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Most small business bookkeeping runs anywhere from $200 to $800 per month depending on transaction volume, number of accounts, and services included. Pricing here starts with a free consultation so your quote matches your actual workload. No surprise fees and no long-term contract.

Flat monthly pricing is the standard here. It keeps your bill predictable and removes the awkward incentive to work slowly. Hourly billing only comes into play for one-off catch-up projects with unknown scope.

Monthly service covers transaction categorization, bank and credit card reconciliation, A/R and A/P review, and delivery of your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet. You also get direct access for questions during the month. See Monthly Bookkeeping.

The right time is usually when your bookkeeping is eating into revenue-generating hours, when you can’t tell what you actually earned last month, or when tax season keeps catching you off guard. If any of those sound familiar, book a consult.

A clean switch means transferring your QuickBooks file, granting new-accountant access, and doing a short review of the last closed month. That review is included in onboarding so nothing gets dropped in the handoff.

QuickBooks records what you tell it to record. A bookkeeper makes sure transactions are categorized correctly, reconciles the accounts, and catches the errors QuickBooks won’t flag on its own. The software is the tool; the bookkeeper is the operator.

Yes. The first call is free and there is no pressure to sign anything. It’s a straight conversation about where your books stand and what you actually need. Book here.

No long-term contract is required for monthly bookkeeping. Service is month-to-month so you’re never locked in. Cancel with reasonable notice and you keep all your data.

Yes. Starting clean from day one is easier and cheaper than fixing three years of guesswork later. New businesses usually begin with a QuickBooks setup plus light monthly service.

Roughly the number of bank and credit card accounts, average monthly transaction volume, whether you run payroll, and any add-ons like 1099s or invoicing. Ten minutes on a call is usually enough to price accurately.

Bookkeeping is the ongoing process of recording, categorizing, and reconciling every financial transaction in your business. Done right, it produces reliable financial statements that show what you earned, what you spent, and what you own. It’s the foundation everything else, including taxes, is built on.

Single-entry records each transaction once, like a checkbook register. Double-entry records every transaction twice, as a debit and a credit, so the books always balance and errors get caught. Any real business software, including QuickBooks, uses double-entry.

Cash-basis records income when money hits the bank and expenses when they’re paid. Accrual records income when you earn it and expenses when you incur them, regardless of payment timing. Most small businesses start on cash and switch to accrual as they scale.

The general ledger is the master record of every financial transaction in your business, organized by account. It’s the source of truth behind your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet. Every report you generate is pulled from the ledger.

The chart of accounts is the list of categories your transactions get sorted into, like Sales, Rent, Payroll, and Loan Payable. A clean chart of accounts makes your reports actually readable. A bloated one buries the story.

Debits and credits are the two sides of every transaction in double-entry bookkeeping. A debit to one account is always matched by a credit to another so the books stay balanced. You don’t need to memorize them; your software handles it once accounts are set up properly.

The Profit & Loss shows income and expenses over a period of time, so you can see whether you made money. The Balance Sheet is a snapshot of what you own and owe on a specific date. You need both to understand the health of your business. See Financial Reporting.

A trial balance is a report that lists every account with its ending debit or credit balance. If total debits don’t equal total credits, something is off and needs to be tracked down before closing the month. It’s a routine check inside the monthly close.

Accounts receivable (A/R) is money customers owe you. Accounts payable (A/P) is money you owe vendors. Managing both well keeps cash flow steady and reveals problems before they become emergencies.

Depreciation spreads the cost of a long-term asset, like a vehicle or equipment, over its useful life instead of expensing it all in one year. Bookkeeping tracks the asset; your CPA typically calculates the depreciation schedule at tax time.

A bookkeeper keeps the day-to-day records accurate, categorized, and reconciled. An accountant analyzes those records, prepares tax filings, and advises on strategy. In small businesses the two roles work together, with the bookkeeper producing clean data the accountant then uses.

A CPA is a licensed accountant who can sign tax returns and represent you before the IRS. A bookkeeper handles the ongoing recordkeeping. Clean books from a bookkeeper make your CPA’s job faster and less expensive.

Bookkeepers generally do not file income tax returns. That’s a CPA or EA role. What a bookkeeper does is deliver a clean, tax-ready file so your tax preparer isn’t billing you to fix data.

You need a CPA for income tax filing, entity-level tax strategy, audits, and formal financial reviews. You need a bookkeeper for the daily and monthly record-keeping that makes all of that possible. Most businesses have both.

CPAs typically bill $150 to $400 per hour for tax and advisory work. Bookkeepers usually bill a flat monthly fee for ongoing service. Paying a bookkeeper monthly is almost always cheaper than paying a CPA to clean up messy records at year-end.

Most established small businesses do. The bookkeeper produces accurate monthly data; the CPA turns that into tax filings and strategic advice. Trying to do both roles with one person usually means one job gets shortchanged.

Look for QuickBooks ProAdvisor certification at minimum, plus real client experience in your kind of business. That’s Bookkeeping is led by a QuickBooks Certified ProAdvisor. See About.

For most small businesses, an outsourced bookkeeper is a contractor, which means no payroll taxes, no benefits, and no HR overhead on your end. You get senior-level work without a senior-level salary.

A ProAdvisor is a bookkeeper or accountant who has passed Intuit’s certification exams on QuickBooks and stays current on the platform. It means faster setup, cleaner files, and access to ProAdvisor-only support. See QuickBooks Setup & Optimization.

QuickBooks Online is the current standard for small business. It’s cloud-based, updates automatically, and lets your bookkeeper and CPA work in the file at the same time. Desktop is being phased out for most new users.

QuickBooks Online subscriptions typically range from about $35 to $235 per month depending on the tier. As a ProAdvisor, Kimberly can often get you a better rate than the retail price and match you to the right plan so you’re not overpaying.

A ProAdvisor can set up your file correctly the first time, fix broken files that regular users can’t, and often unlock discounted subscription pricing. It also means someone fluent in the software is looking at your books every month, not just once a year.

QuickBooks suggests categories based on vendor name and prior activity, but it guesses, and the guesses are often wrong. A bookkeeper reviews every category so your reports actually reflect what happened. Bad categorization is the number one reason P&Ls look off.

Bank feeds pull transactions directly from your bank and credit card accounts into QuickBooks. They save time but do not do the work for you; every transaction still needs to be categorized and matched. That’s part of monthly bookkeeping.

Duplicate transactions, uncategorized income, negative asset balances, unreconciled accounts, and a chart of accounts with hundreds of unused categories. All fixable. See Catch-Up & Cleanup.

Cleanup starts with a diagnostic to see what’s broken, then works backward month by month reconciling accounts, fixing categories, and clearing junk transactions. Most cleanups take one to four weeks depending on how far behind the file is.

For most U.S. small businesses, QuickBooks Online has the deepest ecosystem, the most integrations, and the widest support network of accountants. Xero and Wave have their strengths, but QuickBooks is the standard supported here.

Yes. Migration includes moving your chart of accounts, historical transactions, and open A/R and A/P into QuickBooks Online, plus reconciling to confirm everything transferred cleanly. See QuickBooks Setup & Optimization.

A monthly close is the process of finalizing all transactions for a given month so financial reports can be trusted. It includes categorization, reconciliation, adjusting entries if needed, and delivery of your P&L and Balance Sheet.

Reconciliation is the process of matching your QuickBooks records to your actual bank and credit card statements to confirm every transaction is accounted for. It’s the single most important check for catching missing or duplicated activity. Skipping it is how books quietly go wrong.

Without reconciliation, you have no way to know whether your reports reflect reality. Reconciled books catch fraud, bank errors, duplicate charges, and missing income. Unreconciled books can hide problems for months.

Monthly, at minimum, for every bank, credit card, and loan account. Waiting longer makes errors harder to trace and costs more to fix later.

For most small businesses, a clean monthly close wraps within the first two weeks of the following month. Larger volume or messy files take longer. The goal is timely reports you can actually use to make decisions.

An uncleared transaction is one recorded in QuickBooks that has not yet shown up on the bank statement, or vice versa. A few are normal at any given time. Old uncleared items sitting for months are usually errors worth investigating.

A discrepancy means the ending balance in QuickBooks doesn’t match the bank statement. Common causes include deleted transactions, duplicated entries, or someone editing already-reconciled activity. Fixing it requires tracing back to the last clean reconciliation.

By comparing every line on the bank statement against QuickBooks, verifying amounts, dates, and payees. Anything that doesn’t match gets investigated, not ignored. That discipline is what separates real bookkeeping from data entry.

Adjusting entries are corrections or accruals made at close to make sure income and expenses land in the right period. They’re routine, but they need to be documented and reviewed so nothing gets buried.

At minimum, your Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and A/R Aging report. Together they show whether you made money, what you own and owe, and who still needs to pay you. See Financial Reporting.

A W-2 employee works under your control, gets payroll taxes withheld, and typically receives benefits. A 1099 contractor is independent, sets their own hours and methods, and handles their own taxes. Misclassifying employees as contractors is one of the fastest ways to attract an IRS audit.

Generally, you send a 1099-NEC to any non-corporate contractor you paid $600 or more during the year for services. Payments made by credit card or third-party platforms like PayPal are excluded because the processor reports them. See 1099 Preparation.

A W-9 is the form contractors fill out with their legal name, business type, and taxpayer ID. Collect it before you cut the first check, not in January when you’re scrambling to file 1099s. It’s the single easiest way to avoid a January headache.

1099-NEC forms are generally due to both the contractor and the IRS by January 31 each year. Missing that deadline triggers escalating per-form penalties. Get W-9s on file year-round so filing is a checkbox, not a project.

IRS penalties start around $60 per form for slightly late filings and climb to over $310 per form for intentional disregard. Multiply that by every contractor and the number gets ugly fast. Filing on time is always cheaper.

Most small businesses run biweekly or semimonthly. Weekly is common in construction and trades; monthly is common for owner-only S-corps. Pick a cadence and stay consistent so payroll taxes and reporting stay predictable.

Employers pay the employer share of Social Security and Medicare (7.65% combined) plus federal and state unemployment taxes. That’s on top of what you withhold from the employee’s paycheck. A good payroll system calculates and remits all of it automatically.

S-corp owners who work in the business must take a reasonable salary through payroll, with taxes withheld, before taking additional profit as distributions. Skipping the salary is a top IRS red flag. Coordinate the exact number with your CPA.

Yes. Payroll support covers setup, weekly or biweekly runs, tax remittance, and year-end W-2 and 1099 filings. See Payroll Support.

Gross pay is what an employee earns before withholding. Net pay is what actually lands in their bank account after taxes, insurance, and other deductions. Payroll reports show both for every pay period.

The IRS generally recommends keeping business records for at least three years, and seven years for anything involving depreciation, bad debt, or losses. Digital copies are acceptable, so scan or photograph receipts as you go instead of hoarding paper.

Ordinary and necessary business expenses are generally deductible, which covers most rent, utilities, software, professional services, insurance, and supplies. The catch is documentation. If it’s not in your books with a receipt, it’s hard to defend.

Yes, if you use part of your home regularly and exclusively for business. You can use the simplified method (a flat rate per square foot) or the actual expense method. Your bookkeeper tracks the numbers; your CPA calculates the deduction at filing.

Business-use vehicle miles are deductible using either the IRS standard mileage rate or actual expenses. Either way, you need a contemporaneous log of dates, miles, and business purpose. Apps that auto-track mileage make this painless.

Most business meals are 50% deductible when there’s a clear business purpose and someone other than you is present. Keep the receipt and note who you met and why. Entertainment expenses generally are not deductible.

Self-employment tax is the 15.3% Social Security and Medicare tax that sole proprietors and single-member LLC owners pay on their net earnings. It’s on top of income tax. Planning for it quarterly avoids nasty April surprises.

If you owe more than $1,000 in tax after withholding, the IRS generally requires you to pay income tax in four quarterly installments during the year. Underpaying triggers penalties. Your bookkeeper’s monthly reports give your CPA the numbers to estimate each quarter accurately.

Sales tax is charged on the sale of certain goods and some services, collected from customers, and remitted to the state. Whether you need to collect depends on what you sell and where you have economic nexus. Handle registration and rules with a sales tax specialist; your bookkeeping tracks what you collect and remit.

An LLC taxed as a sole prop is simpler: owner draws, no payroll. An S-corp requires payroll for the owner and separate tracking of shareholder distributions vs. wages. Both need clean books, but S-corp bookkeeping has more moving parts.

Yes. Open a dedicated business bank account and credit card and run every business dollar through them. Commingling makes bookkeeping expensive, audits painful, and can jeopardize LLC liability protection.

An owner’s draw is how a sole prop or partnership owner pays themselves; it isn’t a payroll paycheck. A distribution is how S-corp shareholders take profit on top of a required salary. Both need to be recorded correctly so equity accounts stay accurate.

A tax-ready file has every month reconciled, every transaction categorized, and clean supporting reports your CPA can drop straight into a return. It’s the deliverable that turns tax season from a fire drill into a formality.

Yes. That’s Bookkeeping is fully remote and serves small businesses across the country from Conroe, TX. Everything happens through QuickBooks Online, secure file sharing, and scheduled calls.

Documents move through encrypted portals, not email attachments. QuickBooks access is granted through role-based user permissions instead of shared passwords. Your data is shared only with people you authorize.

Through a secure client portal for documents and direct bank-feed connections for transactions. Receipts can be snapped from your phone and dropped straight into QuickBooks. No email chains, no lost PDFs.

Monthly service is month-to-month with no long-term contract. Catch-up and setup projects are fixed-scope with a clear price agreed up front. You always know what you’re paying for.

Monthly reports come with a short written summary. Email and text access are open during business hours for quick questions. A standing monthly or quarterly call is available if you want it.

Yes. Catch-up projects covering multiple months or full prior years are a routine engagement here. Scope and timeline are locked before work starts. See Catch-Up & Cleanup.

Service-based small businesses across many industries, including trades, professional services, retail, and e-commerce. If you run a small business on QuickBooks Online, odds are the workflow fits. See all services.

Yes. If a reconciliation error traces back to work done here, it gets fixed at no charge. The goal is books you can rely on, not books you have to double-check.

Book a free consultation or call 936-331-3953. You’ll get a straight read on where your books stand and exactly what service level fits.