Service
Bookkeeping that ties to the statements, and software I am building to keep it that way
Clean books today in the tools you already use. Behind the scenes I am building my own bookkeeping software, with account sync planned and AI assistance built in.
Books are right when they agree with the bank, the card statements and the return, and not before. That is the work here: setting up a file that does not need rebuilding in two years, designing a chart of accounts you can read, cleaning up a file that has already drifted, and training whoever is in it every week. Most of it starts as cleanup, because that is when people call.
I do this work in the tools you already use, including QuickBooks. I am also building my own bookkeeping software, described next. It is in development and not yet available to clients.
The bookkeeping software I am building
I am building my own bookkeeping software. It is in development, it is not yet in use for clients, and I will not put a date on it before it is ready. It is designed around a few ideas.
- Account sync (planned)Secure connections to your bank and card accounts so transactions arrive on their own, instead of being typed in or imported from files. This is planned, not working yet.
- AI assistanceAI suggests categories and flags entries that look wrong, so the routine matching goes faster and the odd items get a person's attention.
- Stored on my own computerThe software runs on my own computer and the AI runs there too. Your financial data is stored on my machine, and encrypted backups are kept separately.
- A CPA still owns the booksI review the books myself and close them out each year, or as often as the client needs.
Your books are handled in QuickBooks or whatever you use today. Nothing about the software changes the estimate, the scope or who does the work.
The errors that don't announce themselves
Undeposited Funds is the classic. A payment gets applied to an invoice, lands in Undeposited Funds, and then the matching bank deposit is categorized as income a second time. Revenue is overstated, sometimes badly, and the profit and loss statement looks perfectly normal while it happens.
Opening Balance Equity is next. That account is scaffolding from setup. If it still carries a balance a year later, the setup was never finished, and something is sitting in equity that belongs somewhere else on the balance sheet.
The Add button in the bank feed is the most expensive button in the product. Accept whatever category QuickBooks proposes, transaction after transaction, and you get a file that reconciles to the penny and is miscategorized throughout. Owner draws land in an expense account and overstate deductions on a return you sign under penalty of perjury. In an S corporation the same habit blurs the line between wages and distributions, which is the line an examiner looks at first. Sales tax you collected gets booked as income instead of the liability it is.
Then there is editing a transaction inside a month you already reconciled. It does not undo the reconciliation. It opens a discrepancy that grows quietly behind you. Nothing in the file turns red, and the damage compounds month over month, which is why the price of a cleanup tracks how long the file ran before anyone looked at it.
What the work covers
Scope gets set at intake. No engagement includes all of this, and I would rather tell you which parts you don't need than sell you the list.
- New file setup: entity type, fiscal year, and opening balances tied to a filed return or a real trial balance
- A chart of accounts built around decisions you actually make, mapped at year end to the lines on your Schedule C or Form 1120-S
- Cleanup of a drifted file: recategorization, duplicate removal, clearing Undeposited Funds and Opening Balance Equity
- Bank, credit card, and loan reconciliation month by month, against the statements rather than the bank feed
- Payroll and sales tax posted to liability accounts so they stop running through income and expense
- Vendor records built for January: Form W-9 collected before you pay someone, TINs on file, 1099 tracking on well before the January 31 deadline
- Class or location tracking when you have more than one profit center worth watching separately
- Training on the handful of transactions your business generates every week, with the procedure in writing
- Income tax at 24%
- Employee FICA
- Employer FICA
| Income tax at 24% | Employee FICA | Employer FICA | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Accountable plan | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Paid as wages | $2,239.20 | $713.75 | $713.75 |
The accountable plan has no tax on the reimbursement; the nonaccountable route costs $3,666.70 in income and payroll tax.
Computed: $9,330 of hypothetical expenses; 7.65% each side (Pub. 15, 2026); 24% assumed rate
How a cleanup actually runs
File review
I take accountant access or a backup and read the last complete year: reconciliation reports, the balance sheet, Opening Balance Equity, Undeposited Funds, and whatever is parked in accounts nobody can explain. That tells me how deep the problem goes.
Written scope and price
You get the number and the boundary before I change anything. Which months I am rebuilding, which accounts I am reconciling, what is excluded, and what the file looks like when I am done.
Rebuild and reconcile
I start from the last month that ties to a statement and work forward, account by account. When a reconciliation won't close, I chase the difference. I don't plug it with an adjusting entry so the screen turns green.
Handoff
You get the reconciled file, a written list of what was wrong and why it happened, and a working session in your own file so the same errors don't reappear in month one.
Cleanup gets an estimate in writing before I open anything. The model scores each service on its own factor set, and every one of them is built the same way, out of countable facts about the work rather than anything about you. A return is priced from income sources, states filed, forms required, entities involved. A cleanup is priced from months out of balance, how many bank and card accounts, whether payroll and sales tax run through the file, how many entities are involved. The honest carve-out is that if the review turns up a year nobody mentioned, the scope changes and so does the number, in writing, before I keep going. Here is how the pricing works.
Training, and why the goal is to need me less
An engagement that ends with you calling me every month to categorize a credit card charge is one I set up badly. Recurring dependence on me for data entry is a design failure, not a business model.
So training is specific and boring on purpose. Not a tour of the menus. We sit in your file, with your accounts, and you drive while we run the four or five transactions your business actually produces: receiving a customer payment, recording a card charge, moving money between the business and yourself, handling a refund, and what to do when the bank feed proposes something you don't recognize. The answer to that last one is leave it alone and ask.
You get a one-page written procedure at the end, because a training session nobody wrote down expires in about six weeks. After that I would rather review a quarter of your work in an hour than spend the hour doing the entry myself. It costs you less, and the books stay yours.
When you don't need this
If you are a single-member LLC with one bank account, no payroll, no inventory, and twenty transactions a month, QuickBooks is more software than your business needs. A clean spreadsheet and organized receipts will produce the same Schedule C for less money and less irritation. I will say that on the call, not after you have paid for a setup.
If your books are current and reconciled and you just want the return handled, that is tax return preparation, and it costs less than this. If you want someone in the file every month on a fixed schedule, that is small business accounting.
I am not a payroll processor. I will set up the accounts correctly and make sure payroll doesn't create a tax problem, then coordinate with whoever runs it. And if you are doing serious job costing or carrying real inventory, QuickBooks may be the wrong tool. I would rather tell you that than spend your money bending it into something it isn't.
I can't get over how easy it was to work with Hunter. He's great at communicating with me and answered every question I had.
Starting a file review
The first conversation is free and there is no obligation attached to it. When you write, describe the file rather than the feeling: which version you're on, roughly how many months since anything reconciled, whether payroll and sales tax run through it, and how many bank and card accounts are connected. That is enough for me to tell you whether this is a short cleanup or a rebuild.
Send a note through the contact form and I'll come back with specifics.
Other services
Further reading
Questions, answered plainly.
Can I use your bookkeeping software?
Not yet. It is in development and used only internally by me, not by clients, and I have no date to give. Today your books are done in the software you already use. I will say plainly on this page when that changes.
QuickBooks Online or Desktop?
If you are on Desktop today and it works for you, staying put is defensible. If you are choosing fresh, Online is the forward path, because that is where Intuit has been steering new subscribers and where the development goes. The deciding factors are whether you need the file from more than one location, how your bank and point-of-sale systems connect, and whether more than one person has to be in it at the same time.
How far back does a cleanup have to go?
To the last month that ties to something real: a reconciled statement or a filed return. For most businesses that means the current year plus the prior one. Going back further only makes sense if you are amending a return or answering an IRS notice, and I will tell you which of those applies before estimating the extra work.
How is a cleanup priced if the complexity factors are different from a tax return?
The method is the same and the factor set is service-specific. Both are countable facts about the work in front of me, with no input for what you earn or what you can afford. A return is priced from income sources, states filed, schedules and forms required, entities involved, transaction volume, foreign accounts, and prior-year cleanup. A cleanup is priced from months out of balance, how many bank and card accounts are in the file, whether payroll and sales tax run through it, and how many entities are involved.
Do I have to give you my password?
No. For QuickBooks Online I use an accountant invitation, which you grant from your own account and can revoke at any time. For Desktop I work from a backup file. Documents move through the client portal rather than as email attachments, and until the portal login is open to everyone, intake and file exchange are coordinated through the contact form.
If you fix my books, does that create a problem with returns I already filed?
Sometimes, and you should know that before we start rather than after. Much of a cleanup is reclassification inside the same totals, which changes the reports without changing the tax. But if the corrected numbers move taxable income materially, we talk about whether to amend, on Form 1040-X for an individual return, what that costs, and what happens if you don't. It is a judgment call, and it is yours to make with the real numbers in front of you.
The first conversation is free.
Tell me what's going on and I'll tell you plainly whether you need me.
Schedule a Free Consultation