that helps you focus on your goal ... and you would like to see it published on this website ... so you can look at it often to keep you focused on your long term goal ... or a picture of your favorite tea or coffee cup ...

... just go to The Bookkeeping Resources Forum ... and submit it. I'll publish it.

You can bookmark it and visit it as many times as you want.

If the picture is of a place, it would be great to know where the picture was taken. If you want to put your goal in writing so you are more committed to it, join me as I publicly list and report regularly on my 2011 goals.

Speaking of goals and breaks ...

Because I work from home, one of the things I try to do ... and I'm not always successful ... is to have what Julia Cameron calls "An Artist Date" ... an excursion. Julia's dates were meant to be solitary but I use them to have contact with other people.

I can do whatever ... as long as it gets me out of the office and my home. Here's what happened during an excursion in the summer of 2010.

When I was a kid, we used to spend a lot of summer days strolling along the beach, skipping stones, going to look at all the fancy boats moored at the marina.

We also had to ... no ifs and or buts ... take Red Cross swimming lessons. It didn't matter if it was pouring rain, windy with the waves coming at you, cold ... you were not allowed to miss your swimming lesson. I often came out of the water with purple lips, the rest of me turning blue and shivering.

If the weather was cold and rainy ... and we weren't taking our swimming lesson ... all the kids on our block could make a monopoly game last a week if we had to! We also hung out reading the Hardy Boys ... as the boys outnumbered me, I didn't get to read Nancy Drew ... or the mounds of comic books stored in the old ice box.

Flash forward again to "Our Excellent Adventure". In addition to a few local stores, we also visited Fort St. James National Historic Site, an old Hudson Bay outpost.

My favorite parts were the penny candy that isn't a penny anymore, the old fashioned homemade lemon drop cookies made in the old wood stove, and the swing.

Sometimes as adults we take ourselves so seriously ... at least I do. ;0) Swinging made me remember what it was like to just take in the moment with not a care in the world ... and the biggest challenge was how high could you make your swing go. I used to swing for hours ... standing, sitting, doubles ... but my swing went a lot higher than this one. Loved it!

The only thing missing were the paper cut out dolls ... do you remember them? All in all, our excellent adventure was ... a perfect summer day.

The majority of the information on this site comes from my desire to gather all my own personal reference notes and place them all in one place for easy access.

While learning to get this site up and running, I do my best to ensure my "notes" are accurate, complete and do not infringe on others' copyrights ... but I am still learning.

I make these pages available for your use with the understanding that I cannot be held liable for errors and/or omissions. Please make yourself familiar with my site policies prior to relying on any of the information on this site.

It is my sincere hope that this site provides you with useful, practical information to assist you with your business.

Stay tuned .... there will be more to come ... at some point ... on a day when I feel like sharing / talking about myself.

So until I'm in a chatty mood, I'll share a picture of two of my best friends. They originally started working at Lakeshore Bookkeeping Services as bookkeepers-in-training. However, it soon became evident that their talents leaned more towards the people side of the business. Both are happy in their positions as Greeters. ;-)

The good news is ... you can ask your bookkeeping question ... for free or in private ... on another page on this site. Just click on The Questions tab on the left hand side of the navigation bar. :0)

Your email address will be kept private. I will never publish your email address. It will only be used for the purposes that you intended. It will never be sold, rented, or traded.