Amanda Westenbarger
Sales & Marketing Administrator
Amanda Westenbarger is the Sales and Marketing Administrator at First Steps Financial. She is a dedicated specialist in customer service and is committed to ensuring a seamless onboarding experience for our clients. With several years of experience in marketing and business development, Amanda brings strategic insight and a client-first approach to every interaction. Her unique blend of skills enhances the way clients engage with First Steps’ services.
Experience/Education
- 1+ years accounting experience
- 20+ years sales & marketing experience
- Business Degree, Colorado Technical University
Certifications
- Intuit Certified QuickBooks Level 1 ProAdvisor
Areas of Focus
- Client onboarding and support
- Customer service and communication
- Sales and marketing operations
- Business development strategy
- QuickBooks Online assistance
Our Latest Insight
Choosing new software can overwhelm any accountant. The options feel endless, and each one costs real time and money to test. Building the right accounting tech stack takes years of trial and error. We know, because we have spent over a decade doing exactly that. Our firm has been fully remote since 2012. That means we have tested, rejected, and adopted these tools inside real client work. Here is the stack we trust, so you can skip the guessing. You will notice we left AI off this list. We use it where it helps, but that is a topic for another day.
For consulting firms, project profitability represents the critical margin between engagement revenue and the actual cost of delivery. This gap is fundamental; firms can be entirely booked yet face cash flow constraints if profitability isn't managed at the project level. Project-level tracking is more than a financial formality; it is a strategic tool that enables leadership to optimize pricing, staffing, and capacity. To assist in this process, this guide introduces a practical framework: the Project Profitability Scorecard.
In the construction industry, managing cash flow presents significant hurdles, and the nuances of work deposits often lead to underestimated complications. Mastering construction accounting entails a precise grasp of how these upfront funds navigate your ledger, the timing for revenue recognition, and the strategies to prevent financial pitfalls that could jeopardize your business. For any contracting firm, proper deposit accounting is a necessity rather than an option. The accuracy of your financial statements, job costing, and overall cash liquidity depends entirely on it.
