CPA and Bookkeeping Dallas AlternativeThe booksThe books start with the oldest month still open.
The year you sign should be a year you have already seen, month by month. The close starts at the oldest month the bank does not match, and newer months wait their turn. That oldest-month close is the work Steven Palmieri does here as Tax CFO and as the Entrepreneur's CFO.
Ask about the close
Why the oldest one goes first
A newer month is tempting because you remember it. The old one is the one the return will trip on. If January never tied to the bank, every month after it is standing on a wobble.
You do not have to clean the whole year in a weekend. We close the oldest open month, then the next, and we leave a messy newer month until its turn. The books stay in an order a person can follow.
Last year's loose ends get cleaned up in that same order. The month you are living now gets managed once the ground under it is solid. Then the months still ahead become a stretch you can see, instead of a pile you meet for the first time in March.
What to send
The useful packet is the bank feed plus the name of the newest month you trust. A PDF of a year you have not lived in is not as useful as that feed and the oldest gap.
Contractor forms belong in this pile too. If one person issued the year end forms from an old list, and the return was built from a different list, the forms and the return will not match. We want the list you would hire from today, not the list that was convenient in January.
A late partner schedule often lands in February with the same problem. The bookkeeper closed November. The person who files asked in March for the year as a static file. The schedule sat with neither of them. Send it. A February schedule gets attached to the month the partner was paid, even when the PDF arrives late.
What a closed month gives you
A closed month is one the bank agrees with, the bills are in, and you could explain it out loud. That month can go into the return. An open month cannot, not honestly.
The city still wants the sales report on the twentieth while you are catching up. The state portion is six and one quarter percent, the city is one percent, and DART is one percent, which is eight and one quarter percent together. Those filings do not pause because an older month is open. We keep the current report moving while the old months are repaired, so you are not choosing between the past and the present.
Oak Cliff joined the city in 1903 after being a separate town, and it still feels like its own neighborhood to us the same as it does to you. The bank does not care which neighborhood the shop is in. The oldest open month is still the one we close first.
The price of the catch up depends on how many months are open and how tangled the bank feed is. We name that figure after we have seen the file, and we say it before you commit.
After the stack is standing
Once the old months are closed, the new ones stay on a rhythm. You get a short note after each close. Questions in July have somewhere to go, instead of a voicemail on both sides.
That is the part you can look forward to. The year stops being a pile you dread in March. It becomes a set of months you already understand.
The one report this practice will not sign is written on the Disclosures page, and nowhere else on this site. Running payday remains your job on the provider we help you set up.
Tell us where the books stand
A month name is enough. The reply names the next piece we need.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.