Jamee White CPA - Founder & BAS Agent

How did you start down this career path?

My first job in the accounting industry was an admin assistant in an accounting practice. From there, I moved between a couple of boutique accounting firms, as well as an internal finance manager role, while completing my Bachelor of Accounting and later my CPA.

It wasn’t an easy journey, I balanced part-time work and study while managing a chronic medical condition and multiple surgeries. Coupled with losing my dad as a teenager, I quickly learned the power of resilience.

Eventually, I realised I wanted to create a management accounting/bookkeeping business that bridged the gap between traditional compliance and financial clarity - that’s where I founded NextEra Bookkeeping. While I don’t technically need my CPA qualification to run a bookkeeping practice, I’m proud of it. It’s part of the foundation that allows me to deliver a level of advisory insight that goes beyond the traditional role of a bookkeeper.

What inspires you in your role/industry? Why?

Business owners work incredibly hard, but in most cases they don't have a clear picture of how their business is actually performing. That's a problem I know how to solve, and solving it creates a real, tangible difference in someone's life, their business, and rippling through to their staff & their livelihoods.

I love educating business owners on moving their perspective of bookkeeping as ‘compliance’, or something they ‘have to do’ - into it being the foundations of their numbers telling a story and the opportunities to improve profitability & cash flow.

It’s about helping business owners transition from feeling stressed & reactive, to confident & feeling in control of their business finances and decision-making.

It's also inspiring seeing the industry evolving. Technology has streamlined so much of our firm’s operations - it's easily saved us 15 hours per week to focus on strategy and more proactive communication. In saying this, I also talk a lot about data protection on my socials and with clients - business owners need to consider what information they provide to these AI platforms, and understand where that data goes. For our practice, we have an internal policy which outlines the use of these platforms and details how we use & don’t use these tools.

Strategic bookkeepers today play a critical role in financial education and collaboration, especially in working alongside accountants and virtual CFOs to deliver better overall outcomes for clients.

What's your approach to customer service that separates you from the rest?

Our approach starts before we even take someone on. In the initial phone call, I assess whether the potential client is the right fit for our services and vise-versa, as we’re pretty selective on who we take on and I’m transparent about that.  A true bookkeeping relationship goes both ways, it’s far from a client giving us Xero access and then it’s set-and-forget.

From there, everything is built around clarity & certainty, starting with our engagements. They are extremely detailed & transparent, so the clients know what they’re investing in each month and what’s outside of scope. This is followed by structured onboarding processes with pre-determined onboarding timeframes, and a clear start date and what the client should expect from us. Particularly surrounding the technological & AI evolution, bookkeeping to me is no longer ‘reconciling transactions’, but rather building relationships.

Within that, it means setting expectations on both sides with new clients from the beginning, taking the time to understand their business & challenges, maintaining ongoing clear & timely communication, and taking the guesswork & admin load off their shoulders.

Our goal is to make each business’s finance function as streamlined & seamless as possible for business owners to stay compliant and informed.
This same service philosophy extends to our partnerships with accountants and CFOs. We’re part of the same team - ensuring clean, reliable data and organised systems so higher-level advisory work is delivered more efficiently and highly effectively. It’s a win-win for all parties involved with the business’s finances.

How do you innovate and stay ahead of industry trends?

The bookkeeping & accounting landscape is constantly changing, and this was front of mind when I established NextEra Bookkeeping. We embraced technology early & continue to as it evolves. The results are clear that it saves time, improves accuracy, and empowers decision-making that actually moves the needle on a business’s profitability.

AI won’t replace professional bookkeepers - it cannot replace a human’s professional judgement, own experiences and personal opinions. But it will provide unbeatable competitive advantages to the bookkeepers & accountants who adopt it in streamlining their processes, workflows & deliver faster client outcomes.

As a firm, we boost productivity by integrating tools to streamline communications, document collection, and focus on reducing any friction with  clients and their accountants & CFOs. It’s also important to mention that innovation isn’t just about tech. We continuously improve & refine our workflows, SOPs, obtain client feedback, and adapt to what delivers the most value.

Staying ahead for me means watching where the profession is evolving and positioning our practice to lead, rather than follow.

What is the toughest challenge you've faced in your role? How did you overcome it?

Definitely changing the way business owners think about bookkeeping. We all know the common misconceptions that bookkeeping is ‘just data entry’, and accurate financials ‘only matter for tax’. Yet so many businesses fail within the first 12-24 months, or businesses aren’t worth enough to sell, even though someone poured their whole life, blood, sweat & tears into it!

Overcoming this continues to require consistent, long-term commitment to education - through social media content, through the conversations I have in initial client calls, and through the work we deliver every day. I focus on communicating client outcomes where possible, such as what changes for a business owner when their numbers are accurate, when they understand their financial position, how it makes them feel, and when they have a trusted partner proactively supporting them.

It’s a slow shift, but we’ve especially seen it happening after business owners have received a bad experience from attempting to DIY their bookkeeping, or they tried to ‘save cost’ on a non-qualified BAS Agent/bookkeeper, or even attempted to use a platform that was supposed to ‘handle the taxes’ but didn’t. In addition, the referrals we’ve received from accountants and virtual CFOs, and the clients who come to us already understanding the value of strategic bookkeeping, are proof that the message is landing.

What are some of your goals for the next 5 years?

I always refer to 'quality over quantity', meaning only taking on clients who align with our values long-term, as we’re not trying to be the biggest. Ultimately, I want NextEra Bookkeeping to be known for bridging the gap between bookkeeping and advisory - the missing link that gives accountants & CFOs better data, and business owners better insight.

I’ll continue working on establishing relationships with Virtual CFOs & tax accounting firms who strongly value their client relationships and understand how strategic bookkeeping benefits them. Rather than transactional ‘referrals’, these will be real partnerships where we're collaborating on mutual clients and collectively delivering a better financial outcome than any of us could alone.

Within the immediate 3-6 months (& continuous improvement), my focus is on SOPs and optimising our workflow platform - to ensure ROI on the investment in costs, as well as the team working as efficiently as possible.

On the broader industry side, I’ll continue using social media to shift the conversation around what bookkeeping is and what it can deliver. The perception problem in our industry is real, and fixing it requires consistent, long-term effort from practitioners who are willing to voice their opinion.