Frequently Asked Questions

We have a specialized system and services that have been developed specifically for small businesses. We oversee and perform bookkeeping actions, we create financial money management plans with you, we assess financial goals annually and quarterly, we analyze your income and expenses monthly, quarterly and annually. We oversee Bookkeepers. We create strategies with you for business expansion. We review finance related actions, and more. We are looking at the big picture and we are goal-driven.

Four main things set us apart. One, we don't set up your transactions on rules and never assess what's happening. Two, we don't collect your money and then disappear off the face of the earth. Three, we have fun with our clients! We aren't the stiff, boring ol' bookkeeper and consultants. Four, we look at the big picture and we are goal-focused to help you have a better life.

There are three things we've observed that make businesses fail and we've found reports and statistics that back this conclusion up. One, not managing money (cash flow out). Two, lacking confidence and skill to sell (cash flow in). Three, not being organized and therefore, tainting your PR image and upsetting employees. (cash flow in and staff retention). We fully handle #1, we contribute to #3 and we have a Preferred Partner that does #2 with amazing results!

The more time you let go by, the more mistakes made. Mistakes cost you more money. Mistakes make problems bigger problems and bigger problems cost more and more money. Why do this to yourself when we have tier services for every budget.

In our estimate and evaluation process, we provide an outline of the most common mistakes we find and things we look for when doing a Clean-Up. Depending on the complexity of your books, determines how much it may cost and whether you do the clean-up actions or we do them.

We find many errors in how one chooses to categorize their transactions. Many things are categorized erroneously. Miscategorizing can take away from total amount of deductions and/or record personal transactions as a business expenses and leave you open to audit liabilities. 

If owners commingle expenses (personal and business) a transfer from one bank account to another should not be a transfer. If it's business going to personal, its a distribution. If it's personal going to business, its a owner contribution. There are times where there is an exception to this but we find that also if you mark it as a transfer, you cannot easily change it in the books if its wrong (if reconciled) and it will not go on a report to be used in a budget, it you select the radial button "transfer"

When you invoice in Quickbooks, a CleanUp becomes more complicated. Each record is attached to other records and reports. One error leads to other errors that the owner may not think with because he/she is not a Bookkeeper or an Accountant using the Quickbooks for their roles/duties. There are three main errors we've found over and over. These are: wrong payment to wrong invoice (this affects collections and PR), not depositing cash when you collect cash (this leaves transactions in undeposited funds and doesn't allow deposits to be matched and also makes reports wrong) and last, client writes out check for wrong amount and owner doesn't apply the exact check amount to invoice (leaves inaccurate customer records).

Your Accounts Payable can get messed up by not applying the right bill payment to the right bill or leaving bills in the bill pay window but you were paid for them. This affects other reports. It also creates problems with vendors. This can be tricky to fix because you need the owner's answers to fix it and sometimes they are just as confused as you are because they don't remember what was what at that point in time. This can increase the cost of the CleanUp because it DOES need to be fixed.

Your Accounts Payable can get messed up by not applying the right bill payment to the right bill or leaving bills in the bill pay window but you were paid for them. This affects other reports. It also creates problems with vendors. This can be tricky to fix because you need the owner's answers to fix it and sometimes they are just as confused as you are because they don't remember what was what at that point in time. This can increase the cost of the CleanUp because it DOES need to be fixed.

One of the most consistent things we've seen over the years are, expenses being categorized random, made-up names. For example, once we saw a category called "transfers". Categorizing is used for 1) doing a tax return and 2) reviewing your budget. Made up names do not help either of those.

Most of the time we say "No" because rules seem glitchy in Quickbooks. Also, unless it's an exact thing that remains the same all the time, like a rent expense to the same vendor, categories vary for vendors. An example of this is Amazon expenses. We don't know if it will be personal, office supplies, furniture or something else. We usually don't use them but we also monitor our clients downloads weekly and talk to them weekly.

Reasons owners feel an account doesn't need to be synced: "we don't use it", "it's a personal account"etc. Let us tell you what we've learned over the years... they do end up using it (and we miss the transactions because it's not synced), it IS a personal account but they buy business purchases on it and we miss those because it's not synced.  Your best bet is to sync all accounts unless it's closed. For personal accounts, we usually recommend setting up a separate Quickbooks so we can catch the business purchases.

We don't care what "it" is, but most of the time, owners think that things can just be deleted without a consequence. Payments, invoices, expenses, etc. Transactions are often attached to other transactions for reporting purposes. Also, when you reconcile an account and delete something, it throws the reconciliation off. This is why you should hire a professional to run your books. This is also why CleanUps can cost more as we detect more red flags that we didn't see in the beginning.

We call reconciliations "recs" for short. You know how it has to be green in Quickbooks to show it's been balanced? Well, people think that this means it's correct automatically. If you are not closely monitoring the books, they I would not assume it's correct. Let's say you checked off the $10 expense to zero it out but it was the wrong $10 expense. This throws the records off. Let's say there are duplicates but one doesn't verify. These are reasons the "rec" can "go green", zero out but be inaccurate.

This is usually part of our CleanUp process, ensuring that all accounts are reconciled up to the latest date they can be. If done correctly, it verifies that we are not missing any expenses and that the balances in Quickbooks are correct. We want correct numbers so we can utilize the software program to make business decisions and run the business correctly.