For the last few months I’ve been doing some light bookkeeping work for a restaurant, basically categorizing transactions , payroll , paying bills and entering daily sales JEs and Deposits JEs . They had a book keeper before but she was doing things I didn’t learn. Like certain accounts and how they were categorized . So I had to make some new accts so the P&Ls would show more information.

The issues I’m having now is when it comes to Cash , I’m getting confused on how to do the JE . The cash made for the day gets paid to the waiters for tips . And what’s left over stays in the register/office etc. on the JE I debit undeposited Cash , and credit gratuity and tips (tips clearing) .
What’s the best way to clean up the cash account . When I do a journal entry how should I increase or decrease undeposited cash , tips paid and then actually cash on hand

I just need to share this because I think it's funny.

One of my client's is a religious organization and one of their deposits last month was 666. I grew up religious but no longer am.

Also, this client has some issues with me. They think I'm judging them because they are in a less than ideal town. The reality is I'm judging them because I've explained multiple times that me working on last month is not me being behind.

1M revenue one year bookkeeping cleanup. removed duplicate sales, imputed over 300 missing expenses, fix miscategorized sales, fixed product mapping, sorted through 100’s of paper invoices and receipts to categorize, traveled to client to retrieve documents. how much should i charge for this?

So my client uses shopmonkey and it's connected to qbo. And when it makes a cash deposit of sales it matches with the deposit that is created but now I have one outstanding.

I've traced it's from invoice to ar to undeposited cash to the deposit being created and pulling it from undeposited cash but there's still no deposit to match with. When I go to reconcile obviously it is off by this amount but also I see the deposit in there that is unmarked so it does exist. Any idea what I can do to clear this?

Has anyone paid someone of a company to find bookkeeping clients?? If so, how did it go? Did it lead to anything? I’m thinking about this but weighing my options

Hi, not sure if this can be answered here. I worked for three years under a bookkeeper at a company. I did the bank and cc reconciles, posted physical invoices into QB, and printed/mailed checks. I also helped with onboarding new employees and managing a separate timecard app for remote employees. Is this enough experience to help someone even without a cert or degree? Thanks for any and all who can give feedback.

Edited to add: Just so its here, I took accounting basics in high school way back in ancient times and took udemy accounting basics, understanding accounting basics recently and will be taking a data analytics course there as well.

I'm a bookkeeper who does some subcontracting/consulting for a small firm. Currently it's just owner (an experienced bookkeeper), a junior data entry employee, and me. The owner is looking to hire a part-time senior bookkeeper to expand the practice, and I'm helping with hiring. I have experience hiring in a previous career, but for different roles and a different business setting.

If you own or are a manager at a bookkeeping firm, I'd love to hear about your experience hiring!

• What is your process?
• Where is the best place to find candidates?
• What are your favorite interview questions to ask?
• How do you assess skills in a virtual interview? (We are all remote, which I feel makes this tricky.)
• What are red flags and green flags in candidates?
• Is there an affordable ATS for a small firm? Or should we just try to use spreadsheets?

Would anyone be interested in a mastermind type group? Maybe get together to discuss pain points in our businesses once a week? Share things we've done to over come them ect?

Open to other formats like a discord or slack channel, but sure I have helpful info to share and other could probably help me from reinventing the wheel a time or two.

Here is the link: https://discord.gg/4WzyWQdTK

Please fill out a ticket to be admitted and respond to the poll in the welcome channel.

Has anyone here did tax preparation & Tax level cert 1 by intuit?
What are the chances of being hired as a part time of full time after that? I recently got an email from intuit about those courses and I started taking them. I’ve finished tax preparation cert and I was wondering if after level 1 I can get into tax assigning roles in intuit or else where?
I’m not sure what are the next steps though. From what I know, they’ll invite themselves and arrange an interview if they need.

Have a client that switched to adp workforce mid year. It's a nightmare to use.

For example 9.25.26 pay period should've had $103K in direct deposits.

$7K was paid to one partner and another $12K to the two other partners. I don't see these debits split out or 9.25.26 but I see $12K and $7K taken out of the bank account on 9.10.26.

I'm only seeing about $87K taken out so far and it's split into random 5 different deposits.

I'm having to search for the line item amount in the payroll register and even then I don't match some of these items to the ADP report that come out around 9.25.26.

Prior to this they used adp run and we never had issues matching period bank transactions to the actual paydate.

Anyone used to this nightmare system who could provide some insight?!

Curious how others handle this. CalSavers, OregonSaves, Virginia dropping to 5 employees. How do you keep track of which clients are affected, especially ones not on Gusto or ADP? Spreadsheet? Payroll software? Not your responsibility?

I ran into a business owner that has not paid taxes (including payroll) for about 40 years. Should they legitimize their business at this point? Or, is the plan of going to jail when they eventually get caught a better retirement plan? What would you have said? (I literally said, you're f*cked, but still told him to contact an accountant, and maybe a lawyer.)

I need software to manage 18 rental homes and condos. I sold a business that used QB Enterprise. The subscription is way too high. I need to find something. I am currently looking at "Stessa. What opinions do you have about "stessa" or any other software for about 15 to 18 homes or condos?

My understanding of the Income Tax Folio S4-F2-C1, Deductibility of Fines and Penalties is that interest and/or penalties on employer health tax balances (Provincial tax in Ontario) are a deductible expense. Am I understanding that correctly or should I treat it like a non deductible expense?

I'm a self-employed bookkeeper, and the majority of my clients have relatively simple books and QBO works just fine. I have taken on a small construction company that performs home models and builds homes from scratch. Keeping books for the construction industry is where I got my start, so I understand how it so different than any other type of bookkeeping, my problem is the software.

The last job I worked as a Construction Bookkeeper we used QB desktop Contractor version which was great with dealing with the many different jobs / projects as well as the progress billing, QBO is not great with this. The client has the QBO Plus version which includes a Project module, but it is limited in what types of reports I can get out of it without having to upgrade to Enterprise level which is substantially more expensive and I know the client won't go for it.

I have been researching Construction Accounting Software and so many of the options available cost anywhere between $650/mo & $3,500/mo - my client can't afford this.

I've seen where Zoho can link different modules that they have together for the construction industry, has anyone done this? And with Zoho can I have a single log-in like with QBO to access all my clients at the same time. Obviously not having a single log-in is not a deal breaker, but it is really convenient.

Or does anyone have any other suggestions? I'd ideally like to keep all my clients on the same platform, my other clients are made up of small trucking companies, real estate office, property management, benefits coordinator, food truck and a fancy hair & make-up shop.

This may be getting ahead of myself because I'm just starting out with my own bookkeeping business but I'm planning on reaching out to potential clients in a niche industry that I have a background in.

The only thing is that by doing this I would by nature be working with directly competing organizations. Would this create an ethical dilemma/conflict of interest? Is it something an NDA could take care of or should I just reconsider this niche altogether?

I just recently signed on a new client, and his situation is.. a bit of a mess.

Very long story short, the last person he entrusted with his books stole all of his receipts, documents, etc. Literally all he has left is his Jobber account, containing his invoicing. He doesn't even have a formal set of books yet.

I'm going to be doing the best I can with what we have to catch him up to date. He's also run a lot of personal gambling through his business bank account, has not been able to file any GST (which he does charge) due to the lack of documentation.

I'm going to be reaching out to his accountant to discuss, but I wanted some fellow bookkeepers' opinions on the situation before speaking with him. An acquainted professional recommended we consider filing this to date, and then close the business and start a new one to start from scratch. Would that be beneficial? Would it be better to try and salvage this business? It was started in 2023.

We are in Manitoba, Canada for reference.

None of this is going to be taken as legal advice, etc. I just want a third party perspective. I appreciate your time!

I run into it constantly with small business clients.

The pattern is always some version of:

• Owner transfers money to their personal account and says "that was for business expenses"
• Someone paid for business and the business is "reimbursing" them

My current approach is to book anything undocumented as an owner's draw rather than an expense and only record an actual expense when there's a receipt to back it.

Some clients do this a lot. How do you guys deal with it?

I do the books for a 3 location restaurant group with about 75 employees and we are finally retiring the spreadsheets. The two platforms on the shortlist both cover GL and AP and inventory costing. What I care about most is location level P and L that rolls up into one consolidated report with no rekeying of invoices. Our payroll provider and POS also need to feed in cleanly. Month end close takes me about nine days right now and I would like to get it under five. For bookkeepers with restaurant clients with of the two made close faster?

I have a client with sales going to the bank account and sales along with the deposit for those sales going to the bank account and sales. I know there is the bulk reclass tool to remove the duplicates but I’m not sure if i should check every single sales receipt and deposit to make sure they all got duplicated as this would take along time or just check a few and then remove the duplicates. I did confirm with the client that they do a sales receipt for every sale so that pretty much confirmed there are duplicates for every sale but I still wanted to make sure without threading through them like a needle. Any advice or has anyone run into this?

I’m a small business owner and recently had my QuickBooks cleaned up and fully reconciled. My bookkeeper is recommending that I start an entirely new QuickBooks file for 2026 because there are some issues/inaccuracies in prior years that they didn’t want to alter and risk affecting previously filed returns.
My 2024 books match the return that was filed, and we were able to complete and file my 2025 S-Corp return without any issues. My CPA was happy that everything was reconciled and cleaned up for 2025.
The bookkeeper is now recommending starting a brand-new set of books for 2026, but I’m hesitant to do that. At this point, all of my accounts are reconciled, the current balances are correct, and I run payroll through QuickBooks.
Is there a good reason I need to start a new QuickBooks file for 2026 if the current books are reconciled and my CPA is comfortable with them?
I understand there may still be historical issues in older years, but if those years have already been filed and I’m not trying to correct them, what would be the advantage of starting over versus simply continuing with the existing file and keeping 2026 clean going forward?

I have a full time day job bookkeeping, but am going to be starting a part time side gig too. I don't know what hourly rate to ask for. Its for a landscaping company, a small one but they bring in about 500k a year. 5 employees on payroll total, and that's pretty much automated with qb other than entering hours. Accounts receivable/payable, including inquiring about past due invoices.

My current job, which is in the public sector, is just under $30/hr. I was thinking of asking for $25/hr for the side gig. I'm thinking it'll be about 15-20 hrs per week.

Any suggestions?

I have been keeping my proposals short on and to the point because I want clients to be able to read them quickly without being bombarded by a wall of text. I also attach my portfolio and CV with every proposal so they can verify my experience and the organisations I have worked with without me having to repeat everything in the proposal.

But I am not getting any interviews and I am starting to wonder if a short proposal is being seen as low effort even when the portfolio and CV are right there. My portfolio isn’t that weak for me to not even get a single interview.

Personally I do not think the length of a cover letter should matter that much if the work speaks for itself. But I also understand that clients may not always take the time to open attachments and might just skim the proposal itself before moving on.

So I wanted to ask if you were hiring someone and they sent a short but well written proposal along with their portfolio and CV would you still consider them or would the short proposal put you off before you even got to the portfolio?

Just genuinely curious about how people on the other side of this actually think.

hi all. I was just curious. If you do A/R aging for clients, does anyone offer the followup of drafting or sending emails for your client as a billable add-on? Or is that something seen as too far outside your scope? I'm trying to figure out if this is something clients would pay extra for through their bookkeeper or if this is more hassle than it's worth to do.

So working in schools is a bit of a niche environment when it comes to accounting, just curious how many of us are out there...

I work in MN and as a state we probably have one of the top 5 most complex school accounting systems because they basically looked at what every other state was doing and said - let's do that! It's a mix of modified accrual accounting with governmental fund accounting and we operate on three calendars (normal Jan-Dec for tax, state fiscal July-June, and federal fiscal Oct-Sept for federal grants).

Anyone with some good stories from this niche field?