The Rat in Ratatouille Comes to Mind
A major disconnect between businesses and their accountants occurs at the bookkeeping level. Everyday business bookkeeping is not often concerned with the kind of financial reporting required to elicit a loan or file a tax return. When an accountant finally touches the records, it may be difficult to parse out which debit or credit fits into which category. As a result, many businesses end up with faulty financials and tax returns not because of an accounting issue itself, but only because of a communication problem.

Lawhorn & Associates set out to eliminate that communication gap when it acquired Bookkeeping Essentials as a division in 2008. Bookkeeping Essentials places small business bookkeeping firmly in the arena it should have been in all along: the accountant’s. Now businesses can find an outsource point for their accounting and (traditionally in-house) bookkeeping under one roof.

Ashleigh Carithers is the face and voice clients most associate with Bookkeeping Essentials. She has been with that company since 2006, before it was acquired by Lawhorn & Associates. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Johnson & Wales University as a chef, and she’s been cooking the books ever since.

Ashleigh has two fantastic daughters, Olivia (6) and Zoe (4), that keep her busy and entertained.  In her spare time, Ashleigh has been known to love the thrill of day hiking in Bhutan, camping in Mt. Ranier National Park, or pretty much anything that involves being outdoors.   She also enjoys going to movies and spending time with friends and family. You would never know it by looking at her, but she is a cooking fanatic and loves to test her creations on her girls. She actually used to have three girls, but we won’t get into that story.

A Busy Beverly

Beverly joined forces with us in 2008 along with two of her team members, Lindsay Green and Dee Dee Card. Having owned and operated her own businesses, Beverly is quite the expert at putting the polish on a financial.

Beverly graduated from both Roane State and Tennessee Wesleyan College in the same year, 1991. She earned her CPA a year later for the State of Tennessee. You can see why we know she’ll get it done no matter what the project.

A true accountant, Beverly found an inexpensive way to nourish her gemstone and precious metal fetish when she married jeweler John Linkous. Together, they had four solid gold children whose names are Ruby, Opal, Sapphire, and Jake. Just kidding—we have no idea what their names are, because she keeps them in a vault.

Beverly’s main hobby is trying to figure out what her hobby should be. She claims to be “developing hobbies,” though we’re not exactly sure how to describe how one goes about that. “I would perform if I could,” she explains. She admits to enjoying reading and ice cream, which helps identify the source of the chocolate fingerprints on the pages of the books we’ve lent her. Besides that, she likes all kinds of music and margaritas. She wanted us to give a shout out to her dog, Tucker, which we suppose must be a whiz at computers and surfing the net. But she doesn’t care about this plethora of knowledge we’ve just shared with you. “Just make me sound skinny,” was her only heartfelt request. Accordingly, please be aware that this is only a temporary biography of Beverly, since we haven’t been able to collect enough data on how skinny people sound to meet her demands. But based on the current trends, we would like to report that Beverly’s voice is quite nasally.