Weekly: the maintenance layer
- Bank feed review and categorization, transactions coded to the right accounts (and jobs/classes where you track them) while context is fresh; a week's transactions take minutes, a quarter's take days
- Receipt matching, documentation attached where it matters (equipment, travel, anything an auditor would ask about)
- Invoicing support and AR watch, who owes what, what's aging past terms
- Bill entry and AP scheduling if bill pay is in scope
- Payroll processing on your cycle: hours in, approvals, submission, allocations to jobs or departments
Monthly: the close, where books become trustworthy
The close is the difference between 'data entry' and bookkeeping. A real one includes:
- Reconciling every account, checking, savings, every credit card, loans, and merchant processors, against statements to the penny. Non-negotiable; unreconciled books are unverified books
- Balance sheet review: undeposited funds cleared, AR/AP aging scrubbed of ghosts, loan balances tied to lender statements, payroll liabilities tied to filings
- Accruals and adjustments where you're on accrual basis: deferred revenue recognized, prepaid expenses amortized, owner transactions posted to equity
- A locked period, the closed month protected from accidental edits, so January's reports still say the same thing in June
The deliverables: what lands in your inbox
By a fixed date each month (ours is in writing): profit and loss, ideally with comparison to last month and last year, balance sheet, cash summary, AR/AP agings, and the industry layer where relevant (job costing, per-truck P&L, labor percentages). Plus the human part: flags. 'Fuel ran 22% above trend,' 'customer X is 60 days past due,' 'you're tracking toward a bigger Q4 estimate.' Reports without observations are printouts.
Quarterly and annually, folded in
- Quarterly: estimated-tax support, sales tax filings where applicable, payroll form review (941s), and a look at the year's trajectory
- Annually: 1099 collection and filing in January, W-2 coordination, year-end close, and a tax-ready package for the return, or the return itself, where books and tax live under one roof
What's usually NOT included (so nobody's surprised)
Standard monthly bookkeeping typically excludes: tax return preparation (separate engagement), catch-up/cleanup of prior periods (project pricing), CFO-level forecasting, audit representation, and invoice-by-invoice collections. Good firms are explicit about the line; the fee should match a defined scope, and additions should be discussed before they're billed. (Our scope, in plain terms: Bookkeeping Services for Small Businesses .)
Frequently asked questions
How many hours a month is all this?
For a typical service business: 5–15 hours of professional time depending on volume and payroll, which is exactly the range owners burn doing it themselves, slower, at night. The fee substitutes for those hours plus the skill premium.
What should I have to do each month?
Answer the mystery-transaction list (minutes, not hours), approve payroll, and read the reports. If your bookkeeper needs more of you than that, the workflow needs fixing.
What's a 'close date' and why does it matter?
The date your books are final each month, in writing. Without one, 'monthly bookkeeping' drifts into 'eventually bookkeeping,' and reports arrive too stale to act on. It's the single best contractual term to insist on. The Monthly Bookkeeping Checklist for Small Business