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
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.
When a QuickBooks Desktop to Online migration is actually finished
The import finishing is not the migration finishing. What has to agree between the two files on the conversion date, how to run each figure, and what the Desktop file still has to hold afterward.
Where does opening balance equity go when you clear it?
A leftover balance is several postings with different origins. Trace them one at a time, delete the duplicates, reclassify what was miscoded, and only then move what remains into the right equity accounts.
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.
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.