r/Bookkeeping

Hey all. I recently started a bookkeeping position at a small corporation, and mostly hired on to clean up their book, since their last bookkeeper wasn't really on it.

Their A/P was simple, just matching up old payments properly, comparing to vendor statements, etc. I'm moving onto their A/R this week though, and don't really know where to start. I want to assume that asking for A/P statements from their customers isn't really an option? I've tried sifting through old deposits to match up to old invoices, which didn't really go anywhere.

I've never done bookkeeping work on a scale like this before (accrual basis, or for a corporation) so any other recommendations on where else to look into for this cleanup would be great. Working in QBO

I took on a new client who has a whole mess... In one of the companies, they have 3 credit cards (one account). The problem is, each credit card has expenses but only one shows as receiving payment. We are using QuickBooks ledger. Each card has a bank feed. How do I fix the mapping to have all expenses and payments under one account? It results in two of the cards always showing an unpaid balance.

I work for a small bookkeeping firm and while I’ve worked remotely for several years, my boss is finally going fully remote as well in the next few months. Most of our clients are fairly old-school in that they have my boss drive to pick up stacks of invoices and receipts once or twice a week to be processed in the office then returned.

Since I’m in another state, my boss just manually scans everything to me in one large PDF then I have to sort through and process everything on my end. One particular client requires processing roughly 100-200 pages of receipts and invoices each week and I have to store the invoices until they are paid within 30 days. We currently use Google Drive but I’ve found it to be slow and cumbersome for this volume of work. Now that my boss is going fully remote, we are looking to find the best way to transition clients to uploading these documents to us instead.

I’ve looked into a few options I’ve seen in this sub (Dext, HubDoc, etc.) and I’m unsure which may be the best for our scenario. Most clients are on QB Desktop which makes the connectivity aspect a lot less useful unfortunately. Ideally, we need something with a smaller learning curve for clients but also won’t take up a ton of their time with scanning, etc.

Ultimately, we are looking for a platform for clients to upload documents to (fairly) seamlessly and for short term storage of those documents. We are also looking to get everyone fully transitioned to ACH payments so a bill-pay aspect of the platform would be awesome too but that seems like a tall order. We currently just use the direct deposit feature on Desktop.

Any input would be greatly appreciated!

I just closed on a business that has been around for 75 years and would like to bring it into the 21st century. I have no experience in doing this, however I have used CRM systems etc and know what I would like that to look like. What I have 0 experience in is accounting.

The seller of the business handles all things accounting related. From ordering custom windows, to payroll, to A/R A/P etc. etc. and obviously he needs to be replaced. I am hoping to automate much of this such as payroll. However, I do not intend to be in the office everyday nor do I want to sit behind the computer and do his role. My skillset is in business development. So my thought was to hire a part time bookkeeper and bring one of the inside sales guys in to do the ordering. They use Sage 50 for accounting software. Is this a good program? Is it worth it to switch to QB since so many people are familiar with it? Maybe it will make hiring someone for that role easier? Is there another program out there that would make more sense for this business? Currently do about 3

Million in revenue across 1500 orders annually. Many people pay cash in the area we operate if that is useful to know. Obviously theft/embezzlement would be a concern.

A lot of stuff in this post so I realize I may have lost many of you but I could really use some advice here. Should I stick with Sage and just learn this from the seller? Or should I switch to a QB product? I do plan on installing a CRM system that I would like to speak with whatever system I choose.

Here are the facts:

• LLC partnership (service revenue)
• One of the partners has their own merchant account set up through the POS
• All revenue and tips collected by this partner are paid out through their separate merchant account, but all revenue and tips show up as revenue for the business
• When recording the monthly sales JE, I code their merchant payout as a guaranteed payment
• Fast forward to year-end close and tax prep: tips payable is overstated by the amount of tips collected by this partner because when I recorded their monthly merchant payout, tips payable wasn't reduced by the amount of tips paid out
• Cool. No problem. I'll do an adjusting entry
• I go to make the adjusting entry, and I have no idea what account to offset the decrease in tips payable, because the correct amount of payouts has already been recorded as a guaranteed payment, confirmed by their 1099K. Simply debiting tips payable and crediting guaranteed payments will understate GP.

Here's my JE:

Tips Payable DR 1000 (to reduce tips payable)

Guaranteed Payment DR 1000 (to record tips being paid)

Guaranteed Payment CR 1000(to reduce GP since the payouts were already recorded in the monthly JE)

????? CR 1000 (what account do I credit to balance the JE)

What am I missing? I feel so incredibly dumb for not being able to figure this out.

My people, please help so I can stop obsessing over this and move on with my life.

So I'm an accountant and I prepare the year-end accounts for a few clients that have their bookkeeping done by self-employed bookkeepers.

There are some jobs that I've picked up and they've been a little messy so I've tidied them up when doing the accounts, I've then sent a polite email to the bookkeepers once the accounts have been done to provide them with the opening balance adjustments and also some pointers about things that I may have picked up that weren't minor. I won't tell them about small tweaks I've had to make.

One example is that a bookkeeper posts their own year-end adjustments for a client and then reverses them back out on the first day of the new financial year, the issue here is that these adjustments aren't the final figures, so once they've posted the opening balance adjustments that I've provided them with to make their TB agree to the accounts, then their reversals actually knock out the opening balances in next year's accounts so the brought forward TB doesn't agree because of this.

I politely asked the bookkeper to not post the reversals as it then causes extra work when preparing the accounts, then there was a very defensive email back to me saying that they are a qualified bookkeeper and have been working for X number of years, they aren't causing any problems and they're saving their client time and money and they've always done it and it's not an issue. So rather than say ok no problem, they blew a fuse for no apparent reason.

I tried to explain again why this is, explaining their prepayments and accruals were not the figures in the final accounts and how this worked, they shot back again with more defensive remarks. In this situation I just didn't respond to them after this as they clearly weren't receiving a request from one professional to another very well, and I will just continue to remove their adjustments and do the accounts as normal, costing the client more money..

My point is, there are times where bookkeepers I've dealt with are pleasant and welcoming of feedback, however it seems the majority of the time they feel offended and like I'm saying they're bad at their job and don't know what they're doing, which I'm really not, I'm just trying to ask them to make slight changes to aid with the accounts process.

Am I just coming up against sensitive bookkeepers here or do bookkeepers just not like accountants?

Hi everyone,

first time posting here! I just wanted to ask for your help/advice on how I can update my amazon merchant account reconciliation. Amazon updated their reporting from settlement-based to post-based and I am having a hard time updating our WP to reconcile Netsuite balance with Amazon.

Since both Netsuite and Amazon are now post-based, just looking at monthly transactions, they are the same. But in my reconciliation, I am seeing a difference in the ending balances.

I think it may be a problem with how I get my final amazon ending balance or I do not know how/what else to "adjust" Netsuite balance to match my Amazon ending balance.

What worked for January 2026 (using the updated reports from amazon) are the following adjustments (only in the WP and not in Netsuite, really. I just wanted to show what numbers exactly are causing the difference in balances):

- I add the transactions posted in previous month released in current month
- I remove the transactions posted this month but are yet to be released / deferred transactions

It worked well for January with 0 difference between amazon and NS balances.

My thought process what that the ones I removed in Feb will now be the additions and then a new removal amount from the deferred/unreleased amounts will be there. I'm not sure why it's not working in Feb onwards? Maybe I am missing something to consider?

Files I use for recon:
amz -- transaction report and flat file of period containing month-end date (e.g. period feb 25-mar 11 and then filtered up to feb 28).
netsuite -- balance sheet

general process in amazon merchant account reconciliation before I reach the final audit (the one I've been talking about above):

- recorded/ adjusted amz merchant account via JE -- settlements, reserves, landed cost, sales tax adjustments, income statement items (e.g. sales, returns marketplace fees, discounts, etc.)

After that, I do the final audit where I compare the amz ending bal with the netsuite ending bal and adjust to match Netsuite with Amazon's.

For the final audit, I get the amazon ending balance using the 2 amazon files I said earlier. Included in the amazon ending balance are the transactions that are both in the flat file I used and transaction report + transactions at the end of the month that are in the transaction report but not in the flat file (timing differences). This is how I do it before amazon changed their reporting to post-based and it has worked perfectly. For jan 2026, like I said, I did the same thing and considered the additions and removals and I was able to close cleanly.

For feb or for mar 2026, I cannot do the same simply.

Can you give me some advice or point out if I am missing anything in the final audit steps?

Thanks so much in advance, everyone! I've been trying to go over this for a month now (for feb and then for mar reconciliation).

Please be kind to me, I didn't study this at school. I learned bookkeeping through my boss who mentored me before so I mainly learned through hands-on application.

I did bookkeeping for a company (farm) for the year of 2025. I started from scratch in QBO, set it all up, uploaded transactions and reviewed and classified, set up gst. They had 5 bank accounts, one credit card, personal expenses mixed amongst everything. They were quite a mess needless to say. They have about 6 different loans as well. I have them completely caught up and reconciled as of Dec 31, 2025.

All of this took me 39 hours. I told them my rate for $50/hour for cleanup…are their jaws going to drop when I give them their bill? Does 39 hours seem realistic to other bookkeepers? I’m willing to shave off a couple hours but before I do I want to know if I’m out to lunch…

Interested in hearing how other bookkeepers for small businesses account for cash back rewards. Obviously you've got the debit to the checking account/credit card but what is your corresponding credit entry? The reason I ask is because cash back rewards are not taxable income so I'm hesitating on including it in the P&L as either income or a direct reduction of an expense. I worry that the business's tax accountant (I don't do the taxes) will not catch that the cash back rewards should not be included in income (should be an M-1 adjustment). Could it be appropriate to make the credit entry to equity as paid in capital?

Like, I swear, after this one I can't believe I'm even potty trained.

Came across an absolute mess while reconciling, something I did 8 or 9 months ago. It was like, half accrual....... half cash basis? With random, arbitrary dates. Something like that? Luckily I knew exactly how to fix it and it was pretty easy, even if to this very moment I can't tell you what I even did or how I got there, like what possessed me to say to myself "yes, this is good bookkeeping." I just scrapped all the crap and started from scratch. I couldn't even handle trying to unravel whatever it is I did. It was that bad. I deserve severe punishment for crimes against humanity.

I think I'll hire a nanny to feed me spaghetti-o's because clearly I'm too incompetent to feed myself or handle solid food.

Has anyone done a side hustle as a travel agent? Looking for ways to diversify and bring in more income. Did you like it? What host agency did you use? Is there a better hustle you’ve found?

Howdy!
So, I use Zoho Books (cannot wait until something better comes along!!!), and in 2024 there was a multi month disruption of automatic bank feeds. I'm way behind in my reconciliation and just now finding the missing transactions, numbering in the hundreds across four bank accounts.
That bank closed my accounts in Jan 2026, so I cannot get my statements or transactions in .csv anymore (BIG LESSON LEARNED: Reconcile accounts when the bank statement comes out, no matter what, VERY important!).
Is there a way to import the transactions into zoho from a .pdf?

Or do I just need to suck it up and get moving on manually adding each transaction?

Something I’ve been thinking about since a disagreement with a client (client A) the other day… I automatically document my processes and such, but I keep them on the shared drive. Would it be smarter to keep them on my personal drive so I’m not just giving away a complete playbook of how to do my job? (Not that it would automatically help someone who doesn’t know bookkeeping already, but you get my drift). I’m curious how everyone else handles this? To give more context, i have another client, (client B), who started a new business in early 2025, and I’ve helped build and implement systems and processes for them- and not just re: bookkeeping, but other departments as well. I’m paid for doing so, but am I being too much of an open book?

Edit to add: the disagreement was with a different client (here on called client A) than the client I’ve been building processes and SOP’s for (we’ll call them client B). I realized I didn’t make that very clear, but I do have documents detailing my processes for every client I have, so when this disagreement came up with client A, I started thinking about all of the clients I have processes spelled out for, but especially client B who by far has requested the most of this type of work.

So I have a few rental properties and I have a property manager, I do my own bookkeeping.

The PM manages my properties as one account. I manage each property separately. This isn't a problem usually, every month I get "here is the income for property A, the expenses for Property A, etc"

Example: property A has +1900 and -400= I log $1500 bc that is what hit my acct.

Until this month.

I have a vacancy and it incurred $70 of utilities, I have exhausted my reserve fund held with the PM, NBD, so this time they said, "property A had $1900 in income, $0 in expenses, property B had $0 in income, $70 in expenses, we have held $300 from property A for reserve"

So I was paid $1600 for property A and $0 for property B

Should I log $1900 for property A and then transfer $300 from my property B acct to property A and then log the $300 in expenses (I can itemize it, not just filling reserve) bc I don't think I ever had to fill reserve.

In past situations my property was occupied before I exhausted $300 so I got a "property B +$1400, -300 = $1100"

I'm looking for an "ERP" software for home use, similar to QuickBooks without all of the features.

I have tried GnuCash and Manager.io, but I'm not a fan of the complexity. I don't need something that complicated. I'm currently running on Mac OS and desktop isn't a MUST, but it's a bonus.

Here's what I need:

1. One user
2. Auto bank feeds OR ability to import via CSV
3. Custom categories & accounts
4. Reports by category
5. Bank Register
6. Memorized category transactions aren't a must, but would be nice
7. Bank reconciliations

I don't need receipts, payments, projects, customers, etc. Just the basic COA that I can add accounts to.

I tried the QB free version, but it doesn't allow custom COA. I don't want an app only version of anything - app versions aren't even a must.

I'm not looking specifically for free options, but also don't want to pay hundreds per year.

This has to be the most universal pain point in this industry. Client needs something filed, you request their documents, and then silence. You follow up. More silence. You follow up again. They apologize and send half of what you need. Repeat for six weeks.
I've tried being more explicit in my engagement letters, tried different email subject lines, tried calling. Some clients are just chronically slow regardless of what I do.
What are people actually doing to solve this systematically rather than just case by case? Is this just an inevitable part of the job or has anyone actually cracked it?

Hello bookkeepers. Let’s say there is a small construction company with 1 or 2 employees and the company averages 5 transactions per day, usually meals and materials/supplies. If you are a bookkeeper for this company, do you journal these transactions daily into your software? Do you enter that $10 McDonalds meal? Or that $5.68 bucket from Home Depot? Or on a weekly or monthly basis, you download their bank transactions, separate the income/expenses, categorize them, and do a journal entry in the accounting system for each expense account? Thanks ahead for any replies.

Yes, I know, I'm a terrible bookkeeper. As soon as I can afford to do so, I will happily fire myself from this role.

I'm attempting to reconcile accounts; as I understand it, Reconciliation is simply matching each transaction in my books to the same transaction in my bank statements (If this is wrong, please let me know the correct answer/definition).

Working on four accounts from an old bank that has since been closed, I have .pdf statements.
In some accounts I have transactions in the statements (20+) that are NOT in my books. This may be due to bank feed errors way back when.
Do I simply need to manually add these transactions into my books to match the statement?

In another issue, I have transactions in my books that do NOT show up in my statements; IS it as simple as finding the receipt for that transaction, checking where it should be?

How do you usually deal with things that go beyond basic bookkeeping, like depreciation, adjustments, or anything that feels more "non-basic accounting/tax" level?

Do you handle it yourself, follow some standard rules, or just pass it to an accountant?

I'm specifically asking about bookkeepers who don't have strong accounting background/degree or CPA, or EA.

Does anyone have experience in law firm/IOLTA bookkeeping?

The firm I'm working with started using LEAP and QBO in mid 2024 and it doesn't look like they've done the IOLTA reconciliation since then, I don't know if it was done before as the file was created in 2024.

LEAP is used for the client registers, should I try to set up some kind of integration?

Should I create other current liability accounts for all of the clients? Should I set up Classes for the clients?

I'm just trying to figure out the best way to do this to get them compliant and make sure everything balances.

We're in Texas if that helps.