The archive
Every piece the desks have filed, newest first. Search it, or narrow it to one desk.
Debt service coverage ratio counts a business loan payment your books call an expense
A lender will compute this ratio from your books whether or not you have. Here is which report and which line each term comes from, and why one common way of coding a loan payment drops the answer by a full point.
Scope your catch-up bookkeeping before you reconcile anything
Two decisions come before the first reconciliation: which year you start from, and whether the transactions for those months can still be pulled out of the bank. Answer both and the backlog stops being open-ended.
What to give your accountant for taxes, and the things they should never have to ask for
Nine items, where each one comes from, what your preparer actually does with it, and what a missing one costs you in their hours. Plus the four things they should never have to ask for.
You can review your bookkeeper's work yourself in six checks
Six checks, each naming the report to open and the figure it should equal. Two of them appear nowhere else: the audit log read for changes made after a reconciliation, and payroll deposits confirmed at the source.
What should my bookkeeper be doing every month?
Nine things should arrive from an outside bookkeeper every month, and each one leaves a document behind. Here is the document for each, what to look at on it, and the one thing that never transfers with the work.
Past due invoices, from the first reminder to the write-off
An unpaid invoice ends one of two ways, and both of them change your books. The escalation sequence with wording and timing, the point where a receivable becomes bad debt, and the entry that closes it out.
Accounts receivable aging report: the oldest column is income you already booked
The aging report is a statement about your books before it is one about your customers. What the total should tie to, what is really sitting in the 90-plus column, and which lines are not receivables at all.
Invoice payment terms: what each one costs you in days of cash
Each term on your invoice has a price in days of your own cash. What net 15, net 30 and 2/10 net 30 each cost, which bucket each puts you in on the aging report, and who owes you interest when they pay late.
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