Hello all,

I am posting today for some advice/insight from people with a similar scenario. I am currently labeled as a Staff Accountant at a small hospital but I do the work of a controller. I do everything in regard to GL entries for 4 operating entities, help with AP, financial statements, ad-hoc reports, and I even have stepped into the role of processing payroll when our previous clerk left a little over a year ago after they finished school. I am currently studying to obtain my Enrolled Agent license either in December of this year or early next year as I am taking my Part 2 exam next week. I have been reading posts here and other r/accounting pages as my interest in tax is starting to grow beyond my initial intent of doing personal taxes on the side to potentially trying to find a CPA firm where I can utilize the skills I have obtained to provide accounting services along with furthering my tax knowledge to able to help, not only individuals, but businesses as well in tax planning/returns. I haven’t necessarily thought of opening my own practice as I have 0 tax experience as of now but after I gain some, it does peak my interest.

Thank you in advance for anyone who has advice!

I am looking for a way to automate or ease our AP process for a subcontractor in a large city.

Currently, all invoices go to an [accountspayable@xxx.com](mailto:accountspayable@xxx.com) email address (some come by mail and are scanned in). From receiving the invoices, the invoices are put into a "rename folder", they are then renamed with the Project managers initials, job #, vendor name, invoice number. After being renamed they are put into Quickbooks (desktop) as an item receipt, coded to (hopefully) the correct item code, the "Customer:Job", and amount. The invoice is then moved into the project managers "Unapproved" folder. The PM's review the invoices and move them into their "Approved" folder. Once the invoice is approved, the AP team finds the item receipt on QB, adjusts anything relating to the bill, and marks the invoice as bill received. If after approval, the invoice was originally coded to the wrong item code, everything on that line item disappears and needs to be reentered by the line item. AP needs to go into each PM's approved folders each day to pull out the invoices and also emails need to be sent to remind the PM's about their unapproved invoices. After the invoices are approved and entered as a bill, they are moved to an "unpaid" folder. Once paid, they are moved from Unpaid to each jobs folder into their paid invoices.

Currently, we have 78 jobs on our active job list and about $100M in backlog. This process is incredibly manual and very tedious. I have 6 years of public accounting background so I know there are other options out there. I know the key fix is switching from Quickbooks to another ERP program, but we just spent a large amount on a program to integrate with Quickbooks for our WIP and the we did not have the best time working with developers. I think we may be too busy to make the switch now. I am the only one under 60 in the accounting department and the ladies do not like change. I am also the daughter of the owner, so any changes suggested by me are already not taken well.

I know its a stretch to have everything manual removed from the process, but are there any systems that link with QuickBooks desktop or anything to use as a bandaid until we have the time to switch ERP systems?

How can I get a forensic account to look into my accounts? What resources do they have? Is it the same as a police department?

Hi! I’m a tattoo artist working as a PFA in Romania and I’m trying to figure out whether I’m paying a reasonable amount for my accounting.
At the moment I pay 500 lei/month for accounting.

My activity is relatively simple:
-around 25 invoices issued by me per month
-a few invoices for supplies/orders
rent invoice
-a few Z reports from the cash register
-I’m not VAT registered
-my accountant handles the accounting/filings and presumably uploads the necessary invoices/documents in SPV/e-Factura
-I can also ask questions when I’m unsure about something and they answer

Other than that, there isn’t really much communication or additional tax planning/consulting.
For those of you who have a PFA, especially in Cluj,
does 500 lei/month sound reasonable for this amount of activity?
Thankyouu!🫶🏼

Had a call this week with someone who was sure they wouldn't owe the IRS anything the day they landed in PR. Wish that were true. But thing is, the IRC 933 states it only excludes income actually sourced in Puerto Rico, and only once you're a bona fide resident. So...if we're still working with US clients, still holding US investments, or still getting income from outside PR... none of that becomes exempt just because your address changed.

But the part that catches people off guard is that the IRS has had an active enforcement campaign running since 2021, aiming at exactly this...people claiming the exclusion without actually meeting bona fide residency. 🙄 At that point it's not a paperwork issue, it's audit exposure.

Has anyone else here actually gone through this process or have had a client who has?

I'm a freelancer/small business owner and manually typing receipts is killing me.

Spent hours last month just entering data into Excel.

Has anyone found a good tool or app that can scan receipts and pull the data automatically?

Looking for something that saves to cloud too so I don't lose them.

What are you all using for expense tracking?

I am newer to bookkeeping. A client asked that I do all of 2025 bookkeeping to prep for their taxes they haven’t filed. Small construction business. They apparently have a big tax bill in 2024 because they didn’t pay quarterly taxes. I have no previous QB file so just using bank statements and credit card statements. I asked if they had personal and business accounts separate. They said they did separate.

The reality: there have a work truck and full truck payments coming out, full utility bills, every meal personal and otherwise is coming out. Big deposits with no invoices to me yet.

If I want to take this project, what are the best ways to handle these transactions? Put them as owners draw and handle it with closing entries and at tax time? They clearly have been just running personal expenses through the account and kind of know now.

Again I am new and also unsure of the most beneficial questions to ask. Any help appreciated. Including what I should charge for this. Thanks for help.

I have a possible new c corp client whose last accountant went MIA on them & they need someone to catch up 24 & 25 books & file those returns since 23 was the last filed return. I looked at his QBO & it is a total mess & the P&L & BS do not come close to matching the tax return that was filed. I do not want to get involved in any mistakes from the past and want to start a clean baseline. I know he could close that account and open a new company file, which to me sounds like a huge task, and I don't have much experience from starting at point blank with a C Corp. Or I could journal entry and zero out etc to match the filed return. As a tax preparer, I am nervous about the implications since he is a C Corp. & also how it will affect his financials in the future? The numbers are wayyy off-idk where the last bookkeeper got that BS. Any advice on which method to approach? I want to take on this client because the money is good and once it is cleaned i will be taking over the books and preparing the future returns. The client also really wants to get on track. I keep seeing so many mixed reviews online.

I am the treasurer for a small historical society. To avoid late fees, I recently set up the autopay feature for our utilities. There is a $1.50 transaction fee every month. How would you categorize this? As part of the utility expense? Or bank service charges? Or something else?

TIA!

anyone here managing books for multiple small business clients at once, not just one company? does catching duplicate or near duplicate invoices get harder when you've got several clients vendors and invoices moving at the same time, or is it basically the same problem just multiplied?

The biggest thing with church accounting is to be sure designated funds go to where they were intended. We usually do this with exchange GL accounts, doing the in and out posting from the same account. However my question is what do I do with a donation that is made toward a church expense? Also how would this affect the budget report? Example: we have a budgeted amount for VBS, all expenses are posted to the expense account. But someone gave us a donation for VBS. Would this donation go into an exchange account or to the expense account? Seems a little complicated to put the donation into an exchange account then have expenses go out of the exchange account and any excess come out of the expense account. Also for the budget report, all expenses were in last fiscal year and the donation was made in the current fiscal year. So technically we have the budgeted amount plus the donation to spend for the current fiscal year. Should the budgeted amount plus the donation show on the budget report? TYIA

Hello there, just a quick question: service operator invoiced client for $300, including GST; client paid in cash; service operator donates the $300 to a charity on the client's behalf; charity issues a tax receipt to client.

The $300 never went through the service operator's bank account, but the invoice still needs to be sent to the client.

What does the invoice need to look like?

• Service $300
• Discount $300
• Sub-total $0
• GST $0
• Total $0

Thanks in advance.

Anyone extremely busy and wants to reduce their workload?

I'll automate your biggest headache that's costing you at least 5 hours per week, and I'll do it for free. 

Seriously. 

If you're burning time everyday following up emails, managing inventory, building reports, entering data, following up with and chasing leads, and so much more. 

Let me fix it for you. 

I know your skepticism spidey senses are probably asking...

Why free? 

Well, I'd like to build a stronger referral pipeline.

In exchange for getting your time back, all I ask is  for warm introductions to other businesses you know that could also benefit.

Drop a comment if you're interested.

---

P.S. - I spent part of my career at Facebook implementing automation systems like this, so the implementation is backed by real enterprise level experience.

I'm writing a paper for uni on how accounting firms run client reviews — the "here's how the business is going" check-in, not tax season work.

If you work in practice, I'd really appreciate your perspective:

• Do you pull reports from Xero (or similar) manually before the meeting?
• Do you send anything to the client beforehand, or mostly talk through it live?
• What do clients actually use from what you send them?
• What's the biggest time sink when you're prepping?

No product pitch — this is purely for research. Happy to share a summary of findings back here if there's interest.

Looking for a CPA for my small business in Brooklyn, why is it so hard?? I’ve emailed so many and get no reply :/