Services
Six things this office does every month, and a short, honest account of what belongs to another professional instead.
The monthly close
Every month is closed on a fixed date rather than whenever the paperwork happens to arrive. Sales, purchases, bank movement, card settlements and petty cash are entered, coded and reconciled, and the month is signed off with a short set of figures somebody can actually read.
A closing date that does not move is the whole point. It means last month exists as numbers before the middle of this one, which is the difference between running a business on figures and running it on a feeling.
Reconciliation, line by line
Bank accounts, card terminals and any payment account are reconciled against the ledger every month, line by line, until the two agree. Where a line has no document behind it, it stays queried rather than being quietly coded to something plausible.
Most of what looks like a bookkeeping problem is one unreconciled account with three months of small differences stacked inside it. Those get found while they are still small, but only if somebody reads the columns every month.
Payroll and the monthly pay run
Small payrolls run on the same rhythm: hours in, deductions calculated, payslips issued, the filing prepared, and the amounts due listed before the date they fall due. Starters, leavers and changed contracts are handled with their paperwork in the same pass.
Payroll is the part of a small ledger with the least tolerance for lateness, so it is scheduled first in the month and never last. Where a pay date falls awkwardly against a weekend or a holiday, you hear about it in advance.
Document custody and retention
Invoices, receipts, statements and payroll records are logged, filed in the order they will be asked for, and kept for the retention period that applies to each kind. What arrives on paper stays retrievable; what arrives on a screen is printed to a stable copy and filed with the rest.
Filing is the boring half of the ledger and the half that decides whether a figure can still be defended a year later. A number with no document under it is an opinion with a decimal point.
Catching up books that fell behind
A ledger that stopped being written up six or twelve months ago is picked up from the last month that reconciles and brought forward in order, one month at a time, rather than reconstructed backwards from a single total.
This is slower work and it is scoped as its own piece rather than folded into the monthly rhythm. It ends where every other month starts: a reconciled opening position and a closing date that holds.
The year-end pack
At the end of the year the ledger is turned into a pack the accountant or preparer who signs the return can work from without asking twelve questions: reconciled balances, the asset list, the items still open, and the documents supporting each of them.
The pack goes out with a short note saying what was assumed and what remains unresolved. Handing over the uncertainties along with the figures is what saves a fortnight later.
What belongs to another professional
An audit needs an independent auditor. A return needs the person who puts a signature on it. Company law questions, disputes, business valuations and insolvency need advisers licensed and insured for exactly that work. A bookkeeping office that pretended otherwise would be the most expensive kind of cheap.
Nothing written here is legal, tax planning or investment advice, and a reconciled set of books is not a substitute for any of them. It is the thing those professionals need before they can start, which is a smaller claim and a more useful one.
How the work is agreed
The scope goes in writing before the first month is touched: which accounts, which payroll, which closing date, and what has to reach the office by when. Catch-up work on books that fell behind is scoped as its own piece rather than folded into the monthly rhythm, so a backlog stays visible instead of quietly becoming the routine.
Nothing is billed that was not agreed in advance. If what the business can carry this quarter is the constraint, say so in the first message: there is usually a version of the scope that fits, and it is easier to build at the start than to rescue at the end.
The monthly rhythm
Documents reach the office by an agreed date, the month is entered and reconciled, the close is signed on the fixed date, and the summary comes back to you with anything still queried listed at the top rather than buried. Payroll sits earlier in that sequence than everything else, because its dates belong to somebody else.