 Hello, hon. Welcome to this week's edition of Business in Hawaii. I'm Daylen Yanagida, and we are broadcasting live from the ThinkTech studios in downtown Honolulu. If you want to tune in live, we are at www.thinktechhawaii.com, and while there, please subscribe to our programs and get on our mailing list. The theme of Business in Hawaii is to share with you stories of local businesses by local people, and our guests share with us their journey to building successful businesses right here at home. In the ThinkTech studio today is Nathan Whitaker. Nathan is the business development manager of Pacific Business and Accounting Services. Nathan, thank you so much for joining me today. I am so excited to have you here. Thank you for the opportunity. I'm looking forward to it. Well, it's funny because we go way back and I've known you in different roles, and so it's interesting for me to be able to ask you about the journey and where you've been. So of course, I'd like to ask you, where'd you grow up? Well, you know, it's one of those things where I'm a hapa katunk from Kansas. I'm hapa, I'm half Japanese, grew up in Kansas, met a local girl here 17 years ago, and the rest is history, and in Hawaii will forever be my home. I know. I've known you from your past life, and I've always viewed you as he's right here. He's homegrown, so it's so nice to be able to reconnect with you. But this time, I'm talking about PABS, your new adventure. So tell us a little bit about Pacific Business and Accounting Services. Yeah. So Pacific Accounting and Business Services, we are a local company that helps small companies to outsource their bookkeeping. So many companies, not for profits, franchises, just, you know, all the small organizations out there have a hard time with their bookkeeping. They don't know how the business is doing, how to plan for the future. They don't, they really don't know where, how their finances are in order or not. But that's what we help them to do, is just to basically take that off their hands, let them focus on their businesses, and, you know, help them grow. So I know that Pacific, I'm just going to call you PABS. Make it easier on yourself. I know I say that, I do the same thing. I know that PABS, while you started here in Hawaii, has a parent company. And tell me a little bit about how your business was developed and then grew. Yes. So PABS was a part of another well known organization from Pro Service called Pro Accounting. Then we, PABS purchased the line of business more or less from Pro Service in 2012. So we've been, we've grown exponentially since then. So we were doing, working with about 40 clients now. We've got about 150 clients here in Hawaii, all throughout all of the islands. And then we've got a business in the mainland as well too. So I assume that quite a few of your clients have, have been accustomed to the services that PABS offers since they came from Pro Accounting and now just a fluid transition? Yeah, you know, I think that that's a part of the business here in Hawaii that we're seeing kind of the progression, right? Before any of these other kind of outsourcing, it was something foreign for local people, local organizations to basically, they held everything tight, you know, close to, close to the chest regarding their organizations, right? But now, as, as we all know, it's so difficult to run a business here in Hawaii. So you've got to do what you, what you can do to make yourself more profitable, be able to focus on your business and get all the help you can get. So the manager of a business here, tell me about what you find difficult about, about operating a business in Hawaii or what you, your clients tell you is difficult about running a business in Hawaii? Well, I think we all know, you know, about the taxes and the, the cost of health insurance, you know, all of those things that basically kind of put a, so many small businesses behind the eight ball, we try to kind of ease some of those, you know, address some of those concerns for them. The, the whole part of businesses here is just really, you've got to, you've got to help each other out, right? And knowing other businesses to help kind of grow your business, we, Hawaii is one of those places, right? You know, it's not what you know, it's who you know, right? And so, you know, what we do is we kind of use those relationships to work with all kinds of businesses. Fantastic. Tell me a little bit about the type of business that would seek tabs out. Are they small businesses, large businesses, maybe both? Yeah, we have, we have all, we have all sizes of organization. I have a soft spot for, for not-for-profits. I've done a lot of help for not-for-profits over the years. And that's where I like to really focus on not-for-profits and small, medium businesses, right? Because those small companies, they don't need, they don't need a full-time bookkeeper, right? And then by, let's say it's a restaurant. The people, they're working at the restaurant 12, 14 hours a day. Last thing that they want to do at the end of the, end of the night is to go and do all of, you know, do all of the bookkeeping. So that's where we can help them. Same thing with, with a not-for-profit. You know, they've, they've got that little bit of funding and they need to be mindful about that. So our internal controls helps to avoid any situations where, you know, sometimes people that they don't know could, you know, take some of that money. So we help them. We do all the bookkeeping for them and at a, at an affordable price. So what is the smallest client you have and what is the largest? How do you measure that? We've got one not-for-profit that has one gentleman, right? So we can, we can do that. He, he has a, a, a farm to table, not-for-profit in Waialua, and it's just him. And it's just him. So of course, he's been on the farm all day long. He doesn't want to be doing his accounting. And then we've got some large, some really large organizations for it in Hawaii as well that have, you know, a couple of hundred of people, you know, that, that sort of thing. So it really, it really, really depends. So for a business person who doesn't exactly know what they don't know, right? And I think that, that's probably my problem. I don't know what I don't know. And what types of services do people come to Pabs for specifically? So I'm a business owner. Say I put out a service and that's what I do. There's an exchange of money and what not. Where does Pabs come in? So where, where we can help you out? Let's, let's maybe if we could use a restaurant for an example, right? So then that way we can, so they have all the receipts where they're buying goods from, you know, the, from the grocery stores, from Costco, from all of these places, and they've got these receipts, right? Then they've got, then they, they are, are, you know, using all of their funds, right? So we take all of those receipts from all those organizations. We kind of upload those, those documents, put them into their accounting software of their choice, whatever that they're normally using, and just process all of their bookkeeping for the month. And then make sure that they have monthly financials on time every month, like clockwork on the 15th, on the 15th of the following month. If a small organization, if they don't have those numbers, it's hard for them to grow, it's hard for them to really realize, hey, how to plan for the, for the coming years, coming months. Do you educate the business owner as to what they need or what they should be looking at? I think a lot of business owners may not be familiar, say a little mom and pops may not be familiar with what they need to look at or what they should analyze. Does PAPS also do some of that consulting type? Yeah, most definitely, most definitely. And we kind of help them, let's say if they aren't very familiar with QuickBooks, a lot of our clients are on QuickBooks, we help to kind of train them to make sure that they're categorizing their expenses, making sure that everything's documented properly. We help them, part of our monthly program is to pay their GE taxes if that's something that they want. That's included for free in our program. So if for a lot of newer businesses, they don't always know how the GE taxes work. And so the next part of it that we kind of help guide them through the process, we take care of the 1099s for them, if that's something that they need help with as well. What about payroll? Yeah, we don't do anything with payroll. We do, the closest that we come with helping organizations with payroll is the data entry of more or less like taking that from their time sheets, putting data entry into QuickBooks as far as the expenditures in the hours. And then it's returned to the business owner in the form of reports so they can then process. Yes, yes, yes. And so it actually, it more or less kind of gets them all set up, right? So then that way they, I mentioned earlier about the internal controls, that way they can really realize, hey, where is my money going? All it war is my money going out to making sure that there's not going someplace that they don't want it to. And from the desktop function, they can just easily click and get the payments paid. What about an organization? My guess is that this is all done through some sort of technology platform. But what about the business owner that actually doesn't use technology? I will say that'd be kind of difficult for us, because, you know, the majority of our work is all done through the via the cloud. So, you know, we've got a large grocery store, third generation grocery store on the west side that we help with. And so they're getting in receipts and receipts and receipts invoices every day from all of their vendors that are bringing in the groceries into into the store. If they didn't have, you know, somebody that could help us to be able to scan that to put that into a Dropbox, then we wouldn't be able to receive those to receive all of that information. That's, they were able to take over another location in a Molokai. And if it wasn't because of our system and the way we've got it already organized for them, made it made it a smooth transition for them. In terms of the technology needed to get started, what do you, what would you say is the minimum? What if I'm just not tech savvy? Minimum that I would need in order to partake in your services? I would say just being able to kind of take a picture or scan documents. So most people, even my mom has no really computer skills other than being able to play her games or maybe take a picture on her on her camera. But all she all she would have to do, all the client would have to do is more or less like take a picture or scan the invoices. Then we could kind of more less email it and take it to there. So as long as they've got email, I think we could probably help them out. Your mom and my mom must hang out together. Right. Exactly. When we come back, I want to talk more about the types of things that abs does and and how that can roll into something much larger. Because what I what I'm hearing from you is that this is almost an educational experience for a business owner and developing different ways to analyze their business. And I think that's really exciting for businesses and entrepreneurs. We're going to take that short break. This is business in Hawaii. We'll see you back here shortly. Aloha. I'm Keisha King, host of At the Crossroads, where we have conversations that are real and relevant. We have spoken with community leaders from right here locally in Hawaii and all around the world. Won't you join us on thinktechhawaii.com or on YouTube on the Think Tech Hawaii channel. Our conversations are real, relevant and lots of fun. I'll see you at the Crossroads. Aloha. Aloha. My name is Mark Shklav. I am the host of Think Tech Hawaii's Law Across the Sea program. My program airs every other Monday at one o'clock on Think Tech Hawaii. Most of my programs deal with my own life and law experience. Recently, I interviewed Alex Gempel, who I have known for over 30 years, about his voyage across the sea as a lawyer from Tokyo to Hawaii. Those are the type of stories that I like to bring and like to talk about human stories about law and life. Aloha. Welcome back. This is business in Hawaii. And with us today is Nathan Whitaker of Pacific Business and Accounting Services. Hey, Nathan. Before we get back into what we were talking about, how you help businesses. Tell me about your passion, how you got here. I know you as Nathan Whitaker from Robert Half, but tell us a little bit about your passion and why you love this space. Yeah, I think this is a great opportunity. We talked about earlier about how difficult it is to make your business work. You see that, unfortunately, how many businesses close up shop. I felt that this was an opportunity to be able to help the community, help organizations grow, become more profitable, and just be able to help generations in the future. Being able to help those companies, taking a little bit off of their plate. We are all so busy as parents, as business people, we're maxed out. So if PABs can help organizations just taking away that little bit of that bookkeeping from them, take a little bit of that stress and pulling out their hair. Oh, did I file my GE taxes? How do I do this 1099s? Where are my financials? If we can take that little piece of the puzzle, the little piece of stress away from them, then that way they can go enjoy their kids baseball team, baseball games, softball games, volleyball games, you know, paddling. That's what I feel passionate about it, but being able to help those companies. And now it makes complete sense to me because you've always, in any space that you've been in, you've always connected your passion with your work. And I've always seen whether it's giving back to the community, or of course helping others. Now I see how it aligns with your passion. So thanks for sharing that. When we left to break, we were talking about perhaps the business owner who's just starting out and need some help from step one. Can they come to you and say, Hey, Nathan, I got a GE license for 25 bucks. Now what? Right. Yeah, absolutely. You know, they can come over to us and and I want to just kind of help them, you know, kind of map it out, try to help them out from the get go. So oftentimes, I hear these come these companies that I meet, Nate, I didn't have anything set in place. It's been two years. My books are a mess. I don't know where I can find all this information. I am growing. I want to get a loan, a commercial loan. They said, Where's your books? I just kind of pointed at the box of receipts. I need help. So we can help both of those types of both of those types of clients, whether it is the starting out, just to kind of get you set up from from the get go correctly, right? Or one of those clients that needs some help doing some of those reconciliations, making sure that they get their books in order, we can help out both ways. I love that story of the business owner that opens up his box of receipts and says, Okay, now I need some some bookkeeping, right? Right. So you've actually had situations where Oh, my gosh, yes, all the time. All the time where I'm talking to companies. Oh, I, you know, I haven't found taxes. I haven't done this. I haven't done that. Okay, well, then let's let's kind of break it down step by step. Now, you know, we don't file taxes for we're not a CPA. But what we do is more or less kind of help the companies to get their book bookkeeping, the general ledgers in order. So then at the end of the year, when they hand off all of their monthly financials to their CPA, they're actually spending less money on their CPA, because everything's in order that CPA is not having to go out and dig in through that shoebox. Okay, very good. So it sounds like though with, of course, the clientele that you have the number of clients that you have, sounds like you need a lot of bodies to make that all happen. How many people at PAVs? Yeah, we've we've got quite a few, we've got quite a few. Yeah, so most definitely. And so that's one of the things that you know, with with a lot of CPA is a lot of bookkeepers that they kind of max, you know, they have a max capacity. You know, our team, we've got over 200 people on our on our team, so we can definitely help them to get their books in order and kind of help them out for the future. I think another great thing that you had said was that you you can work with whatever software that someone is using, I think most commonly in small businesses, QuickBooks. So tell me a little bit about the integration and how that all works. Oh, yeah. And that's one of the things is that some of the companies, let's say a construction company, for chance, they've got all of these different projects. Some software is they don't it doesn't have the capability to be able to match every single, every single project and making sure that everything is keeping separate. We use a product called Sage intact that really helps a lot of the not for profits that maybe they've gotten a grant to help help the homeless, maybe to help the blind. So then that way they can charge to each category or each project each grant. Same thing in in turn for a construction company, for each project, each building each house to make sure they're keeping everything separate. Then at the end of the month, give them an overall general ledger for everything as well too. I think if you talk to a lot of folks who are entrepreneurs, they may not know that there's an opportunity to outsource those functions. Yes, or you may not even know that they need right keeping. But they may not know that the outsourcing opportunity is is available. And since you're in that space, I want to ask you what your feelings or your thoughts are about the temperature in Hawaii for outsourcing business services. I know that there are companies out there that outsource recruiting or outsource payroll. And now we're talking about an outsource of business and accounting services. What are your thoughts about the Hawaii business climate and where where that's what I like to use it as an example of if you're getting married, right? Your your aunt has a camera, right? And she can take all the pictures that that that she wants or you may want, right? But wouldn't you rather have a professional hire professional to do that outsource a professional to take care of take care of your special day? That's more or less what an outsourcing organization can do for any company taking part of one aspect of that wedding or of that business, because that business is more or less like their baby. That's their special day. And you don't want somebody to that isn't a professional to go in and ruin it. So that's what that that's probably the easiest explanation that I could probably give regarding Do you think that businesses in Hawaii are open to that? I know that once upon a time, this is my business, I want to control it. You even said that, Hey, you know, I don't want anyone to look at under the hood. This is this is my business. Yeah. And I think with technology, we all know why maybe a little bit slow when it comes to making changes. But I think that as unemployment has has has dropped so significantly, you know, the unemployment for accounting people is less than 1% here on Oahu right now. So finding those good accounting people, those good bookkeepers is rather difficult and rather expensive. So then that's where we can come in, help a company get their books in order and actually save them money, because they don't have to buy that person the computer, we don't have to rent a bigger building space. You know, we don't have to pay benefits for another person, we can kind of outsource that one aspect of the company, and they can concentrate on their business. That sounds pretty fantastic. So tell me what that's going to cost. Yeah, and it's very simple. So what we do is we actually talk to the business owner and get two months of their general ledger, or if they have it, right, of the shoebox, right, right on the shoebox, right, or their bank statements, just to kind of see how much, how many transactions that they're having on a monthly basis. And so then that's how that's how we kind of figure out what the monthly cost would be. Yeah, I definitely think it's a lot more affordable than people, than what people might think. You know, if I'm a business owner, and you know, I don't know if I want someone to look in my shoebox, your industry must be built on a lot of choice. Right. Tell me about the relationships that you have with your clients. And then tell me about security. So once you open my shoebox and you put that all into your software system, how secure is my information? And what what what measures are you taking to protect my company? Yeah, and that's that's, you know, the the whole data thing, identity theft, that's a huge, that's a huge issue that everybody's kind of talking about. And we've never had any issues with that were actually are held held to a higher standard of that data security. You know, nobody can have their cell phones in the room when they're working. Nobody can have any kind of flash drives just to make sure there's no information that can be that can be reached by the other employees. So if I become a client, do I have a relationship with one one point of contact so that now I feel like, Hey, Nathan, remember that receipt that I put that somewhere else? Yeah, what we actually do is we actually sign you a team. Because you know, let's say that you have you have Jill's bookkeeping company, right? You know, for example, if Jill's out sick or Jill goes on vacation, everything, all of her clients get put on hold. She goes to that that that two week Alaska cruise, right? You know, everything's put on hold. So with us, because you're assigned a whole team, it just you don't even know. So you've got more or less you've got a couple of people that you talked to on a regular basis to make sure that everything keeps going. The other thing I love about HABS and the business that you do is that you also offer opportunities to educate people. And I know that you have an event coming up soon. And I'd love for you to share with your viewers about that event and what they can expect. Yeah, well, we definitely loved for everybody to come down to the Plaza Club next Thursday, the 14th from 830 to 1030. We have a networking event. It's a great opportunity for business owners and people to come down, talk about their their organization, meet new people. It's tremendous. We've had two events. We've also had such great feedback from people that have all come to the events, actually doing business with people that they met just at that event. So come on down. And also to meet HABS and learn more about the services that you all provide. Yeah. And so we do like a five minute presentation on regarding HABS. And then we have a couple of our clients to come in and speak about their organizations for five minutes and then their relationships with HABS. And then that along with a great breakfast, you can't beat it. You said food. I'll be there. Bacon. That's all you need to hear. I'd also like for people to know how to find you. I mean, if most people know where to find you, but tell your viewers how to how to get in touch with you if they have any questions. Yeah. So it's a www.pacificabs.com. And you can definitely reach me at Nathan.wittaker at pacificabs.com. That's fantastic. Where your office is located? Over here on Richard Street. You are close by. Well, Nathan, I am so thankful that you spent time with me today and I'm glad that we got to catch up. Anything, any last parting words that you'd like to leave? No. Well, first off, I just want to say thank you. This is this is great. I thought it was going to be worse than it was being next to you, the pro. So I appreciate the opportunity. This is my little tagline that I like to say for Pabs. Leave your books to us. We'll take care of the fuss. Fantastic. Unfortunately, we are out of time, but I wanted to thank Nathan and the amazing production staff here in the studio. If you would like to be a guest on the on the show, please like us and subscribe and leave a comment at the bottom. Business in Hawaii airs every Thursday at 2 p.m. And we look forward to seeing you here next week.