E&S Entrepreneur Advisors: The Business
Expertise in Small Business Planning and Support
Susan Schuldes, CPA, and Beth Ehlers, CMA, have extensive experience in financial and operations management on both the large corporate scale and on the small business side. This experience, combined with strong problem solving and analytical skills, enables us to bring extensive practical knowledge to entrepreneurs looking to start up a business, or business owners looking to improve their operations.
As small business owners ourselves, we understand the challenges you face – from cash flow concerns and payroll accounting to time management issues. We also understand the struggle to get a new product or service to market and to secure financing. We have experience in all aspects of financial and business management and can offer you the appropriate advice and guidance, along with the unique operating style and responsive service of a small, home-based businesses.
E&S Entrepreneur Advisors, LLC, with personnel in Appleton, De Pere, Waukesha, and Madison, is able to help not only on the financial management side, but also with personnel management, operations management, process flow and training. We offer our clients all of these skills in a friendly, easy-to-understand language. With a passion for training and teaching, we can easily help clients who lack a financial or accounting background by offering well-rounded strategic business advice–leaving you to focus on your business’s core capabilities and allowing you to position yourself for business growth and success.
Taking advantage of modern technology, E&S serves clients remotely, as well as locally, enabling us to offer the level of financial management services and small business support that is typically available to large corporations, but at a rate that is affordable to all businesses.
We work with each client to provide the right combination of business consulting services needed to achieve individual goals. Our small business set-up lends itself to flexibility and responsiveness for our clients. We want you to succeed!
E&S Entrepreneur Advisors: The Partners
Financial/Operations Management and CPA Experience
Beth Ehlers
Member, CMA
Appleton, WI
Beth Ehlers received a BBA in finance from the University of Notre Dame. She is a licensed Certified Management Accountant (CMA) and a Certified QuickBooks Online ProAdvisor.
Prior to establishing E&S Entrepreneur Advisors, LLC, she gained her Financial Management experience working for General Mills in Minneapolis, Gorton’s of Gloucester in Massachusetts, and Kimberly Clark in Wisconsin, working in both the staff and plant settings. She has experience in bookkeeping and accounting, payroll processing and payroll tax, sales tax, internal financial reporting, forecasting and analysis, inventory management, fixed asset management, cash flow management, capital expenditure analysis, and strategic planning.
Beth gained her Operations Management experience while working at Kimberly Clark managing a team of 120 employees in the plant setting. In this capacity she gained experience with manufacturing equipment start-ups and steady-state efficiency, preventative maintenance, just-in-time inventory management, machine product loading, and personnel management (including goal-setting and performance reviews). She also gained training experience while managing the plant training department during this time.
Beth currently works in the role of Outsourced CFO for several of our clients including manufacturers in Green Bay and the Fox Valley.
Susan Schuldes
Member, CPA
Waukesha, WI
Susan received a BBA in accounting from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is a licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Certified QuickBooks Online Advanced and Desktop Pro Advisor.
Susan has over thirty years’ experience in the accounting world, working as a staff accountant for Wipfli in Green Bay and as a Senior Territory Manager in the Internal Audit Department for Firstar Bank Corporation (now US Bank) prior to establishing E&S. She was a trustee for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society of Wisconsin and served on the Finance Committee for the United Way Fox Cities. She has experience in accounting, bookkeeping, payroll processing and payroll taxes, sales taxes, recordkeeping, as well as cash flow management, inventory management, internal control procedures, and lending/loan applications.
Susan currently works in the role of Outsourced CFO for several of our clients including a large chemical engineering firm in the Boston area and a graphic design studio in the Fox Valley.
Kathy Denis
Staff bookkeeper
De Pere, WI
Kathy received a BSN from Marquette University and worked as an RN for many years prior to changing careers. She received her Small Business Bookkeeping Certificate from NWTC and joined E&S Entrepreneur Advisors, LLC in December of 2011. With her cheerful demeaner she manages much of our payroll service and is a valuable bookkeeper for many of our small business clients.
Hugh Schuldes
Staff bookkeeper
Madison, WI
Hugh received a BS in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2017. He worked in sales for several years after graduation and joined E&S in January of 2021. While headquartered out of Madison, he was working as a Bookkeeper while simultaneously working toward his Master’s Degree in Accounting. In December of 2023, he graduated from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. Now a full-fledged Accountant, he looks forward to taking over the business down the line. He will be tackling the CPA exam next!
Testimonials
Hear From Our Clients
After thirty some years of working for other people, I “retired” to start my own freelance Photo Styling business. I needed help with bookkeeping, billing, and everything else related to correctly managing the paperwork side of doing business. Beth was the first person I thought of to get me started. Having been friends since before Beth started her own business, I knew that she was knowledgeable, meticulous, and dependable. I had no background in accounting, Beth guided me using QuickBooks and I now feel confident in my ability to keep my own books and billing in order. If I ever have any questions navigating anything, Beth is always there for me. Thank you, Beth, for your continued guidance and support for me and my business.
I can’t express enough how important Beth and Kathy have been throughout the last ten years working together. I’ve learned through business to hire people who are better at the jobs you need done than you are. I didn’t go to business school, but my confidence is much higher knowing that I have them in my corner, guiding me through this journey. As much as I have learned from them in the last ten years, I know I still need their expertise to have the success that I want. I couldn’t be more thankful to them.
Beth is professional, knowledgeable, and very easy to work with. When I first called E & S I was in quite a bind with almost a year of inaccurately using QuickBooks online. She helped to fix my mistakes, train me on how to correctly make entries and set up catagories for my business expenses and income that would make it easy to generate detailed reports. I never would have survived my first and consecutive years in business without her expertise. I highly recommend her for any business, especially a new startup so that they can avoid the mistakes I made.
Beth has been there since the start of my business. She made it such a smooth transition for me by helping me set up systems for business success right away. I appreciate the time she took to help set up my Quickbooks and also coach me on the ins and outs as well. Her organization has helped me better understand my business and has helped me to continue to make great decisions for it. I’m grateful for her guidance and also for sharing her wealth of knowledge so I can grow as a business owner. I would highly recommend Beth and E&S Entrepreneur Advisors. They have been a business game changer.
I have been working with E&S Entrepreneur Advisors for the past 3 years and I am constantly impressed with Beth’s timely responses and eye for detail in my financials. If she doesn’t know an answer to a question, she will explore all resources to find the answer for me. Her monthly reports are extremely thorough and help me understand my business better so I can make financial decisions to grow. Beth and her team are a huge part of my business’ success, I am so thankful to have found E&S Advisors!
After 6 years working with Susan, she has become an invaluable member of my business support system. She allows me to focus on what I do best while giving me the peace of mind that my finances are being kept in proper order and everything is being tracked/ paid properly. Especially during the start of COVID she made sure that I was always up to date with the constant rule changes and programs, helped secure the aid we needed, and made sure that our spending was tracked properly to ensure the forgiveness of the aid we received.
Susan has played an integral role in helping me set up my accounting system. She is easily accessible and always ready to help. Susan also played a huge role during the pandemic, helping me navigate the rules with the COVID 19 small business loans and grants. I am grateful for Susan’s expertise and would highly recommend her to other small business owners.
Susan and Beth from E&S Advisors supported my dream of opening up my own mental health clinic. When it came time to do the SWAT analysis they both stepped up and assisted in finishing this part of my business plan. As a result I was able to get a VA loan to open up the business.
They both were there every step of the way, offering encouragement and factual information to support making this goal achievable. Both are easy to work with, flexible and professional.
Susan and Beth with E&S were very helpful in getting my Quickbooks set up properly and training me on the specific areas that I needed help with. I had already set up QB and was using it for a couple months… E&S was able to walk me thought real transactions and point out areas that I needed to adjust so that all of my reporting was correct. I received a customized document summarizing all the features that we discussed for on-going reference. I felt like they were a great value and saved me time and money in the long run. I have scheduled them to come back and walk through submission of taxes at the end of the quarter. It’s great to have someone you can call on for just what you need and not feel like they are going to charge you and exorbitant fee!
Excellent value, and pro-active on cost-savings measures. We have been in business for 25 years, and E&S has found several areas where we can improve our accounts for better transparency and cost-savings. Her quarterly analysis is always insightful and her problem-solving skills are always appreciated. We outsourced a portion of our bookkeeping this year to E&S and it really lightened the load on our administrative staff. We had a key member out of the office for several weeks for health reasons and our payables stayed on track thanks to their efforts.
I have been working with Susan and Beth of E&S Entrepreneur Advisors for the last few years and I am very impressed with their company. They have helped me to better understand my business. I am even learning to do some of the entering in QuickBooks myself. They are always very professional, ready to help me when I call. I would highly recommend Beth and Susan from E&S Entrepreneur Advisors.
The knowledge, experience and results that E&S Entrepreneur Advisors have brought to Medalcraft Mint have been integral to the success, and continued success, of our company. Beth has an exceptionally strong understanding of manufacturing and cost control. Her skills as our outsourced CFO are an important part of our management team.