About us
Two bookkeepers, ninety clients.
Marlowe & Fen has been keeping books for Edmonton small businesses since 2016. There are two of us, and there will stay two of us.
We met working in the bookkeeping department of a mid-sized accounting firm, where the business owners we liked most were the ones we had the least time for. The firm’s model rewarded volume: process the file, bill the hours, move on. Nobody was allowed to pick up the phone and spend twenty minutes explaining what a balance sheet actually says.
So we left and built the version we wanted. Fixed fees instead of hours, so we’re not penalised for taking your call. A deliberate cap on how many clients we take, so everyone gets closed by the tenth. And a rule that we never make anyone feel foolish for being behind, because being behind is the single most common thing in small business and shame is why people stay that way.
Elena Marlowe
Fourteen years in bookkeeping, eight of them in construction and trades. Elena handles the payroll clients and anything involving job costing, holdbacks, or a CRA letter that has made someone stop sleeping.
Theo Fen
Eleven years, mostly with hospitality, retail and professional services. Theo does the catch-up work — the eighteen-months-behind files that everyone else quotes a frightening number for — and the software migrations.
By the numbers
Small, and staying that way.
How we work
Five things we hold to
- Fixed fees, never hourly. Hourly billing punishes you for asking questions. We’d rather you asked.
- Closed by the tenth. Every client, every month. If we’re going to be late you’ll hear it from us first, with a reason.
- Read-only bank access. Always. We do not move your money and we do not want the ability to. Nobody should have it but you.
- Plain English. If a report needs a glossary, it’s a bad report. We’ll tell you what your numbers mean in the words you’d use yourself.
- No judgement, ever. You are not the worst set of books we have seen. You are probably not in the worst ten.
Say hello
Have a conversation with us.
Thirty minutes, no charge, no obligation. Bring your worst-case scenario — we’ve probably seen it.