Frequently Asked Questions

• Your company’s financials will make or break your business. It is very important to keep up with your bookkeeping consistently to make sure that you know where your business stands. It is not enough to look at your books once per year -- you could find ways to save money, gain more business, and prevent costly mistakes by looking at your financial statements multiple times per year.

• Also, a good bookkeeper will classify your transactions properly and save you money at your accountant’s office, since there will be no need to spend time fixing the books or trying to figure out where you stand. By keeping up with your bookkeeping monthly, you will not only have a better picture of your business, but you will also be able to avoid the headache and stress of having to catch up with your bookkeeping come tax season. 

• Every month we will categorize all business related income and expense transactions and issue you a monthly or quarterly financial statement consisting of a Balance Sheet and a Profit and Loss. These reports will help you understand your business past to make decisions on your business future. They are required in order to do any tax planning or to fund your business with mid-year loans. 

• Anything above and beyond basic tracking of income and expense items for the month is not included in the monthly price above. However, additional services are available as an add-on to your basic bookkeeping package. These add-on's include: accrual basis accounting, detailed financials showing class tracking or job profitability, invoicing, bill payment, payroll, sales tax filing, tax preparation and legal help. Monthly strategy sessions are also available for additional fees. 

• Our base minimum rate starts at $300 per month for basic bookkeeping and $600 for full charge bookkeeping. The frequency of the services performed, the level of activity and the complexity of the account increases the base price. Clean up jobs may be quoted at a flat or hourly rate. 

• We do not do taxes or give tax advice. However, we partner with a Tax Professional or your CPA to ensure your books are ready for tax season. 

• We do compile and process W2's and 1099’s every January through Gusto.

• We ONLY work with QuickBooks Pro, Premier, Enterprise and QuickBooks Online. We do not work with QuickBooks Self-Employed, QuickBooks for Mac or any other accounting platform that is not QuickBooks. 

• We can assist with your QuickBooks Subscription.

• My preferred payroll servicer provider is Gusto which we can send a link to help get you started or you can hire a third party payroll service for your payroll and filing taxes. We will enter payroll and reconcile the books to the payroll reports. 

• Many of our team members are Certified Bookkeepers and ProAdvisor's that work closely with CPAs, Enrolled Agents and Legal Professionals. You can rest assured that you are working with the highest quality professionals. We also belong to a large network of financial professionals so if there is a question we have not seen before, we have a lot of resources in our back pocket to find an answer for you fast. 

• Ideally, our bookkeeping team will need access to your business bank and credit card accounts in order to efficiently complete your monthly financials. Many banks allow for accountant (read-only) access to bank accounts. This access helps us to keep our fees affordable and our efficiency high. 

• Yes. Our team must use QuickBooks Online in order to handle the bookkeeping at the price list above. Versions - Essentials, Plus, or Advanced are all acceptable. Simple Start or QuickBooks Self Employed are not. If you have a current subscription, you are ahead of the game. No need to get another subscription. If you do not currently have a subscription, we can create one using our company discount as long as we are your bookkeeper. We highly recommend signing up for Essentials or Plus to start. 

• We do not believe in locking our clients into using our services for a set period of time. We want you to stay with us because you are happy with our service, not because you have to. Thus, we do not have contracts with time commitments.

• We do, however, have an Engagement Letter that you will be asked to sign when you become a client. This Engagement Letter outlines the quote we have provided for your file and some general terms of engagement. There is no time commitment outlined on the Engagement Letter -- all of our clients are considered to be working with us on a month-to-month basis. 

• If you are a monthly recurring client, payment is due on the 1st of every month. If you have a special clean up project, a retainer is due to begin work and is generally charged on an hourly basis. 

 We are very flexible and always find a way to make this part convenient for the client.

• View-only logins
  Most of our clients set up separate view-only logins to their bank account, which allow us access to view and download statements, but give us no access to your other sensitive account information. This is the most convenient option because it allows us to pull the information we need to do your books each month without having to bother you for each document or check copy.
  
  Pdf files
  For banks or credit cards that do not have the option to create a secondary login, or if a client is uncomfortable providing logins to us, the client may also send us pdf versions of their files. We use a secure document transfer service called Hightail in order to ensure that all documents sent to/from us are protected.

• the “shoebox”
  If you have a lot of paper receipts that you believe we will need in order to do the books, you may be surprised to find out that we may not even need them. How is that possible? We try to work efficiently, so we will first use the information on your monthly statements to categorize all the transactions we can. If you use mostly checks and debit/credit cards for your transactions, we will see the vendor come through on your statement and can categorize a large portion of the information already. Then, we will export to a spreadsheet for you to look over, which will contain any transactions we are unsure of or need more clarification on, so that you can let us know what was purchased. Exchanging receipts is usually not necessary. 

• You can rest assured that your financials will be handled with the highest degree of integrity and precaution.

• With a large franchise, you do not usually know who is doing your books. Often, the processing centers are even located in other countries.

• While some CPA firms do bookkeeping, we are usually cheaper than your CPA firm when it comes to bookkeeping.

• We will need to gather info about your company and needs in order to accurately quote. The level of activity and the services needed differ on every client.