Questions people actually ask

Here it starts at $200 a month for a straightforward set of books, as one flat fee rather than an hourly rate. Beyond that it depends on three things: how many transactions run through your accounts in a month, how many accounts and entities are involved, and what condition the records are in.

Anyone quoting you a firm number before seeing your books is guessing. How pricing works sets out exactly what moves the figure, and this longer piece covers the wider Rhode Island market rather than just my own fee.

Because hourly billing punishes you for asking questions and rewards me for working slowly. Neither is what you want from the person keeping your books.

A flat fee means you know the number before the month starts, and it does not move because you had a busy week or because you called me twice.

No. The fee is flat, so a question in the middle of the month costs you nothing. If you are hesitating to ask something because you are watching a clock, the arrangement is wrong.

No, and it should not be. Catch-up is a one-off project with a defined end, so it is scoped and quoted separately from the ongoing monthly work.

Most people do the catch-up first and then move onto a monthly fee once the books are current. See catch-up and cleanup.

Rarely, at small-business scale. A part-time in-house bookkeeper costs wages plus payroll taxes plus software plus the time you spend supervising them, and you carry the risk when they leave.

The honest exception is volume. Past a certain transaction count and complexity, an in-house person genuinely becomes better value. If you reach that point I will tell you rather than wait for you to work it out.

No. I am a bookkeeper, and the distinction matters. A bookkeeper keeps your records accurate and current through the year. A CPA is licensed to file returns, represent you before the IRS, and give tax advice.

Most small businesses need both, and they are not competing roles. My job is to hand your CPA books they can file from without rebuilding them first, which is usually what makes their bill smaller. Bookkeeper, accountant or CPA sets out who does what.

Categorise every transaction, reconcile every bank, card and loan account against the real statement, keep the chart of accounts sensible, track what you are owed and what you owe, and close the month so the numbers stop moving.

The output is a profit and loss and a balance sheet you can rely on. The point is not the filing at year end. It is that you can make a decision in June on numbers that are true in June. If you run jobs rather than repeat sales, job costing changes what those numbers can tell you.

No. Your CPA files. What I do is make sure that when they open your books, everything reconciles, the trial balance ties, and there is nothing to rebuild before they can start.

No. I do not run payroll or file payroll returns. I specialise in monthly bookkeeping, catch-up and cleanup, and financial statements. Plenty of providers handle payroll well, and I would rather tell you now than halfway through onboarding.

I prepare the vendor list and the totals. Your CPA files them. That split keeps the filing with the person who is licensed for it, while making sure the underlying vendor data is right, which is where 1099 problems usually start.

I record and reconcile it, so what you collected and what you owe are both visible and correct in the books. What gets filed, and when, sits with your CPA. I do not file returns of any kind.

No, and be careful of anyone in a bookkeeping seat who says they can. It is a legal question decided on the facts, and Rhode Island takes classification seriously.

That call belongs with your CPA or an employment attorney. My job is making sure the records support whatever answer you reach.

Yes. That is a large part of the value. Uncollected money, a supplier whose charges have crept up, a margin sliding month over month, a duplicate subscription nobody cancelled.

I am not going to run your business, but I will point at things. You get anything I cannot resolve myself as a short written list rather than buried in a report.

Months or years, it does not change whether the problem is solvable. Catch-up work is a large part of what bookkeepers do and it is not a conversation to be embarrassed about.

The books get rebuilt period by period against real statements and handed back as a clean trial balance. See catch-up and cleanup.

Catch-up is for books that have not been touched. Nothing was entered, so the work is recording it.

Cleanup is for books that were entered wrong. The transactions are there but miscategorised, duplicated, or reconciled to something that was never true. Cleanup is usually the harder of the two, because it means unpicking decisions before you can redo them.

Plenty of businesses need both at once.

Yes. A reconciliation that will not balance is a symptom, not the disease, and the cause is usually one of a short list: duplicated transactions from a bank feed, a payment recorded twice, an opening balance that was never right, or a prior period that was forced to balance with an adjusting entry.

Forcing it again just moves the problem forward. QuickBooks cleanup covers what this involves.

It is a holding account for payments received but not yet deposited to the bank. Money should pass through and leave.

A balance that only grows means payments were recorded as received but never matched to the actual deposit, so your income is overstated. It is the single most common thing I find in a QuickBooks file, and it is usually years deep by the time anyone notices.

Both, along with the payment platforms that feed them. My certification is in QuickBooks Online, where most of the work happens. If your file is a mess rather than simply behind, QuickBooks cleanup covers what that involves.

It means passing Intuit's certification exams on QuickBooks Online. It is not a job at Intuit and it is not a sales badge. You hire the ProAdvisor, not the software company.

What it certifies is knowing the file structure underneath, not just how to categorise a transaction. More on that here.

Yes, and it is a common reason people move. The usual complaint is not the work but the discontinuity: a different person each month, nobody who remembers what you told them in March.

The handover is straightforward. I review the file first so nothing is assumed to be correct just because it was there.

Sometimes, genuinely. If the volume is low, the structure is simple, and you find it tolerable, a properly set-up file plus a couple of hours of training may be all you need. I will say so if that is the honest answer.

Where it stops working is usually not the categorising. It is the reconciling, and the fact that nobody is checking the balance sheet.

Read-only access, which can see your transactions and nothing else. No money can be moved from your accounts through the connections I use. That is the standard arrangement for bookkeeping and it is the only kind of access I ask for.

Every month, once the previous month is closed. Profit and loss, balance sheet and cash position.

If they are useful to you in a particular shape, say so and they get built that way. More on statements.

Email for most things, and a call whenever it is faster than typing. Questions come back to you as one short list rather than a stream of individual messages, because answering eleven things at once is less disruptive than being interrupted eleven times.

Same day in almost every case. I am reachable at any hour, which is one of the advantages of a one-person operation over a firm with a queue.

Yes, and it usually makes their job cheaper. I do not file returns and I do not do tax planning, so there is nothing for us to compete over.

If your accountant is the one asking about this, this page is written for them.

Rhode Island is home and where most clients are. The work itself is done in QuickBooks Online and does not depend on being in the room. If you are nearby and outside the state, ask.

Owner-run small businesses generally. There are pages written for the trades where the bookkeeping has its own specific problems: contractors, restaurants, auto repair, trucking and salons.

A conversation about where things actually stand, then read-only access to your accounts and whatever records exist. If you are behind, I would rather see the mess than a tidied version of it.

The free health check is a reasonable first step if you are not sure what shape the file is in. It is read-only and there is nothing to buy at the end of it.

Ask me directly and you will get the current position in writing before anything starts. I would rather answer that specifically than post something general on a web page.