Long one, sorry. I need to vent and I also genuinely need a gut check, and advice.

I'm a solo bookkeeper. One of my clients is a commission-based sales agency.

The model: Reps sell, manufacturers pay the agency, the agency pays the reps. Not complicated in theory.

But an absolute financial shit show in reality.
I got recruited by the ops manager who wanted me to review the books because the old bookkeeper "didn't know what she was doing."

This was a true story, the prior bookkeeper had literally been making up transactions. Not sloppy books. Fabricated transactions to make the bank accounts reconcile. Made up, imaginary numbers. Large deposits not tied to actual invoices. An absolute shit show.
I've never seen anything like it. And in hindsight this was probably the red flag that should have sent me running in the first place.

So I did the forensic cleanup, caught the books up, and built their whole commission calculator from scratch, took over payroll, reconcile the owner's cards, all of it. I basically AM the finance department.
And now that the books are actually clean, I can see exactly what's going on. And it is ugly.

The numbers:
Profit Jan through Sept: about $72K
Owner distributions over the same months: about $290K. Plus another $30K he pulled last week.

So he took 4x what the business made. A $140K line of credit covered the gap (maxed now, nothing left) along with draining the bank account.
Right before that $30K draw, I counted everything already owed (rep commissions, his credit cards, bills). Under $4K was actually free for distribution. He took $30K. So $26K of it was other people's money.

His salary is tiny, by the way. His "business expenses" were running through payroll as reimbursements (HUGE ones), and his distributions were getting lumped in there too, until I untangled it and pulled his cards into the bank feed. And flat out refused to run owner distributions through payroll as reimbursements.

The one thing this man definitely knows how to do is spend. That's really the whole problem. Business spending aside, his personal lifestyle apparently demands the distributions he's taking, which is why he won't cut them back.

The business actually does make money. He just spends waaay more than it makes, and treats whatever's sitting in the bank as his. And it almost always looks full, because the reps get paid weeks after the money comes in. So he sees a big balance and helps himself.

Two more fun facts:
1. Their biggest team, (who bring in roughly half the revenue), might be leaving. I found this out from the ops manager. Not the owner.

1. There's a guy who gets paid like a partner but isn't one. He gets half the profit pool on EVERYONE'S deals, including the owner's own deals. Over the last four commission periods he made about $142K, and about three quarters of that came from deals he didn't close. That's on pace for $300K+ a year, while the business can't afford its own owner's spending habits and he's borrowing from next month's deposits to take his distribution.

I built the calculator, so I can see it to the dollar. But the owner doesn't want to change the deal because of their personal relationships. (Even if it sinks the ship apparently.)

But here's the part that actually broke me, and has me writing this rant.

Sunday. Text from the ops manager. Asking me questions I told her the answer to last week, and also that she's now the "primary point of contact for all financial matters." That there is to be no direct communication with the owner. That he will only discuss commissions approvals with me and even that may be delegated to her.

I asked why he doesn't want to talk to me directly. "It has nothing to do with you, he prefers a single point of contact." Then basically: the questions would be the same coming from him or her, so why does it matter?

It matters because I'm the one diagnosing the problem!! I'm the person who can see the ship going down, and I'm being told to pass notes through someone whose whole approach is softening everything so he doesn't get upset, and treats him like a child.

I know she knows it's bad. I also know she's not delivering it straight. Much more concerned about how he feels about the news than the reality of the news.

I know she knows it's bad.
She's the one who told me about the team leaving, and has asked for financial reports that don't actually go anywhere.

The problem is she'd rather make it palatable than give brutal honesty, and brutal is what the reality is.

She's also all over the place and one of the most unprofessional people I've ever worked with. Weekend texts constantly. I've asked for email or Slack more than once. Completely ignored. Hours spent on reports requests that doesn't know how to do herself.
Meanwhile simple statement requests that I shouldn't "bother the owner with" ho ignored by her for a month.

She's also requested I pay a subcontractor through payroll, but flat out refusing to provide a W-9 because the owner prefers not to report it. (Ummmm what?!?! I flat out refused to do that btw)

If the company was doing great, he could set up communication however he wanted. But it's not doing great. It's on the edge, and I think he wants to cut off communication with me is the equivalent of wanting to take the batteries out of the smoke detector because the beeping the dumpster fire that is his current financial situation is "so annoying."

My plan: Monday I email him directly. Here are the numbers. Here's what I need: direct access, a meeting this week, asking for a reply from HIM confirming text message from the ops manager that he doesn't want direct communication with me.

And if he says that is actually how he wants communication ser up. Everything routed through her I plan on resigning effective immediately.

I was already planning on leaving once I replaced the income with other clients, but even though they pay well it no longer seems worth it to wait and am prepared to take the financial hit.

So if you made it this far, first off,thank you.
What do you
But second, should I even bother with the email? Or just fire them now and skip it?

How would you handle an owner who won't look at reality and a gatekeeper who won't let you show it to him?

Has anyone stayed with a client like this and actually seen it turn around? Or does it always end the way I think it ends?

All advice is welcome.
I'm not sure what the professional move is here. Or if I should even be worrying about that anymore given the circumstances.

I have this construction client for about 2 years now where i do their books and AP. We always had somewhat of a system. The invoices would get approved in slack. But the problem is that in his field, things happen last minute, and invoices get adjusted. It was never a problem.

Well I approved a $9,000 invoice early in the week for it to go out on Friday. But sometime during the week, he gets on the phone with the vendor and the amount changes to $7,800. He never told me, just the PM. So, $9,000 went off on Friday.

I've told them we needed something central, but owner doesn't want anything new. He's pissed off, and I'm furious as well. I'm so close to cutting him off.

Rant over. Not looking for advice because I know what the solution is... but some owners are so hellbent.

Hoping to get some advice here because the last time I scheduled something with my sister's accountant, it was quick advice like this and he didn't charge me, and I felt awkward. I don't know if this is more appropriate or not but if you tell me to call him back, I will. Otherwise, is there a better way to get quick questions answered?

I have a small LLC, it doesn't make much money. I teach German part time and starting this year I now have an independent contractor who works for me, too. This was the first month that he had students. Payment has been going through me, as I understood that was important for tax reasons. So students meet with him but send the money to my business venmo account. Then he's supposed to send me an invoice every month and I pay him for the lessons, keeping my overhead. The problem is that after the initial email, unless the students end up taking lessons with me, I send them the contractor (Kevin)'s email, and then the student and I don't have much contact. So there's a lot of annoying checking in between me and Kevin about missed/late payments and canceled/moved lessons and stuff like that.

It would be really convenient if payments for Kevins lessons could go through him. The students could send him the full amount and Kevin could send me my overhead only, keeping his fee.

Is this reasonable? For some reason I was operating under the understanding that the direction of money flow was important and that if we switched it, it would change the classification - it would look like he was paying me some kind of "finders fee" and for tax purposes it might change everything and make it all more confusing. I don't remember where I read that or got that idea. I've been thinking that all year though.

What should I do? It's chaotic as it is and this seems like the best solution.

Curious what everyone uses as a naming convention for files?

I have a decent system but I'm looking for inspo!

One of my clients is considering Mercury bank. I manage his books on Xero. If anyone has experience with Mercury bank, I'd love to hear your feedback. Brownie points if you have experience with Mercury's feed connection in Xero.

You apply a payment, think everything's good, then realize it was matched to the wrong invoice. Now one looks paid when it isn't, and another has a balance that shouldn't be there.

For those who work in AR, how do you usually catch these mistakes? Do you spot them during reconciliation, or does the customer end up telling you first?

I run a small bookkeeping practice serving mostly micro-businesses like farmer's market vendors, online retailers, and contractors. I've been re-examining a few practices and realized I may be overcomplicating my billing.

The way I bill now is something I call flat-rate invoicing (there may be a better name). When a client signs up, I estimate a monthly price before starting work, based on # of accounts, avg monthly trxn amounts, and extra services needed. I then invoice them that estimate every month, give them a rate-lock for 2 years, and reassess after that. I set it up as an automatic monthly invoice using QBO's auto-pay, so the same amount goes out each month, and the client doesn’t need to worry about manually paying each month since that complicates things. I try to streamline my services as much as possible, and billing is an example of that. I do this process for every client regardless of size, which has caused problems with larger clients whose monthly workload fluctuates. Another issue is that the price is based on an estimate, and I don't track actual time spent. I have no way of knowing whether I'm over- or under-charging.

I have a few different thoughts on how I could change my billing process. One thought is to split clients by size: I'd define a micro-business (MB) as under $250k in annual revenue and a small business (SMB) as anything above that. MBs would stay on the current flat-rate billing, and SMBs would go to hourly billing for actual time spent. I know that's how most accountants and lawyers bill, usually with minimums (which is probably why I see CPAs charging my clients $300/mo, though I have no idea what for).

Another thought I’ve had is to base the monthly flat rate on avg actual time spent. I would bill new MB clients hourly for their first 3 months, and then average that time from those first 3 invoices and charge that as their flat rate for the current 2-year rate lock.

The last thought I’ve had is to pull some services out of the flat rate invoices, these being A/R, A/P, and research/advisory/calls, which can vary a lot from month to month. Right now I fold them into the flat fee and just absorb the heavy months. Instead, I'd track actual time for those services, and then send a separate quarterly invoice for any hourly work from the previous 3 months, which would keep the monthly auto-pay and flat rate I advertise intact, while also billing actual time for services that require it.

I'm hesitant to go fully hourly because I like being able to advertise to MB clients that they'll pay the same amount every month with a 2-year rate lock, instead of giving them a semi-unpredictable hourly bill each month. Auto-pay also makes life easier on both sides, since Clients tend to skip over QB's invoice notification emails, which leads to late payments on my end when they aren't on auto-pay. I've also wondered whether a credit card authorization form would maybe be a better route than QB's auto-pay.

So,

How do you all bill, flat rate, hourly, or a mix?

Does anyone else use QB's auto-pay for recurring invoices, or not notice payments being any easier for clients using it?

If you bill hourly, and serve smaller clients like I do, how often do you deal with squirrely clients who just forget to pay?

Would a hybrid setup of anything I’m describing sound reasonable, or am I making it more complicated than it needs to be?

Thanks guys for your thoughts!

What do you actually prefer using for your clients and what’s your reason for that?

Hey all. EA, CFE and CPA candidate here. I will start: restaurants and construction accounting! I’ve done restaurants before. It was so much work. Construction accounting is just another monster that I’m not willing to take on. I actually don’t have experience with construction accounting (besides the little bit you learn about in college lol) but I know it’s a monster. What about you and why?

I recently posted about a payroll mess. I followed the suggestions of the commenters and found the source of the problem: me.

We're up to date on everything. In 2025 and 2026 I listed our Workers Comp payments as bills to a non-payroll account (Taxes & Licenses) and matched the payment there off my bank feed. Our payroll people made entries for those amounts against the liability. They must have not cleared the bank because of my entries. I'm hoping. At least that would be an explanation.

To add to the confusion, the amounts listed on our WA L&I reports never match up with actual amounts paid in the non-clearing tax payments our payroll guy made.

Rookie mistake that I won't make again. I'm not touching any of these entries until someone who knows what they're doing takes a looksie. Thanks everyone for helping me out and chiming in with your much needed wisdom.

Our accounts with everyone are good. Our bookkeeper (me) took a dump all over the project.

Just a rant but I’m bummed out with this new last minute client I had for amended S-corp bookkeeping in time for 1040 filing. I did all the work on such a tight deadline (literally got client less than a week before deadline, I got client intentended results and never once did I get a thank you. The work was good. I’m an actual accountant. Now that 10/15 is over, client is moving to a much bigger firm now. Listen that’s okay, that’s not my problem. I just would have appreciated a thank you. Just something. Damn. I put clients ass under deleted client folder asap.

Client seems to be a firm hopper when client doesn’t get certain tax results. 🤦‍♀️🙄

How do you reconcile A/R general ledger?

hello!! i work at a small full service firm doing the book preparation for our cpa for about 60 monthly clients. i have been doing this for five years and am currently preparing to move into a more review and closing the books, posting financials role but i don’t feel like i have enough practice in this. i know how to read a p&l, would like to be more comfortable in the balance sheet and how to spot discrepancies, i can do journal entries and things like that.

im looking for a course or some supplemental education on this part of the bookkeeping process. i am training alongside my cpa and she is amazing but i feel like shes going to teach me what she knows and how she does it (she’s extremely knowledgeable and i trust her to teach me) but while she is really good at explaining the core concepts when i ask - sometimes i dont know what im not asking if that makes sense. so im looking for something more in depth of the core concepts.

what did you do when you started closing and reviewing books, any supplemental courses i can talk to my manager about ?

thank you!!

I’m looking to take my bookkeeping business to the next level. What are you doing as a bookkeeping business owner to grow your business and find clients?? Not the obvious ways like referrals, contacting CPA’s ect. What else has worked for you at finding clients and growing your business?

While running reports for our (late) 2025 Year 1 S-Corp, we found the books were off because of a payroll service error. The bones of the issue are this:

• We reversed a post-tax Traditional IRA Shareholder benefit prior to the service withdrawing for payroll; we did not reverse the shareholder salary 
• The payroll service reversed the Traditional IRA amount as requested and, in error, placed the reversed amount as "net pay"; it did not withdraw or pay the shareholder that new net pay amount, but did include the amount for the 2025 W-2; they did not recalculate the payroll taxes 
• As a result, the 2025 W-2 for that shareholder is incorrect—almost in its entirety 
• The well-known payroll service suggested the S-Corp simply issue Traditional IRA funds in the amount of the reversed funds to correct the error, which the S-Corp will not do 
• Then the payroll service offered to amend the 2025 W-2 Box 1 if I would provide them with the amount to insert 
• As managing shareholder, it falls to me to address this issue. What verbiage should I use to tell the payroll service that correcting the single payroll to reflect the reversed post-tax Traditional IRA amount will automatically affect gross wages, taxes, and the retirement plan, resulting in a new W-2 and the necessary tax corrections and refunds? 

I admit, it seems stunning that I should have to explain what should be done. Perhaps I am not talking to the correct level of service or management. I truly appreciate any guidance you could provide. I feel at my wits' end at this juncture.

I worked with a woman as a contractor and was making around $2500 a month. She has shouting problem and wanting to track me more than usual. So I had to let her go

I have solid experience but I’m not able to get contract work or clients to cover this amount. This amount was pretty important for me to cover up all my finances. I’ve been reaching out to busy bookkeeper and firms as well in case they need additional help but I wasn’t able to get anything.

Should I go back to her as I do have this option?
I’m severely stressed

I took on a client that has 2 companies (completely separate entities, no parent-sub relationship).

Company A frequently pays bills on behalf of Company B. Company A then bills Company B for reimbursement.

Company B consistently does not have the funds to reimburse Company A within the same tax year. The bills then sit on the books for multiple years.

I don’t want to apply payments to prior year bills and they get logged to current year expense accounts.

Is it appropriate for me to bundle Company B’s prior year bills from Company A into a Loan Payable to Company A?

Also, should I make this change reflect in Company A books as well?

I don't know if this is normal or if I'm just a bad AP specialist. Ive worked at 3 companies doing AP and I was a full charge bookkeeper for a year in between those positions. Every day I worry I'm going to get fired doing AP. No matter how I organize or what I do to stay on top of things, I'm always being lectured by my boss about something. As soon as I feel like I'm on top of things, ill get a suprise call that a vendor put us on credit hold. On top of it all, this company uses Sage so every mistake I make is completely imortalized and highlighted. I've never been more stressed in my adult life. Is this normal?

We have three people handling accounting for growing manufacturing company and our annual audit starts in about six weeks.

I’m trying to get ahead of document requests before everything becomes reactive. What preparation has made the biggest difference for your team?

So we had a bookkeeping company doing our payroll for some time. After they neglected to do our payroll 3 times, I took over. We have 4 employees and I run it through QBO.

To my surprise we weren't set up for automatic tax payments. So I fixed that. Then I went over our tax liability accounts.

Mid 2025 it looked good. Payments were made each period and amounts owed were zeroed out. Then all hell broke loose. Payments started to be made on arbitrary dates, maybe 5 months apart, and not for the amount owed. The accounts never zeroed. For our workers comp, the payments for Nov 2025 (about 2650) didn't even clear the bank or zero out, and I get the "error" message when I try to access them.

What the actual hell do I do now?

What is your guys' basis for retainer pricing. This would be my first one and it is for an acquisition that I would be setting up the books for and communicating with the CPA on opening balance sheet amounts as they have the purchasing agreement. I am hoping to receive the financial statements of the seller to roughly know what I am looking at but am curious what your rules of thumb are on retainers. Thanks in advance!

Hey everyone! I keep running into this and I’m curious how other people handle it.

When I need to change prices or categories on a bunch of products and services I’m stuck either editing them one at a time or doing the export and import thing. Importing overwrites everything and there’s no undo, so one mistake can mess up a lot of items.

Could you point me in the right direction? Thank you!

I have a line of credit backed by accounts receivable. My company basically sells our invoices to the factoring company and the factoring company uses that amount to decide our line of credit limit. We can pull from the line of credit at any time. Clients pay the invoices directly to the factoring company, from which the factoring company pays down our line of credit and releases anything left in reserve back to us.

Very simple example: my company factors an invoice for $100. The factoring company puts $10 in "reserve" which they use later to collect their own fees. $90 is put towards the line of credit. I can draw from that whenever I want. So maybe I only draw $60.

Later, the client pays the invoice of $100 to the factoring company. Factoring company applies $60 to the line of credit to pay it down, takes their $5 for fees and commission, and releases the leftover $35 to my company.

How do I track all this?

Preciously when we did traditional factoring, I marked my invoices paid and used a clearing account for that "deposit." Then used the clearing account to pay down the liability account for the factoring company. The reserve account was tracked separately. That was easier because every part of the invoice was covered somewhere. Now that it's a line of credit and we aren't drawing the entire amount, it doesn't feel right.

I’m looking to buy a bookkeeping business. Anyone selling or know anyone selling??