AD Keeps The Books, a Lancaster, California bookkeeping practice, serves mental health professionals, drawing on its founder's clinical nursing background.

LANCASTER, CA, UNITED STATES, August 18, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ -- Aretha Dirde spent more than 15 years as a licensed nurse working in mental health. Today she keeps the books for the field she came from. Her firm, AD Keeps The Books, provides bookkeeping for therapists and counselors, psychologists, clinical social workers, and other mental health professionals in private practice, serving clients across the country from its base in Lancaster, California.

The background pays off in practical ways: Dirde already knows the terminology, the rhythm of session-based revenue, the recurring costs of EHR subscriptions and liability insurance, and the pay arrangements that come with associates and contract supervisors.

"I came to bookkeeping from the world my clients work in," Dirde said. "I know what a full caseload does to the rest of the to-do list. The calendar fills with clients, the books slide, and one month behind quietly becomes a year. My job is to bring the records current without any judgment about how they got that way, then keep them current so it never piles up again."

The firm works exclusively with mental health practices, from solo clinicians to group practices of roughly ten people. That includes telehealth practices, ABA and behavioral health teams, addiction and recovery counselors, and prescribing practices run by psychiatric nurse practitioners and psychiatrists, a corner of the field Dirde knows firsthand from her nursing career.

Monthly engagements cover transaction categorization, bank and credit card reconciliations, and monthly reports. For practices whose records need attention first, she separates two situations: catch-up bookkeeping for books that were never done at all, and clean-up bookkeeping for books that exist but are full of miscategorized transactions, duplicate entries, and accounts that were never reconciled. Group practices can add payroll processing for every pay period, clinician pay recorded the way it was agreed, year-end 1099 preparation for contractors, bill payment, and invoicing. Dirde also handles QuickBooks Online setup and training for practices. She is a certified QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor at the Gold tier, with Level 2 and Payroll certifications.

"A packed schedule does not always mean a healthy practice," Dirde said. "When the books are current, an owner can see what a caseload actually earns, what it costs to keep the doors open, and whether the fees are right. Those are decisions about the future of the practice, and they deserve real numbers."

AD Keeps The Books is deliberately a practice of one. Dirde does the work herself for every client, so the person a practice owner meets on the first call is the same person keeping the books and answering questions month after month. Cloud-based systems let her serve practices in any state.

Practice owners anywhere in the country can book a consultation through the firm's website or by phone.

Aretha Dirde
AD Keeps The Books LLC
+1 6616469745
info@adkeepsthebooks.com
Visit us on social media:
LinkedIn
Facebook