The SWIFT Blog

Entrepreneurial grit & seamless operations

I have successfully built and managed my own small businesses, from a high-end landscape design firm to a specialized copywriting agency. I’ve written and executed business and marketing strategies, pitched and sold projects, and run field crews while working right alongside them.

High-stakes financial accuracy and unwavering trust

Whether I was running high monthly accounts payable, executing a capital gains audit on an $18M estate, or building a provenance and valuation tracking system from scratch for a notable contemporary art collection, I have a proven track record for detailed, meticulous management of highly complex projects.My past roles include assisting corporate financial executives managing 100 companies worldwide, managing home offices for high net-worth families with complex financial needs, engineering a complex margin analysis for over 3,000 inventory products, and supporting C-level executives and departments in every facet of their roles.

Down-to-earth coaching and clarity

In addition to my financial background, I’m a lifelong athlete and coach. I’m an active part of our local Moore County equestrian community and have been teaching people to ride since I was 14 years old. I’m also a professional figure skating coach, where I've helped eliminate fear and develop solid skills through detailed focus and discipline.

Imagine Saturday morning.

There’s nothing better than that first sip of coffee while strolling through the farmer’s market in downtown Southern Pines on a Saturday morning, sniffing the crisp air, smelling the produce. It’s heaven!Unless you’re stuck at home trying to log all of your expenses.One of the most challenging aspects of owning your own business is wearing all of the hats. At one time or another, you’re training an employee, making a sale, catching up on filing, or perhaps your most dreaded task: catching up on the bookkeeping.

Frustration sets in.

While it may seem simple on the outside - grab your receipts and log them - the process of keeping your books meticulous month after month takes patience, a dogged tenacity to get those details right, and the oversight to make sure it’s all done correctly, so you’re not wasting your time.Deciding which accounts to post transactions to, being able to spot red flags, and understanding how the flow of money can affect your day to day business takes an experienced bookkeeper who is fluent in Quickbooks, understands how your mobile apps work and connect, and is savvy in capturing all of the details and nuances involved in monthly bookkeeping for any business.In other words, you’re spinning your wheels and wasting your weekend trying to save a little money each month.

Why delegation is your best friend.

When you find a trusted partner for your bookkeeping, that firm becomes an ally for years, sometimes decades, keeping you informed of the ins and outs of your monthly finances, and keeping everything perfectly organized and up to date for your accountant and year-end taxes.

How much are you worth?

The true test of whether you’re ready for a bookkeeper is to ask yourself: how much are you worth on an hourly basis? If you’re consulting, running crews or closing sales, it’s a pretty high number.If you spend your high-value time trying to figure out how to get to the chart of accounts in QuickBooks, you miss out on much higher-value business endeavors such as revising your business plan, going over your workflows or getting through that list of sales calls.There are so many more important and effective ways you can spend your time rather than trying to do your own books.

The payoff is tenfold.

Think about it: if you take those four or five hours you normally spend trying to track expenses, and instead put those to use in other ways, you’re bound to increase your income, land new clients and streamline your processes.The extra income you make and money you save by hiring a bookkeeper is much more than the amount you would pay for your monthly service. It’s a win/win relationship that almost instantly elevates your business.

Choosing the right partner

SWIFT Bookkeeping of the Sandhills is a local, Moore County-based business that specializes in small business accounting.Run by Kitty Bateman, Swift brings over 25 years of varied financial experience to your business. Kitty is a proven partner that can help you sort out your books and set you on a charted course for success.

The real cost of ignoring your books.

I get it. You’re busy, and the last thing you want to do is spend any time in the back-office tracking expenses. You can think of a thousand things you’d rather be doing. And the truth is, if you’re not a trained bookkeeper, it can take you two or three times as long as it should.

Has this happened to you?

You get bogged down in your busy season and the receipts start stacking up. What used to take a few hours has now snowballed into months of back bookkeeping that you can’t even face. It becomes one of those, “I’ll deal with it later” scenarios.Not only is that risky and harmful for your business, but it creates an underlying stress that eats away at you and robs you of being clear and fully focused.

And then tax season comes.

Your stress doubles, your CPA’s invoice doubles, and the hours it takes to pull it all together in such a short amount of time are pulled from everywhere you can spare time.All that can quickly go away, for much less than you might think.

True bookkeeping is a routine wellness plan for the health of your business.

Routine bookkeeping. It sounds so dull. But it’s actually the most exciting thing for the health of your business.
When you review a clean Balance Sheet and Profit & Loss statement on the 15th of every single month, you can spot a volatile pricing variance before it drains your margin. You can see exactly how much cash flow is truly yours to draw.

Find out which wellness plan is right for your business.

Don't wait for tax season to find out if your business actually made money this year. Protect your margins, and run your practice with certainty. Your stress will disappear overnight.
Not only is it healthy for your business, but it’s healthy for you, too.

Receipt fatigue is real.

Sometimes, the most irritating part of running your business can be keeping track of all the receipts.They’re printed and stuffed into pockets, emailed and buried in the inbox, or worse, texted and forgotten.These tiny details don’t really seem to matter in the moment - you’re scooping supplies up off the counter at Tractor Supply and running to a job - but at the end of the week, month or year, it becomes a mountain of stress, worry and backtracking through every drawer, coat pocket, car glove box and every other nook and cranny you’ve touched since last January.

But it’s 2026, my friend! And the tech world has heard your pain!

In fact, DEXT was invented by a person just like you. Back in 2010, Michael Wood, a business owner, was drowning in receipts. As an accountant, he also struggled to receive these paper receipts from his clients on time. It created such a bottleneck for Michael and his staff, that he had a brilliant idea. Capture receipts digitally, then toss the paper.Michael built his first product, Receipt Bank, where receipts were physically mailed in and scanned by the company. As mobile phone cameras improved, Michael’s business model transformed to utilize Optical Character Recognition and early machine learning. Michael and his partners also created a “pre-accounting” ending that could pull out data from the photo like vendor, date, tax, and notes, and could then send it straight to a ledger, mapping the correct fields.In a nutshell: they created an app that allowed you to snap a photo of a receipt and have that date go right to your Quickbooks accounting software, landing in all the right places.
In 2021, the company rebranded to the name Dext, to signify “digital dexterity.”

How you can use Dext right now!

If you have a smartphone, you can try Dext for free before you sign up for the paid version. Dext offers a risk-free 14-day trial without requiring a credit card, which is the perfect, low-stress way to check it out before you purchase.Step 1: Download the App.
Head to the App Store or Google Play and download the free Dext app to your smartphone.Step 2: Start Your Trial.
Open the app, select "For Businesses," and set up your quick 14-day trial account.Step 3: Grab a Receipt.
Find a gas slip or store receipt.Step 4: Snap and Tally.
Open the app's camera, snap a clear photo of the receipt, and hit submit.

SWIFT rule of thumb.

Watch how Dext's parsing engine automatically reads the image, extracts the vendor, date, and exact amount, and neatly organizes it into your digital inbox.Once the green checkmark flashes confirming the photo is uploaded, you can physically throw that paper receipt in the trash!

What if your finances were pristine, organized and totally up to date?SWIFT can get you onboarded, handle your set up and have you up and running within a week, and I'll only need you for about a hour of that time.Here's how it works.

Quick onboarding, thorough setup and we're off to the races!

At SWIFT, your entire experience is meant to be easy, quick and seamless, getting your time back on Day One.

Your total investment will be about an hour, when we have our onboarding session. After that, I'll take over and finish your setup. Then your monthly service begins.

Your unique chart of accounts

The chart of accounts is the backbone of any accounting system, allowing it to function fully and allowing you to get the most out of your reports. When I onboard your business, I create a chart of accounts unique to your business that addresses all of the “buckets” you need to capture your full financial picture.

Working with your transactions

If we are getting Quickbooks up and running for you mid-year, we'll look at bringing your historical months from January onward up to date so your year-end is flawless.If you’ve already been using Quickbooks, I’ll look over the year to make sure nothing is amiss. all reports have been generated and filed, and the chart of accounts is up to date.

Your monthly service

Once you're onboarded and your transactions are up to date, your stress-free monthly service begins.

Quick onboarding, thorough setup and we're off to the races!

Your total investment will be about an hour, when we have our onboarding session. After that, I'll take over and finish your setup. Then your monthly service begins.