FAQ & How We Work
What’s included in the monthly bookkeeping services?
- Categorizing all income and expense transactions in QuickBooks Online
- Reconciliation of business bank accounts, credit card accounts, and business loans (including PayPal)
- Payroll entries into QuickBooks, including account mapping and syncing with your payroll provider
- Entering/reconciling gross income and processing fees for payment processors, such as Square or Stripe
- Monthly financial reports including Balance Sheet, Profit and Loss
- As needed journal entries, general ledger & chart of accounts maintenance and balancing
What’s included in the Diagnostic Review?
- In-depth review of your QuickBooks Online account, including: bank reconciliations, uncleared or missing items, undeposited funds, Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable, reports formatting and chart of accounts, product and services list, payroll, sales tax and inventory.
- Summary of findings and recommendations
- Proposed price for cleanup and monthly bookkeeping services going forward
What additional services are available?
Additional services are available including: accrual basis accounting, class or location tracking, project/job profitability, invoicing, bill payment, budget reports, and 1099 preparation and filing.
What information do I need to share? What is required of me?
- You would connect your business bank, credit cards, and PayPal account in the banking section of QuickBooks Online (if not already).
- You provide bank statements access: This could be providing a read-only access login to your online banking (preferred), shared drive access where you store statements, or emailing the statements to me each month.
- You would add me as an accountant user to your payroll account.
- Merchant service accountant/reports access for me (your payment processor) so that I can reconcile sales and fees monthly
- Timely responses to any other information that may be requested throughout the month
If I have a question, how long does it take to get an email response?
We pride ourselves in being very responsive to our clients important inquiries. We strive to respond within 24 hours AT MOST (except over weekends and holidays). If we are very busy, we will respond to let you know we’ve received your email and will address it shortly.
Is QuickBooks Online required?
Our bookkeeping service does require the use of your own QuickBooks Online subscription. You own the license to that and will retain access to the program upon termination of our working relationship, if that ever happens.
QuickBooks Online is where our expertise and proficiency lies! The Essentials, Plus, or Advanced versions are all acceptable. Simple Start may be sufficient for very small businesses, but the reporting capability is preferred in Essentials. QuickBooks Self Employed is not sufficient because it doesn’t allow reconciliations. If you do not currently have a subscription, we are able to offer 30% off to our new clients for 12 months. We highly recommend signing up for Essentials or Plus to start. Plus may be required depending on which features you will need. Visit https://completebusinessgroup.com/eagle-rock-bookkeeping/ to order QuickBooks and other Intuit products at the best price. (If you are a nonprofit organization you can purchase QuickBooks Online through techsoup.org at a deeply discounted price).
Do you require a contract?
No contract is required. We do ask for 30 days notice if you would like to discontinue services. We reserve the right to review price for services with you on a quarterly basis in the event that the work required has substantially changed.
Is an engagement letter required? How do you accept payment?
Yes, an engagement letter detailing services and price is required. You may be asked to sign future engagement letters via electronic signature for any additional services as well. You will also be asked to electrically sign a bank draft authorization form to authorize payment for monthly services on the 1st of each month.
What if my books are not up to date? Can you catch up my books?
Yes! Clean-up/catch-up bookkeeping is something that most of our new clients request. You may need this service for any months that are not up to date and a tax return has not been completed. For example, if you have filed your 2021 tax return already, then we may need to complete and/or clean up your books starting with January 2022 in order to prepare accurate financials for your upcoming tax return. If you think you may need this service, we will recommend starting with the paid Diagnostic Review service.
Do you offer payroll?
Our bookkeeping service includes payroll syncing and account mapping with your payroll provider, if applicable, but we do not offer payroll processing. Your payroll provider likely handles all tax payments and tax report filings (including year end reports and W2s), plus HR functions and retirement plans for yourself, partners and employees. We can recommend payroll service providers if needed. We will reconcile all payroll expenses on your books.
More information about additional services:
Class/location/project tracking is available if you are looking into more detailed financial statements. This can be helpful if you are wanting to track profitability of certain jobs, projects, customers, locations or large product lines. It is useful for real estate investors who have rental properties or plan to flip homes for resale. We use class tracking for our nonprofit clients to track programs. In order for class tracking reports to be helpful to you, we will need to communicate details on each transaction so that we know how to track the various classes, properties or departments. We can make a plan of action based on what works best for you.
AR and AP management are tasks that can be very time consuming and we can help streamline those processes for you. Keeping track of customer and vendor balances, sending out invoices, processing customer and vendor payments and updating customer and vendor records are some of the items we can do for you. We can set up a bill pay workflow with an approval process to pay your vendors.
1099 preparation and filing are tasks that we can help you with in January per IRS requirements. You will be responsible for obtaining the W9 forms from your vendors (we recommend doing so before you pay a contractor for the first time) and confirming with us who is required to receive a 1099.
Legal Services are available to you through our partner. Our legal partners offer a complimentary consult to discuss any needs your business may have, including but not limited to, automated alerts to specific due dates and reporting requirements, secured cloud storage for all company documents, questions on entity setup, articles of incorporation, and exit strategies. We highly recommend taking advantage of this complimentary interview. Any additional legal services will require an additional engagement with our legal partner.
We can recommend a trusted CPA tax advisor for tax planning and preparation if you do not already have a tax accountant. Any tax service will require an additional engagement with the tax accountant.
We can recommend apps and software for sales tax compliance, inventory management, e-commerce, receipt management, and more! Just ask.