Bookkeeping Services

Bookkeeping is the part of a small business that gets pushed to the weekend and then to next month. We take it off your calendar entirely, and we keep it current rather than reconstructing a year of it every spring. Plans start at $150 a month and are set by how many accounts you run and how many transactions move through them.

The monthly cycle

Each month follows the same routine, so you always know where things stand. Early in the month we pull the previous month’s bank, credit card, and merchant activity. We categorize every transaction, match deposits to income, and code expenses to accounts that will still make sense at tax time. We reconcile each account to its statement, which is the step that catches duplicate charges, missed deposits, and transfers recorded twice.

Anything we cannot identify goes on a short question list, usually a handful of items, and we send it to you rather than guessing. Once you answer, we close the month and it stays closed.

What you receive each month

A profit and loss statement and a balance sheet, for the month and for the year to date, a reconciliation confirmation for each account, and a plain summary of anything worth your attention, such as a category that jumped, a customer who has not paid, or a cash position that is tightening. Everything lands in your client portal, so prior months are always available without asking. If a bank or a lender wants statements, they are already prepared.

Catch-up and cleanup work

Most businesses come to us behind rather than current, and that is normal. Catch-up work brings a set of books forward from wherever they stopped to the present month. Cleanup work corrects books that exist but do not reconcile, usually because transactions were miscategorized, an account was never connected, or an earlier balance was forced to match.

We scope this before we start it, not while we are in the middle of it. We look at how many months are open, how many accounts are involved, the monthly transaction volume, and the condition of what is already recorded. From that you get a fixed scope and a price to bring the books current, quoted separately from the monthly price. Once the catch-up is finished you move onto the normal monthly cycle. Two things make it faster and cheaper: complete bank and credit card statements for the whole period, and one person we can ask about the unusual transactions.

How current books change your return

A business return prepared from clean, reconciled books is a different job from one prepared from a folder of receipts and a spreadsheet. When the books are current, the income and expense figures on Schedule C, Form 1065, or Form 1120-S come straight from statements that already tie to the bank, so preparation time drops and the return goes out early instead of on extension.

Depreciation on Form 4562 is straightforward, because asset purchases were coded correctly when they happened rather than reconstructed a year later. Deductions get missed less often, because the expense was recorded in the month it occurred instead of remembered in March. Clients whose books we keep generally pay less for their business return and get it back faster.

What we do not do

Our office does not run payroll. We do not process pay runs, file payroll tax returns, or issue year-end wage statements. If you have employees or expect to hire, tell us and we will point you toward a payroll provider, then take their monthly reports into your books so the two systems agree.

If you collect sales tax, ask us about including Form E-500 in your monthly cycle, with Form E-536 where you collect in more than one county.