Elizabeth Reid serves as Corporate Compliance Accountant for BELAY, an industry leader providing U.S.-based virtual assistants, bookkeepers, web specialists, and social media strategists for businesses and nonprofits to help relieve their clients’ administrative burdens as they grow.
She spends her days in front of a computer, but don’t let her work life fool you. This energetic powerhouse has the grit and determination of a marathon runner. Literally.
Still, if you ask about her life, she won’t say a word about her eight marathons. Or about any challenges she’s overcome.
Instead, she’ll tell you how much her family means to her.
“I grew up in a small town, working with my parents in the pharmacy they owned. We spent a lot of time together at work and at home, so being present at home is very important to me.”
How does she balance being an attentive mother and high-performance athlete with a full-time job?
She doesn’t. Instead, she gives them all the energy they deserve.
“I don’t love the word ‘balance.’ I moved into the remote workplace so I could manage a successful, full-time career, be engaged at home, and pursue other challenges. By leveraging modern technology in the virtual workspace, I really can have it all.” — Elizabeth Reid, Corporate Compliance Accountant, BELAY
Elizabeth’s appreciation of numbers and technology stretches back to her childhood, working for her parents from the time she was 10 years old.
“My dad had an adding machine in the store,” she remembers. “When I wasn’t counting stock for inventory, I was wasting rolls of receipt tape playing with the calculator. I loved it.”
She continued to work for her parents through high school. In college, she was a Resident Assistant and worked at the campus post office. She spent several years in retail, but Elizabeth isn’t one to stay in her comfort zone for long.
“Retail was too familiar,” she said. “I wanted to explore a new industry. And I wanted to do something to help small business owners like my parents. When I joined BELAY, it was the perfect fit for me.”
Elizabeth recognized how well BELAY serves its contractors and clients with BILL, especially small and midsize businesses and nonprofits, freeing up their valuable time.
“When you’re serving clients virtually, you’re building trust and integrity with them every day. Then, as the business grows, you still have to find ways to protect the integrity of the process.
“BILL makes that possible.”
From very early on, BELAY has utilized BILL both to serve its clients and to manage its internal bill pay process.
“Since our inception, we’ve added hundreds of contractors all over the country,” Elizabeth told us, “and we’ve paid them through BILL from the beginning.
“We pay over 1,000 contractors from a single platform—on time, every month—keeping our banking information encrypted while syncing those payments with our accounting software, QuickBooks Online. We couldn’t do that without BILL.” — Elizabeth Reid, Corporate Compliance Accountant, BELAY
In addition to using BILL for its own contractor payments, BELAY also uses the platform for most of its bookkeeping clients—not just for speed and efficiency, but for security.
“BELAY has used BILL from the beginning, serving our first bookkeeping clients. The controls and user roles built into the platform let us serve our customers virtually while maintaining the full integrity of the bill pay process. I can’t imagine BELAY without BILL.”
Today, Elizabeth oversees compliance for BELAY. Within that role, she’s become an expert in BILL, extolling its virtues to new clients.
“Security controls, fraud prevention, and the integrity of the bill pay process are always top of mind for us. BILL protects our clients, BELAY, and our bookkeepers. Our clients can offload the mundane task of paying bills while trusting their finances aren’t being compromised.” — Elizabeth Reid, Corporate Compliance Accountant, BELAY
Elizabeth was quick to point out how important the approval process is in giving both BELAY and their clients that critical peace of mind.
“The BILL platform makes sure every bill gets all the approvals it needs before it can go out the virtual door. And the system’s audit trail keeps a record of those approvals, which makes our bookkeepers feel protected, too.”
When we asked Elizabeth about the challenges of 2020, her answer was unexpected.
“So many companies took a hit during the pandemic. But as BELAY was already fully remote and an industry leader in virtual services, we had the tools in place so we could continue to focus on our clients with minimal disruptions, giving them the time they needed to address the unexpected.
“The uninterrupted service we were able to provide gave many of our clients what they needed most: peace of mind with their books.”
So, what did this mom, athlete, and career woman plan to do as the world opened up again? Hike the Grand Canyon from rim to rim to rim, of course.
“It’s 21.3 miles and about 6,000 feet of elevation gain,” said Elizabeth. “I’ve never done anything like it, but that’s why I want to do it – to challenge myself to grow.
“BELAY’s growing, our clients are growing, and I’m growing – and I couldn’t ask for anything else.”
