“If I had to tell another company that might be worried about spending the money to hire PCO Bookkeepers, I’d say I don’t think of it as spending money. I think it’s making an investment. Some things are best left to a professional. You’ll have more time to run your business.”

At age 17, Bobby Leon followed his father’s footsteps into the pest control industry. He worked as a technician for many years before opening his own company, Akita Pest Control, which he runs with his wife, Bimaris.

“I’d worked for many other companies beforehand,” he says. “I figured I could do things better. With $8,000, I bought a truck and some equipment so I could go do what I know how to do.” Fifteen years later, Akita has 25employees and is focused on growing even further. Over the years, Bobby and Bimaris have learned the benefits of outsourcing some key functions of their business.

“There comes a time in a company’s growth that you realize that you can’t specialize in everything,” Bobby says. “You have to find somebody that’s really good in an area, so you can focus on growing your company.”

With that mentality, Bobby connected with Dan Gordon and the team at PCO Bookkeepers, a firm that works with more than 300 pest control and lawn care companies across the U.S. to provide accounting, bookkeeping and CFO services; tax preparation and planning; and accounts payable management. He was familiar with the company from its involvement in the pest control industry, including writing for trade magazines, hosting the PMP Industry Insiders podcast and more.

Akita had previously worked with other accountants from a tax preparation perspective, but the company had some negative experiences. “Trying to get ahold of someone, trying to get correct answers — it was kind of like pulling teeth,” Bobby recalls. “We weren’t too pleased with what they were offering.”

He is pleased with the accounting and bookkeeping services PCO Bookkeepers provides, including cleaning up and managing QuickBooks, issuing on-time monthly reports and being available anytime for questions. Overall, the partnership has helped the Akita team get out of the weeds of accounting tasks. “We’re not so involved with QuickBooks anymore,” Bobby says.

“We focus more on our day-to-day operations.” When the Akita team first began working with PCO Bookkeepers, they were pleased to hear they had a financially healthy business.

“But they’ve made us even healthier,” Bobby says. “Now we’re able to gauge how we compare to others in the pest control industry, what certain items we need help with, and where we’re excelling and lacking. We’re able to get a clearer picture and we’re able to adjust.”

For example, the PCO Bookkeepers team helped Akita improve its payroll and pricing. Bobby says, “They painted us a picture of how we needed to adjust that to have a stronger company.”

While Akita primarily works with client manager Cyrus Ahmadi, Dan has advised Bobby on several matters, such as when it came to potentially acquiring a smaller local company. Dan helped Bobby identify the information he needed to gather to determine whether it would be a good investment for Akita. Ultimately, Bobby didn’t go through with the purchase. “It was a big decision, so I’m glad I had somebody to get answers from,” he says.