You’ve been saving up questions since March.

Bookkeeping, so the numbers exist before you need them

Monthly reconciliation, sensible categorisation, and a profit and loss statement that actually tells you something — split by location or revenue line if that’s what your business needs.

Behind? That’s the usual case. Cleanup is quoted as its own project and it’s often the single most useful thing I do for a new client, because everything downstream depends on it. Nobody can advise you well from books that aren’t right.

Clean books also make your return cheaper to prepare, which quietly pays for a chunk of the bookkeeping.

Entity structure — the decision most people make once and never revisit

Sole proprietor, LLC, partnership, S-corporation, C-corporation. Most owners chose theirs at the start on somebody’s casual advice and have never looked again, even though the business is now a completely different size.

The right answer depends on your profit, how much you take out, whether you have partners, whether you plan to sell, and what state you’re in. It changes as the business grows. I’ll run the numbers rather than telling you what usually works, because “usually” is how people end up paying for a structure that doesn’t fit them.

If you’re starting something, this is worth thirty minutes before you file anything. Undoing an entity choice is far more expensive than making it correctly.

S-corp analysis and what to actually pay yourself

Two separate questions, and people usually only ask the first one.

Is the election worth it? Below a certain profit level it costs more in payroll administration and filing fees than it saves. Above that level it saves real money. I’ll tell you where you actually sit rather than reciting a rule of thumb.

What’s a reasonable salary? If you’ve elected S-corp status, the IRS expects reasonable compensation before distributions — and “reasonable” is a facts-and-circumstances test that most owners have never had documented by anyone. Paying yourself too little is one of the most reliably examined issues in small business tax.

I run the analysis and write it down, so if it’s ever questioned there’s a defensible file instead of a shrug.

Partnerships, and the paperwork nobody wrote

Partnership returns, K-1s, capital accounts, guaranteed payments, and how profit actually gets split when what you agreed verbally doesn’t match what the return says.

The recurring problem: two people started something on a handshake, put in different amounts of money and wildly different amounts of time, and never wrote down what happens if one of them leaves. Basis gets tracked badly or not at all, and then somebody wants out and nobody can agree what they’re owed.

I’ll sort out the tax side of that — including the elections that matter when a partner comes in or goes out — and tell you when you need an attorney rather than an accountant.

I’ve run one of these too

I spent fifteen years in financial advice, and then I bought a laundromat that was failing. I ran it, turned it around, and sold it at a profit.

What I learned from that has nothing to do with laundry. It’s that there is never time for the paperwork, because there is always something more urgent than reconciling last month. It waits, and waiting costs money — not dramatically, not all at once, but steadily, in deductions nobody took and decisions made a year later than they should have been.

That’s why I became an Enrolled Agent, and it’s why this practice is set up the way it is. Flat fees so you’re not watching a meter. Books and taxes together so nothing gets lost between two people. Reachable in July, because that’s when the questions actually happen.