Meet our team
Meet our team
KNKBS is small and mighty, with decades of experience! We work remotely with businesses all across the United States.
Kathleen Fernan
Kathleen has been working in accounting since the '70s! While working for Angeles Corporation, she was in charge of over 75 sets of books under year-round audit. Since then she's worked for a range of businesses, including a software developer and a wholesale tree grower. Kathleen founded KNKBS with her sister Kerry in 1991, and has been helping small and mid-sized businesses with technical and accounting challenges ever since.
Kerry Whitmire
Kerry began her accounting career in real estate - from bookkeeper to Controller to CFO to Senior VP in 13 years. Ever since starting KNKBS with Kathleen in 1991, Kerry has been providing CFO-for-hire and consulting services to small and mid-sized businesses. She can immediately evaluate any set of accounting records and determine how to get a business on the right track - and she can make the best out of a mess.
Kitty Morse, CPA
Kitty's experience ranges from performing financial audits while at Ernst & Young, to SEC reporting at The Walt Disney Company. She went on to spend 20+ years as CFO of a small family-owned manufacturing business. Kitty brings a broad understanding of management needs, compassion for the bookkeeper's responsibilities, and a deep appreciation for accuracy to her work as a conversion and clean-up specialist.
Julia Morse
As our Lead Bookkeeper, Julia works directly with our small and mid-size business clients on setups, cleanups, conversions and training, as well as coordinating and supporting our team of in-house bookkeepers. Her favorite part of the job is when she encounters a problem she's never seen before. Julia works with clients on all the accounting platforms KNK serves: Zoho Books, QuickBooks Desktop, and QuickBooks Online. When not fixing tricky reconciliations or setting up conversions, Julia loves gardening, sewing, and working on her deadlift.
Danielle Barkume
Danielle joins KNKBS as a part-time bookkeeper with 15 years of QuickBooks Desktop experience running her family-owned, manufacturing small business. She learned the accounting basics from the many hours shadowing her mother in their business, and looks forward to continued learning and growth with KNKBS. When not working, Danielle enjoys time with her 3 boys and 4 dogs.
Dusty Bisla
Dusty Bisla
Dusty brings to KNKBS a broad range of experience. As operations manager and bookkeeper for her own music consulting business, she has been working with QuickBooks desktop for 12 years. With a degree in Applied Economics from London University, she worked in banking for 15 years as a commercial loan documentation specialist. In her spare time, Dusty regularly attends the gym and loves to travel with family and experience other cultures.
Griselda Conde
Griselda found her passion for accounting after working as an A/R Specialist for a small CRM software company in late 2016. She then proceeded to study Accounting at SMC in 2020 and is now a part-time bookkeeper at KNKBS. Griselda has experience in general bookkeeping, payroll, analyzing financial reports, and assisting with client book cleanups. In her free time, Griselda enjoys playing bingo!
Tess Crabtree
Tess Crabtree
Tess started her career as a Budget Analyst in the corporate world, and has since worked as a pharmaceutical rep, a professional assistant, and the co-owner of an online needlepoint company. She's been with KNKBS for several years, managing billing and applying her excellent professional organizing skills to keeping our office in tip-top shape. In her free time, Tess loves to spend time with her family, go fly fishing and water and snow skiing, and do needlepoint and jigsaw puzzles.
Deana Cruz
Deana Cruz
Deana Cruz is a part-time bookkeeper at KNKBS with over 25 Years of accounting experience. She has served as Corporate Accounting Manager for DynaMetric, Inc. in Arcadia, CA, and as Director of Finance for Starving Students, Inc. in Los Angeles, CA. She obtained her BA degree in Business Administration and Accounting from Mount Saint Mary’s College in Los Angeles. She loves being a mom to her four boys that keep her busy outside the office!
Michele Haisman
Michele has worked for KNKBS for over 20 years as a part-time bookkeeper, supporting multiple companies with their financial record-keeping. She loves gardening, spending time with her 3 grown kids, and has been a foster mom to countless kittens.
Arlene Karma
Our accounting sleuth! Arlene has been with KNKBS since 1997, working full time keeping clients' books squeaky clean. She prides herself on balancing every account and is not afraid to take on a troubled set of books. Arlene specializes in contractors and job costing; she's also a payroll expert. Arlene works remotely from her Texas office, and when she's not balancing the books, she's a professional barrel racer -- Check out one of her rides here!
Carina Martinez
Carina Martinez
Carina is a bookkeeper located in Southern California and is a wife and mother of two beautiful daughters. She studied accounting in college and quickly began working for multiple organizations on finance teams. In 2013 Carina took a hiatus from her career to begin a family, then joined KNKBS in 2019 to provide support including bookkeeping, payroll, and reconciliation for multiple businesses. She and her family have recently found a passion for traveling and camping across Southern California.
Karen Robertson
Karen Robertson
Karen recently joined KNKBS as bookkeeper, bringing with her the organizational, analytical and customer service skills that were important in her previous career as a consulting engineer. She is grateful to get to use these same skills daily as the mother of two teenagers and two needy cats, wife to Dave and as an active volunteer in multiple charitable organizations. Karen and her family live in Columbus, Ohio.
Mira Rose
Mira Rose
Mira joins KNKBS from Seattle, WA, bringing a background of client services, organizational communication studies, and public relations, among other interdisciplinary scholarship and experience. Mira is a bookkeeper and Webmaster for KNKBS and particularly enjoys creating and maintaining accessible, sustainable systems. Outside of work, Mira can be found reading, creating multimedia art, and saying hello to every neighborhood dog.
Penny Todd
Penny Todd
Penny has worked for KNKBS for over 20 years as a specialized paralegal. She maintains all the compliance for many corporate entities. She enjoys the Big Bear area, skiing and horses.
Ileana Tomich
Ileana has worked across a variety of fields and has a primary background in customer service, operations, and real estate accounting. In her current role with KNKBS, she acts as a Quickbooks Online Bookkeeper. She lives in Seattle and enjoys creating art, cooking, and snuggling her cat, Bento.
"My company has been working with K&K for about a year now. They handle bookkeeping, payroll, a host of other admin tasks and have become an invaluable member of our team. They do an exceptional job and are efficient, responsive, pragmatic, helpful and always a pleasure to work with.
I cannot recommend them highly enough."
"As a CPA and CFO, I have worked with many accountants, bookkeepers and consultants. Kathleen is an exceptional professional. She has incredible breadth of technical knowledge and practical business acumen. She has been able to assist us in a very large and complex task of cleaning up 3 years of financial statements. There was not one issue she could not address or handle. She has been helpful in building our knowledge base to utilize the system better and to implement best practices for daily operation of QuickBooks. As a business consultant I doubt there is an area of accounting / process improvement that she would not be able to assist.
I feel very lucky to work with her and you will too!"
"In a very short time, Julia has become an incredible asset to our team. In addition to expertly handling our bookkeeping and payroll needs, she has helped investigate and resolve many of the complex, related financial matters that arise in the course of running a business. She is smart, proactive, diligent and if that wasn't enough, she's an absolute joy to work with.
I feel very lucky to work with her and you will too!"
"Kitty is truly a pleasure to work alongside! Our firm has gone through several bookkeepers over the years because they tend to be 'too busy' to keep our records up-to-date, or are simply unable to help our business, as we require some unique bookkeeping methods to keep track of client expenses we front. Kitty, however, was clearly up for the challenge and was able to efficiently clean up our previous years' records, while also providing a significant number of tips and ideas for the future. We're excited to incorporate her new techniques and procedures going forward, and are confident that they will be just as effective as all of her other ideas... I would recommend her to anyone looking for bookkeeping services or simply in need of help with QBO."
"Kathleen is the best thing that ever happened to my business. She came in to help us with upgrading and clean up of our Quickbooks accounting system, a big mess. She quickly understood the problems and solved them one by one. She is easy to work with and she can even make accounting fun and interesting. She is extraordinary!"
"Kitty is the QuickBooks Ultimate Extreme Advisor, and a pleasure to work with. ... She has helped us understand proper accounting strategies, workflow and has reconciled all our accounts. Now our books are clean and much easier to manage. Kitty not only fixed our books, but goes out of her way to help us understand the reasoning behind it. ... I wish there were more accountants like her.
You're the best, thanks Kitty!"