Bookkeeping
You didn’t start a business to do data entry.
Monthly bookkeeping, plus the cleanup to get you there if you are behind. Done by the same person who prepares your return, so nothing gets lost between two people who have never spoken to each other.
However far behind you are, I have seen worse and I am not going to react.
Does any of this sound familiar?
There is a box. You know roughly what is in it. You have known for months that you should deal with it.
You genuinely cannot tell from your own records whether you are making money.
Every February is the same scramble, and every February you promise yourself it will not be.
Somebody set up QuickBooks for you once and nobody has looked at it properly since.
Your bookkeeper does not do taxes and your tax preparer has never seen your books.
You are doing this at ten at night, after everything else, badly.
If you are behind, we start with cleanup
Almost nobody arrives with tidy books. Most people who contact me about bookkeeping are somewhere between three months and three years behind, and that is the normal case rather than the embarrassing one.
Cleanup is its own project, quoted separately, with a fixed price agreed before I start. It involves reconstructing the period from bank and card statements, categorising everything properly, reconciling each month against the actual accounts, sorting out what was personal and what was business, fixing a chart of accounts that was never right, and producing a profit and loss statement you can believe.
It is frequently the most useful thing I do for a new client, because everything downstream depends on it. Nobody can advise you well from books that are wrong, and a tax return built on bad records costs more to prepare and misses things.
You do not need to organise anything first. Send me the bank statements and whatever else exists. Organising it is the work, not the prerequisite.
What monthly bookkeeping includes
Every month
- Bank and credit card accounts reconciled
- Transactions categorised properly, not dumped into miscellaneous
- Receipts matched where they exist
- Loans, owner draws and transfers recorded correctly
- A profit and loss statement and balance sheet you can actually read
- A short note from me on anything that looked odd
Through the year
- Quarterly estimated tax payments calculated from real numbers rather than last year’s guess
- A conversation in the autumn about what to do before the year closes
- Sales tax reporting where it applies
- Records kept in the form your lender or a buyer would want them
- Reasonable questions answered as they come up, not saved for April
Built for your business
A chart of accounts that matches how your business actually runs, not a generic template. Separate reporting per location if you have more than one, so you can see which is carrying which.
For laundromats specifically: vended wash and dry separated from card loads, app payments and wash dry fold, so revenue is legible rather than one lump called sales.
Books and taxes by the same person
The usual arrangement is a bookkeeper who does not prepare returns and a preparer who has never seen the books. Every year the file gets handed across, questions get asked twice, and something falls between them.
When the same person does both, the books get kept with the return in mind all year. Depreciation schedules stay current. Owner compensation is documented as it happens. Decisions get made in October rather than discovered in March.
It is also cheaper than it looks. Clean books make a return substantially quicker to prepare, and that shows up in what the return costs you.
Because of that, I take bookkeeping clients alongside their tax work rather than on its own. It is not a rule I enforce for its own sake. It is that half the value disappears when the two are split, and I would rather not sell you half a thing.
What it costs
A flat monthly fee, not an hourly rate. You should never be wondering whether it is safe to ask me a question.
| Monthly transaction volume | Per month |
|---|---|
| Up to around 75 transactions | $XXX |
| Around 75 to 200 | $XXX |
| Around 200 to 400 | $XXX |
| Above that, or multiple locations | Quoted |
| Cleanup of prior periods | Quoted as a project |
What moves the price: the number of accounts to reconcile, how many locations or revenue lines need separating, whether inventory is involved, whether records arrive in a usable form, and whether sales tax reporting is needed.
You get a fixed number in writing before anything starts, and it does not change without a conversation first.
How it works, and what I do not do
One system, not five
Everything runs on QuickBooks Online plus one tool for bank feeds and receipts. That is a policy rather than a preference. Supporting three platforms at once is how small practices get slow and make mistakes.
If you are on something else, I will tell you honestly whether moving is worth it. Sometimes it is not.
I do not run payroll
Deliberately. Payroll tax liability is personal and unforgiving, the deadlines do not flex, and the margin does not justify the risk to either of us.
What I will do is get you set up on a proper payroll platform, make sure your owner compensation is defensible, review how your workers are classified, and handle anything the IRS sends you about it. Somebody else presses the button.
Limited places
Bookkeeping is monthly work with real deadlines, and I would rather do it properly for a small number of businesses than adequately for a large one.
If I am full when you ask, I will say so rather than taking you on and letting the service slip in February.
Tell me how far behind you are
What the business does, roughly how many transactions a month, what software you are on if any, and how long it has been since the books were right.
If the honest answer to that last one is that they have never been right, say so. That is a very common answer and it does not change anything except the quote.
Please do not attach statements or financial records here. Once we are talking you will get a secure portal.
What happens next
A reply in a day
From me. I will tell you straight away whether I have capacity.
A look at what exists
Read only access to your accounting file, or a few months of bank statements. Fifteen minutes tells me how much cleanup there is.
Two numbers in writing
One for cleanup as a project, one for the monthly fee afterwards. Separately, so you can see what is catching up and what is keeping up.
Then it just runs
Statements arrive each month whether you ask or not, and February stops being a scramble.
Michael Jones, EA & CFP®. Enrolled Agent, licensed by the U.S. Department of the Treasury to represent taxpayers before the IRS in all fifty states. Bookkeeping and tax preparation services. This practice does not perform audits, reviews or compilations, and does not issue audited financial statements.