Zenbooks Case Study: Boutique La Muse

Scaling Style – How Zenbooks Helped Boutique La Muse Grow from $800 K to $3.8 M in Sales

About La Muse

Boutique La Muse is a women’s styling boutique founded in 2017 in Ottawa. From day one, their mission has been to make every client feel special and to curate a personal style that speaks to who they truly are. When they first engaged Zenbooks, La Muse operated a single store and did $800 000 in annual sales.

The Challenge

Pain Points:

Inaccurate or incomplete financial reporting: Untrained owner handling bookkeeping, payroll, HST, WSIB, and compliance without formal training
Modernize the accounting: Disorganized records kept on a shared Google Drive, leading to paper piles and lost invoices. Currently using a large payroll provider requiring manual input of statutory holiday formulas and WSIB payments that are onerous.
Strategic Guidance and Forecasting: No time or clarity for strategic planning or growth

Impact:This state of chaos cost the owner hours every week and created significant risk of compliance errors. It also left no bandwidth for marketing, merchandising, or opening new locations .

The Desired Outcome

Goals:

Automate and centralize all bookkeeping and reporting
Simplify payroll so that processing takes minutes instead of hours
Ensure full compliance with HST, WSIB, and payroll regulations
Free the owner to focus on client experience and store expansion

Our Solution

Onboarding:

Deployed Dext receipt bank to capture invoices and receipts digitally. No more shoe boxes of paper!
Set up automatic bank feeds so transaction reconciliation is handled in the cloud
Configured payroll workflows: owner now only emails staff hours and Zenbooks processes hiring, terminations, garnishments, and holiday pay.

Ongoing Support:

Monthly delivery of reconciled financials and up-to-date QuickBooks files
Dedicated team of experts are just an email away
Proactive guidance on grant applications and payroll relief during COVID, ensuring staff retention
Regular check-ins to advise on cash flow, inventory costing, and expansion planning .

Consequences

Without Zenbooks’ intervention, La Muse would have continued losing hours to compliance work, missed out on COVID support programs, and faced mounting errors as they tried to open new stores. Instead, with clean books and expert oversight, they expanded from one to three locations and grew sales from $800 000 to $3 800 000 by 2024.

Client Feedback

“It’s like having our own accountings department. I don’t have to think about day-to-day compliance issues anymore.” “During COVID they really shined. We got all the grants available and kept our staff employed, something that would have been so difficult on our own.”