Kind of a tricky situation here.

Owner of the company decided to buy a van for sole purpose of the business. The van is around 20k. He put 10k of his own money down. He has an interest rate of about 10%. It’s spilt into 45 payments at $257. (All the payments will be from his personal money)

How would you bookkeep this? I’m a visual learner so if someone would be open to showing how they would bookkeep it, that would be great!

I need to access or open a QBB file to convert historical data from QB Desktop to transfer it to Xero. I can't access the account as the admin password is lost. I have tried everything in Intuit's website. How do I go from here?

Note: it's a QuickBooks Pro Desktop version (Canada).

For those that do the 1099s, how do you get the W9s? My clients are deer in the headlights when I tell them I need the W9s to file. I’m thinking about getting vendor email addresses and doing it myself.

Also, how do you handle 1099 filings for those that are missing W9s? Do you file anyway with no EIN/SSN? I keep telling my clients to get the W9 before paying a dime, but they are so reactive.

Thanks

How are you guys able to stay a freelance 1099 contractor remote mainly? Seems as I have a few small business that are asking me now to sit in their office daily? Doing bookkeeping, paying vendors, AR etc. I’m being asked to turn into an employee.

Hey Redditors,

A friend of mine recently left his corporate job to start his own accounting firm. He’s got experience with U.S., Canadian, and U.K. clients, plus his wife handles Australian accounting. Solid team, right?

Instead of diving straight into cold outreach with businesses, I suggested he reach out to established accounting firms ahead of tax season. The idea is that firms might be looking for extra hands during the rush, and since he’s in the same profession, the connection could be smoother.

To build trust, he’s offering a 15-day free trial —no commitment, just quality work to show what he can do. He’s also doing content marketing to build a bit of a presence.

What do you guys think of this approach? If you were in a firm’s shoes, would you consider bringing someone like him on during tax season? Looking forward to hearing your insights! Cheers!

Right now I have a mixture of flat rate clients and hourly. I am thinking about switching the hourly to flat rate as well.

The problem is I can see some of them thinking they can call us for everything, and trying to take advantage it. Does anyone have where it caps at a certain amount of time per month then over that would be an hourly fee?

Any advice on apps that can read each line item on a receipt or invoice and classify it?

For example: beer (taxable), milk (not taxable) + amounts

What is your tech stack for your bookkeeping or accounting practice? It can be as basic as QuickBooks online or any other tools to help you in your day-to-day whether it’s automation, tax software, receipt scanning, etc.

I've started the interview process with ADC, and was wondering if anyone currently or previously worked with them and can provide some insight?

India seems to be a fast growing market in Finanical services. Is India a frutiful market to invest in for such spaces?

Any luck getting clients? Im currently employed in a US CPA Firm and Im from Philippines. Doing Quickbooks and stuffs. Rate is $5/ hr. 5yrs experience in Accounting/Tax Industry. Why I feel upwork is a scam for all the connects stuffs.

Looking for a part time only. I tried posting on upwork sub thing any called that super cheap, like there are so many bookkeeper now in upwork 😵

To give a quick background - I currently have 3 clients for whom I do bookkeeping and payroll which totals about 10-15 hours weekly of work. I’ve been with them for about 2 years each. Additionally I was working for a company for whom I did basic bookkeeping and payroll as part of my many other duties for 3 years. I have a bachelors degree in an unrelated subject and don’t have a bookkeeping certification of any sorts. I live in Canada.

It seems like on experience alone there aren’t many businesses who are willing to hire or give me a chance.

I’m 35 and can’t afford to go back to school in accounting.

My question is what’s the best way to find additional small business clients?

Are there cheap online certifications that can give me a leg up and increase my chances of landing a job/more clients?

Hi, i'm a newbie bookkeeper, took some accouting courses and bookkeeping courses then took a mastery course for QBO and Xero, i am now a Xero certified adviser and working on my QBO proadvisor, although i only have hands on experience on both accouting software for some industry, still can't find work XD, i am looking to upskill more and i want some advices about learning the E-commerce and real estate industry, so what should i study for me to learn everything i can without paying for lessons on both industry?

I did learn somethings about E commerce, like A2X, shopify, amazon,paypal and stripes, then a specific COA designed for each but i know i still don't know much which is why i am still looking into more resources online.

As for real estate i don't know a single thing about but i did see some job posts about airbnb, but i think there are other types of real estate bookkeeping that focuses more on fixed assets?

I would really appreciate some guidance from experts in the field. Also as to how i may be able to land my first client or work on a bookkeeping firm hopefully, since most jobs require 2-5 years experience. Any advice would be really helpful as this is my new dream job.

Hi, I will start contributing from my business to my SIPP as an employer contribution very soon. I simply want to make once a month payments of £10,000 out of my business bank account to my upcoming SIPP. I'm in the UK.

I don't make any employee pension contributions. I am also not on the payroll of my company. If I need to take out money, I simply pay myself dividends. I am the sole director of my limited company and I have no employees. I am also not employed by the company, I simply run the company as the sole director.

My question is, in Xero, where do I reconcile the SIPP payments to? I see two pension accounts [482 - Pensions costs], an overhead expense account and [858 - pensions payable], a current liability account. Which is do I choose? With my specific scenario, I'm assuming it's the 482 - Pensions costs, an overhead expense account option?

I work full-time bookkeeping w 3 years experience. My first two years were an accounting firm so I've had a lot of exposure to cloud based platforms, various industries and inventive accounting x technologie solutions. I'm looking to pick up some freelance or one off projects to boost my income. I have been looking at upwork but wondering if any of you have tips or advice to get work.

I'm open to recurring tasks or clean up projects. Ideally items that are less time sensitive and could be worked on before and after my work hours.

Any thoughts?

I have basic bookkeeping knowledge for a small business run out of a home as a sole proprietor. I'm a bit stumped, though, when considering adding a laundry service to my cleaning service. I will be doing laundry in my home to, of course, there will be an expense for water and electric for that. As a sole proprietor, how do i account for that seperately? If I use the IRS simplified home office deduction, that wount account for it accurately, but neither will using the regular method and the percentage of square footage be accurate either. How do I record for accurate use of water and electric when I use my own washing machine and dryer?

I am not a bookeeper, - I plan to do bookkeeping myself, so am now tasked with learning the software myself (not a bookeepers problem) and need to start off correctly. SO far I have a huge list of questions on why things appear the way they do, and how to handle stuff, so in theory I want to hire a bookeeper initially to help me clean up my records and help with set up.

But then I was thinking how it would take me many hours to go through item by item to explain what it is, and how it should be handled. Then I would fix it, and be done. Is this even a thing bookeepers would do, and is it normal? The main part I dont understand is lets say a charge comes in for $450 (e.g. a cleaning fee paid upfront). How does a bookeeper know what to put it as unless they are on the phone with me all the time? "Whats this charge, whats that charge, where do i put this?" etc.

IN short, How do you know what to do without massive client involvement?

For anyone considering using Bill.com be very careful.

I purchased a small corporation with about $4M in annual revenue and began modernizing systems, including accounting. Part of this included signing up to Bill.com With them I went through underwriting and was approved for a credit card for expenses and began loading invoices in. I linked my business bank account, provided my EIN, etc.

I paid about $9k from my accounts receivable and called it a day. 3 weeks later I get both a dunning letter for an invoice I had paid AND an email from bill.com saying they needed to see proof of my company. The ticket had been put in 5 days before but no notification was sent. They asked for my corporate formation documents, a pic of my drivers license, a copy of my personal utility bill, a selfie of my holding my license and my IRS SS4 letter.

I provided all these documents and they updated the ticket to say "this matter is now resolved".

The next morning I got a notification that my account is closed and they wont be doing business with me any further and I would not be able to login. I tried, and I logged in just fine. I checked my invoices and they took the $9k from my account and were holding it for review but not paying the invoices.

I filed a complaint with my bill.com rep and was contacted by an account executive. She said there was a new ticket open requesting my corporate docs and ID. I checked and there was no ticket open. I provided the docs to her and re-uploaded them to the older ticket.

Since then it has been silence. They are holding $9K of my cash, I have late payments to vendors and they wont reply to any other emails or calls.

On the brightside I was able to signup with ramp and they have been great. But I'm just taking over this business and we operate on Net 30 so every dollar counts the first couple months, and they have $9K of my money tied up.

EDIT ANS UPDATE: I had my attorney email their legal department a short demand letter. It was resolved within an hour. My account was reactivated and the vendors will be paid by Wednesday, and they emailed an apology.

That being said I won’t be using them moving forward except the card (maybe)

Hi friends, I'm sure someone here has the answer I'm looking for, so far Quickbooks help, google searches, and chatgpt haven't been able to help.

I'm trying to find a simple way to check which invoice a supplier bill has been linked to. For example; I have bill 5678 from Supplier A for work at Project X. I have 10 invoices sent to the Customer for Project X and want to see which invoice has bill 5678 linked to it. Is there a way to do this other than just searching through all 10 invoices one by one and looking for it?

I feel like this should not be that hard so I must be missing something obvious.

Hi All — I'm working on setting up a new set of books for my new Canadian company — the company does our own documentary film productions and my freelance work.

My main priorities are:

• expense tracking
• project tracking/P&L
• P&L of rental equipment
• HST
• invoicing

I used QBO for years for my previous company. It was never set up properly and was a mess, but I got to know it quite well over the years. Now I have smaller budgets/cash flow so I'd like something cheaper. And of course would like to get things set up properly from the start this time ;).

What would you recommend for a small media production business and why? Thanks in advance for your help!!!

Hi everyone,

I came here for advice since I am considering buying an existing practice.

- The firm has been up and running for a long time with a great reputation.

- Six employees at any given time who handle the bookkeeping work

- They do payroll but looking to hand that over to ADP bc too much hassle

- The current owner does tax prep work.

- Everyone is licensed as a bookkeeper and the owner as a tax preparer

- The brand of the business is that they are not CPA's, but know more than CPA's because they have been in business so long. So same advise and service for a lower price

- The customers (about 280 monthly) + 200 quarterly are very niche and not very sophisticated (understatement). Most dont know how to work a computer and they simply drop of bags with receipts that the team processes. They then do the bookkeeping, pay the sales tax, do payroll (which they push to ADP soon), and the owner does the taxes.

- The firm does about 700K annually, which would be the price to acquire

- The owner will stay on and help me get going with the tax prep work.

- me: certified bookkeeper, studying the tax prep work.

Finally, my questions:

- what am I not thinking of as I take over the business? What can I expect to go wrong or right, and what should I look out for?

- The owner says the bookkeeping work is simple, the tax work is ok (audits are a headache and some customers just dont turn in paperwork on time), but the real-time suck is dealing with the government as he puts it

- One thing I was thinking is: right now, the staff enters and classifies each receipt to calculate sales tax. I dont think there is any software that does this properly, but from what I have seen (Claude Compute demo) from AI, it cant be long before an AI agent can be trained to do this? Am I right or too far in the future still?

Thanks for your input, and let me know what I should clarify!

I run a small business and have customers pay me NET30 (or longer...argh) and I pay a bunch of vendors with NET30 as well.

I don't use credit cards, only debit and ACH.

Using QBO to keep track of everything.

Is there some way to view an "AR/AP calendar" that would show me the dates that all my Invoices are due and how much they are for (the totals per calendar day would be nice, too), as well as when my customers' payments are due and how much those are for. You get the picture? Post in comments if you don't and I'll make a mockup.

Thanks!

I don't want to be a bookeeper, I have a small business of my own that I am perfectly happy with)

I'm wondering what specifically a bookeeper does. beyond 'keeping the books'.

I have read a lot of posts here and a lot seems to be about how quickbooks is too complicated for the average person to use so you need to hire a bookkeeper to use it for you.

I think that is probably not quite rite, so I am asking for clarification.

What do you categorize this as? I thought it was going to just appear as a credit card payment? Is that not accurate

Hi! I'm currently working as an admin generalist and would like to expand my options by doing a bookkeeping college certificate course. I've already done a few bookkeeping overview "courses" on LinkedIn Learning to get a sense of what it's about, and it's definitely appealing to me.

I'm trying to decide between two different college certificate programs, I'm not sure which would be more useful, so was looking for input on what others think in terms of potential job opportunities I'd have access to after completing either:

Option 1 is 3 courses that cover

• journals, ledgers, worksheets, financial statements, special journals, payroll, receivables, bank reconciliations, capital assets, bonds, and financial analysis

plus 3 courses that teach you Excel, Sage 50, and Quickbooks Online.

Option 2 is 2 courses that cover

• generally accepted accounting principles, interpretation and preparation of financial statements, recording in various business records, accounts receivable, capital assets, corporations and shareholders equity, bonds payable, preparation of Statements of Retained Earnings and Changes in Financial position

plus 1 course that covers Canadian federal income tax and using tax preparation software, and 1 course that covers payroll administration

The coverage of bookkeeping skills in both options seems the same. Option 1 appeals to me because it seems more comprehensive in terms of also having opportunities to learn the software... but I believe I can take training courses for each of these programs for free/lower cost elsewhere? I'm wondering is Option 2 would have more benefits in terms of job opportunities since it teaches the bookkeeping basis, plus taxation + comprehensive overview of payroll admin.

Hey r/Bookkeeping! I’m the founder of a platform called DocGenie, and I’m hoping to get some thoughts from this community about the challenges of retrieving bank statements and other required documents—especially for those of you managing a large number of multiple clients.

Many bookkeepers and accountants I’ve spoken to mention how manually retrieving bank statements can bottleneck their processes, especially when scaling up with more clients. It often feels like it’s limiting time that could be spent on more strategic or valuable work. I’m curious if others here feel the same, or if you’ve found other tools or workarounds to manage this.

DocGenie automates document retrieval from banks and other institutions, designed to reduce that manual workload. We already live with almost 1,000 banks and we're in the final stages of integrating thousands more. Once completed, DocGenie will support over 7,000 institutions.

If anyone’s open to it, I’d love to chat over a virtual coffee and hear your perspective! I’d be happy to cover the coffee digitally. Looking forward to your thoughts and feedback!

Hiya Reddit. You guys are my go to place when I seem to have impossible hurdles.

Can you help me with this exhausting and stressful scenario?

TL;DR: We have subscribed to Xero and are attempting set up our bookkeeping and our projects to fit these parameters set out in the longest amount of text you'll likely read today. Is this possible using Xero, and if so, can you offer any suggestions for how to set this up most efficiently? Our bookkeeper has been thinking through a couple of different scenarios (bills to reflect the "commissions" earned by the attorneys) and the projects (one project per case). He is wavering between using bills and using journal entries. Any assistance is much appreciated.

Here is the long text:

Before we get too much deeper into Xero, I think we should very carefully think through what accounts we are going to need in our Chart of Accounts in Xero.  To do this, we need to walk through some actual transactions and think through what accounts we need to represent those. I have attached here a simplified spreadsheet that I made that I think illustrates some of the complications and important points of what we need. I’m available today / tomorrow to discuss if you want to jump on a call.

The short story is that, I do not think we can get to where we need just by doing internal “invoices” or “bills” to “projects” in Xero, it just doesn’t seem to have – or expose through its UI – the necessary internal bits. The substance of what we want to account for (e.g. amounts owed to individual attorneys on a project based on amounts that are tracked to that project) is simply not built into Xero’s basic concepts of Invoices / Bills / Projects and so on.  Or said differently, Xero is built on traditional double entry bookkeeping “accounts,” but – as far as I can tell - it only has built in accounts to power the end-user interfaces that normal folks use it for. Because Xero is not traditionally used for these somewhat unique things, we will need to create them manually.

 I am not a bookkeeper or an experienced user of Xero. But I am pretty good with the basics of accounting and double entry bookkeeping.  If I get the terminology wrong here, I’m happy to be corrected. And, if there is a better way to do the bookkeeping on the things we want to account for, I’m again happy to be educated. But, importantly, while I’m OK changing how we do the bookkeeping, I do not - without consensus - want to change the substance of what we are accounting for. I am happy to discuss the distinction between these things if this is not clear.

 Back to the spreadsheet. It has 5 tabs, 4 of which I think are mostly self-explanatory.

1. Case / Client – This tab indicates which attorney owns which case / client (and thus gets the 20%).  There are two cases.
2. Billed Time - This tab indicates time records, per attorney, per client, with billing rates, dates, and so on.
3. Expenses – This tab indicates expenses, for each case, with dates.
4. Invoices – This tab shows invoices that we send to the client.  3 invoices in this simple example.

 The last tab is “Events That Change Accounting.”  This is intended to be a chart of Firm, Jane, and Mark’s accounts showing who is owed money at various points in time. This is not a complete chart of every single account used to calculate these things, though I could create that if it would be helpful. If Jose is up for it, he may be better placed to design this table of accounts. For simplicity’s sake, I have omitted from here several accounts that I think are probably necessary for a thorough accounting of the transactions here.  Xero might have these built in, and it might not, but they likely include:

 i.                    Accounts for “loans” for expenses from the firm to attorneys, and from attorneys to projects. When the firm spends money on an expense (e.g. a filing fee is charged to a credit card) that is like a loan from the attorney in charge of the case. And if the attorney doesn’t have any money, it is also a loan from the firm to the attorney. When revenue is received / payable to an attorney, that loan is paid back first – this is important - even if the expense hasn’t been invoiced to the client yet or if that case hasn’t earned any money.  To account for this we need two accounts - first the firm loans the attorney the money, then the attorney loans the case the money.

ii.                   An account for each attorney’s contingent earnings on the case. If I work an hour on the case and bill $100 to that case, I have “earned” $60.  That’s an account for the case – not for an individual invoice-to-the-client. This is really important. Imagine the following situation:

1. Invoice 23– Jane “earns” $100.
2. Invoice 24 – Mark “earns” $100.
3. Invoice 25 – Jane “earns” $100.

In this situation, if the client pays invoices 23 and 24 (total $200) and money needs to be allocated between the attorneys, Mark should get 1/3 of  the money, and Jane should get  2/3 of it.  We could “hack” it by “knowing” that it is wrong and re-allocating some of the payment from invoices 23 and 24 to invoice 25, but – as I was taught accounting – anytime you have to “know” and “remember” something you are doing it wrong. We should just account for this in the first place as Mark and Jane having “earned” various amounts so that when there is revenue to distribute to those who have “earned” we do so directly.

iii.                 There may be more!  This is something we have to be working on and figure out FIRST – what accounts are needed to do the accounting we want to do; THEN figuring out how to do the bookkeeping to keep those accounts up to date; THEN figuring out what we can do to automate / verify / simplify those processes.

Looking at the last tab of the spreadsheet, the notes on the right are basically self-explanatory.  I would draw your attention to the following things:

12/31/2024: Everything starts at zero.

 1/1/2025: There are expenses from cases.  These roll up to the attorney’s individual accounts as negative amounts (like a loan).

 Note that the loans are due as soon as the expense is incurred, not on the date an invoice is generated, or paid.  Thus, on 1/1/2025; Jane owes the firm $100 and Mark owes the firm $300. This again makes me think that we need an account that collects case expenses (or expense repayments) per project, because we want to be able to compare (1) expenses on a case with (2) revenue from the case retained to repay those expenses.  If Xero already has an internal account (whether by this or another name) for expenses associated with a case – great.  Then all we need is an account that collects repayments of those expenses so that we can compare the value of the two.

 2/1/2025 – An expense here in the next billing month means that Jane has another loan from the firm for an amount that will not be billed until after the next invoice payment is received.

 3/1/2025: There is a payment made on Case 1. Now, a multi-step process plays out to split up that payment and allocate it into the appropriate accounts.  A few important things here:

1. Step 1 - When the payment comes in on Case 1, it is probably for the first invoice on Case 1. But whether or not the payment is for that invoice, or a different invoice, from the client’s perspective does not matter for our internal accounting.   

   1. All of the expense-loans booked to the case so far are repaid first from the incoming revenue, NOT JUST THE EXPENSES THAT WERE BILLED ON THAT INVOICE. Reason being, if there is a big expense on the 2^(nd) invoice, and the client doesn’t pay that invoice, we don’t want the firm to be left holding the bag and “lose” money on the case while the individual attorneys “make” money on the case.  
   2. This reinforces my thoughts that we need, associated with each matter, a journal of expenses or at least expense repayments, so that we can compare whether the expenses for a case have been repaid or not, because expenses must be repaid before firm or attorneys earn money from a case.

2. Step 2 – Then, the firm takes 20% of the revenue net of expenses.

3. Step 3 – Then, the money is allocated to the attorneys’ earned-but-not-paid accounts on the case thus far. 

   1. Note that the indicated payment does not complete payment on what’s owed for this case – because the attorney’s earned-but-not-paid accounts are larger than the money that’s left – both Jane and Mark are still owed money.
   2. Also note that, the money is not allocated according to the amounts that were billed on the invoice – Only Jane’s time was on the first invoice, but Mark is being allocated a portion of the payment because his account of billed-but-unpaid-time is positive for the case.
   3. Also note that the revenue allocated to Mark does not result in a full cash payment for the amount to Mark, because Mark had a $300 loan on a different case, so while $480 is credited to Mark’s account, Mark is only owed $180.  Again, we need an independent account for each attorney which stores how much money they are owed (or have been loaned) by the firm OVERALL; in addition to the accounts showing how much each attorney is owed on a per case basis.

3/1/2025: Invoice is paid on a different case.  This repays a previous expense loan.  Note that, there were two loan transactions – Firm -> Mark, then Mark -> Case.  The original Firm-> Mark loan was already been repaid when Mark received money from the 3/1/2025 payment, so when this loan is repaid it merely repays the Mark - > Project loan, which means that Mark is owed some more money.

 4/1/2025: Payment on the 2^(nd) invoice in Case 1.  Notes:

1. Even though there was an expense on this invoice, there are no more expenses to repay, because the expense loan was repaid by the earlier payment, so the “expense loan” balance for this project is 0.  So, no expense loans to repay in Step 1.
2. Next, the firm takes 20% of the payment.
3. Next, the workers “earned but unpaid” accounts are repaid.  These are now zero’d out.
4. All the money left over is Jane’s, which adds up to her hours @ 60% + my hours at 20% + all hours @ 20%.

I'm curious how other firms handle access to their customers' banks.

Some banks make it very difficult or impossible for customers to create a separate, delegated log-in for their accountant/bookkeeper. A sensible bookkeeper, of course, does not want the customer's personal login details to their banks.

What do y'all do in this situation, and where does that leave you in reconciling those accounts to a statement balance? How do you get the statements? Do you get the statements?

(I'm interested in both US and non-US answers here, and what bookkeeping platform you use)

It’s my understanding that snacks for employees must be provided on office grounds to be deductible meal expenses, but how about if a client doesn’t have an office to host this common snack room for his employees (instead has his home as his principal office), but rather works at a different client site every day and buys his employees snacks after the job is finished.

So each day there is a unique client site my client and his employees are working on, they drive to customer houses and work on fixing cars. After the job, my client and his employees may stop by 7/11 and he will buy them all snacks and beverages after a long day’s worth of work. I understand if he bought these snacks and beverages and hosted them in a business office for all employees to consume, that’s a meal deductible expense, but how about if there’s no office to host this snack, and instead it’s always on the go as he works on clients at their location (will drive to their house and work on their cars, etc) and stop by 7/11 after to treat employees?