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Your Business Bookkeeping Is a MessAgreement can be the start
Steven Palmieri works as a Tax CFO, the Entrepreneur's CFO, and the sentence you were handed is where we start.
See the fair pathYou can agree and still ask
If the comment was fair, we do not need you to defend the year. A partner who can point at a week of mixed charges is often right about that week. A preparer who cannot tie retained earnings to the filed net income is often right about that gap. Agreement is a starting place. It tells us which check to run, and it keeps the work from turning into a fight with someone you still need.
We will not write to them for you, and we will not insult them so the engagement feels useful. Leaving them is not the check. The check is the week, the two figures, the tie-out, or the month.
What a clean month looks like
A clean month agrees with the bank. The statement ending balance is the book ending balance. Outstanding items are listed, not deleted. Holding spots are either empty or clearly still open. Sales are customer money. The chart of accounts is stable enough that this month can be compared with last month, and stable enough that a return can be built from it later.
That is the shape of the work we mean by a monthly close. It is ordinary, and it is the same job in a shop, a studio, or a route business. Once a few months look like that, a quarterly look ahead is possible. Before they look like that, a forecast is a story.
Payday stays with you
If the comment folded payday into the insult, we can talk about setting the pay system up on the tool you already use. You keep running payday. The pay run remains in your hands. Setup waits until the sentence is clear, so a pay conversation does not become a way to dodge the first check.
The same people who read the sentence can prepare the return once the months agree. A return built on a year of unmatched lines is how one giant other-expense line shows up. The return waits until that agreement exists.