A chart of accounts that splits where your return splits
Design the chart around the questions you ask each month and the lines your 2025 return already has. Where the return splits an expense in two, your accounts should split it too.
Latest from the desks
Bookkeeper cost depends more on your books than the rate
A bookkeeper's salary is not what one costs you, and a freelancer's rate is not either. The in-house figure built from BLS data, and the six counts any monthly quote is priced on.
Reconcile your budget vs actual to the cash that left your account
A month can beat its budget and still leave the bank lower than it started. Four outflows never reach a profit and loss budget, and an eight-row bridge shows which one took the cash.
Cash vs accrual accounting comes down to the balances only accrual keeps
Accrual books hold six balances cash books never record. Each opening figure comes from a document, the first month looks wrong without them, and for 2026 the IRS line that forces the switch sits at $32 million.
We are here to make the money side of your business easier to understand — and easier to act on.
Every issue sets out to answer the questions owners and finance teams actually ask: how the numbers work, what they mean for the decision in front of you, and what to do next. Practical financial guidance, in plain language, whatever stage the business is at.
Everything we have written
1099 threshold: the part of each vendor's total that counts toward $2,000
A vendor's total in your books is not the number the IRS tests against $2,000. Which payments come out of it and why, seven vendors worked through, and the setup to do before December 31.
Section 179 vs. bonus depreciation: what each election does on the return, and what neither one does to your books
The machine cleared the capitalization threshold, so it is an asset. Both elections write off its cost on the return in year one. Your balance sheet still shows it, and your books still depreciate it for seven years.
De minimis safe harbor: the capitalization policy has to exist before the tax year starts
The $2,500 limit is the easy part. What decides whether you qualify is a written threshold in your own books, dated before the tax year began, and this is what that document says.
One email a month on what is changing in finance.
A short round-up at the start of every month: the numbers worth watching, what changed in tax and reporting, and the guidance behind it.