Happy Bookkeeping believes in: honesty, approachability, accountability, trustworthiness, and responsibility.
About Us: As bookkeepers, our job is to help the small business owner or executive director track and understand the finances of their company and use the information we provide to pursue their own mission and vision. We commit to investing in client financial fluency and ability.
Happy Bookkeeping was founded in 2014 when owner Miriam was looking for a new professional challenge after 20 years of financial and technology work for nonprofits and legal firms. Kat joined in 2016 as the firm grew. We are a small but mighty firm that provides individualized accounting and bookkeeping services to companies for whom hiring dedicated financial staff is not practical or desirable. We help entrepreneurs and nonprofits avoid compliance issues and financial pitfalls by providing information for making thoughtful, informed decisions. Our services give our clients a full financial department at an affordable price, a CFO-for-hire.
We love helping businesses succeed
When I found Miriam, I was seriously behind in my books and was in real danger of incurring penalties if I didn’t get my business in order. I was thrilled to discover that they not only were able to quickly turn things around, but they also understood my issues as a small business and were able to offer suggestions on ways to prepare and save for the future. I simply can’t say enough good things about them. If you run a small business, you really should check them out.
Jon Hays, Silver Pine Software
Meet the Team
Miriam Mueller, Owner
Miriam has been a trusted bookkeeper for a quarter of a century (where did the time go?!). She’s watched over the finances of home-based design businesses, multi-million dollar nonprofits, statewide professional organizations, software development groups, and many businesses in between. Her background is in corporate law, fundraising and membership management, e-commerce and technology.
Miriam has been a staff member, a Board Treasurer, and a consultant, allowing her to understand finance from multiple viewpoints. She decided to take a leap by going independent in 2014 and forming Happy Bookkeeping. Since then she has enjoyed the variety and problem-solving nature of being involved with the day-to-day operations of small businesses and nonprofits. She thinks the best clients are the ones who are passionate and engaged in work they love. It’s her privilege to help these people succeed.
Kat Zarfas, Bookkeeper
Similar to the satisfaction she finds in patiently working a snarled ball of yarn into a workable skein, Kat finds joy in helping clients sort through their financial data to make sense of where the money is going. She enjoys working with small businesses who are enthusiastic about the products and services they provide.
Kat has a degree in statistics from Virginia Tech and is currently pursuing a Certificate of Accounting. She has worked for the Mayo Clinic and Johns Hopkins School of Public Health as a statistical programmer, and for a data science start-up performing data management, web development, and accounting services. Kat met Miriam through the mutual nerdery of their husbands and has been working with her since 2017. In her spare time, Kat enjoys dabbling in fiber arts— her current focus is embroidery. She loves to read and can often be found with a Kindle in hand.