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Customer story

How Partenza kept clean books from day one

I keep the books for Partenza, a one-person translation business, so its founder can spend his hours on clients and translations instead of bookkeeping. He brought me in before his first month even closed — so the books were clean from the start and have stayed current ever since.

Partenza

Partenza translates U.S. vital records (birth, marriage, and death certificates) into Italian and formats each one to the exact requirements of the Italian consulate that will receive it. Its clients are claiming Italian citizenship by descent, where a single rejected document can set the whole application back by months. Accuracy is the entire product.

Industry
Certified document translation
Focus
Italian citizenship by descent
Location
United States
Team
Solo founder
Client since
Month one
Services
Setup + monthly bookkeeping
Visit Partenza ↗

The challenge

Partenza is run by one person, founder Rafael Cecilio, and every hour he spends is a choice. Time on a spreadsheet is time not spent on a client’s documents, and translation is work that does not get faster when you rush it. For most new owners, the books are the first thing to slip: receipts pile up, the bank balance and the records drift apart, and by the time taxes come around it is a cleanup project. Rafael did not want to start there. He wanted his numbers handled by someone else from his first transaction, so he never had to choose between serving a client and sorting out his own books.

What I did

I set up his books before the first month closed — the right accounts, connected to his bank, organized so every dollar has a place to land. From there I took over the monthly work: matching each account to the bank, sorting income and expenses, and keeping everything ready for tax time. Rafael sends nothing, chases nothing, and files nothing in a drawer to deal with later. He sees clean numbers; I handle what is behind them.

The result

Every month, the books are closed and current. Rafael spends no time on them, which means more time on the documents his clients are waiting for. And when he needs to make a call on whether to take on more work, what a slow month cost, whether the business can carry a new expense — the numbers are already there, accurate and up to date. No scramble, no guessing, no year-end surprise.

I'd rather spend my time on clients than on spreadsheets. With Cecilio Books handling the books, I always have clear numbers when I need to make a call.
Rafael CecilioFounder, Partenza

Published