Small Business CPA Dallas AlternativeThe close comes first.

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One total has to be shared by the bank, the open items, and the books.

A close is a month where the bank, the uncleared items, and the books describe the same money. A tidy page has fooled owners before, so we still want those three totals to name the same dollars. We list what has not cleared. We do not hide those items inside profit so the page looks smooth. If a deposit has no name, the month stays open until the name is known.

Owners of one company often keep the books in the same place they keep the group texts and the vendor photos. That is a fine starting pile. The close turns the pile into a month. We want the statement, the uncleared list, and a note on anything that moved for a reason that is not a sale. A personal transfer that landed in the business account is named as personal, and that transfer stays out of the sales total.

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Open months stay open.

If March does not match the bank, April does not get to pretend March was fine. We name the open month and we stop the return from using it. An extension can move a filing day. It does not reconcile a statement. People mix those two up, and the mix-up is how a year gets filed on a guess.

The useful note from you is the last month you believe matches the bank. A plain statement that you do not know which month matches is a better opening than a hopeful guess. We would rather start from that sentence than from a promise that the books are mostly caught up. Mostly is not a month.

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What we look at in the first hour.

We look at the bank, the places money leaves for the owner, and the sales tax total if the company collects it. Those three tell us whether the month can close. A chart with forty accounts and no reconciliation is a chart, not a close. We will archive accounts that have not moved, and we will not invent activity to make an old account look alive.

A close also names what the company owns when that list changed. Equipment bought, equipment sold, and equipment that died in the shop all belong in the month they happened. That is the same list April will ask for. Doing it monthly is how April stops being a scavenger hunt.

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On a calendar, on a video.

A video call and a shared file are the ordinary way the month moves. You do not drive the statements anywhere. We still keep the sales-tax day on the same calendar as the close, because a month that is tidy and late for the 20th is not tidy.

Start with the newest statement you would sign your name under, and the older one you would not. Those two statements are the whole first call. The paid close starts only after a signed page names the months and the fee. Until then the call is a reading of where the file actually stands.