Most owners do their own books at the start, and that is usually the right call. Early on there are a handful of transactions a month, one bank account and nothing at stake if a category is wrong. The question is not whether a bookkeeper is worth having in general. It is whether your business has reached the point where doing it yourself costs more than it saves.
This is how to tell, what a bookkeeper should actually hand you each month, and what to ask before you hire one, including us.
Signs the books have outgrown you
The clearest sign is that the books are behind and you are not sure by how much. A few others tend to arrive with it:
- You make decisions from the bank balance. If the balance is the number you check before hiring, buying stock or paying yourself, the books are not giving you anything the bank does not.
- Revenue in QuickBooks does not match what you see in Stripe, Square or Shopify. That gap usually means processor deposits are being recorded net of fees and refunds, or the same sale is being recorded twice.
- Accounts have not been reconciled in months. Categorizing transactions from the bank feed is not reconciling, and an unreconciled file can look tidy while being wrong.
- Tax season is a project. If your preparer sends questions you cannot answer without digging through statements, the books are not doing their job.
- Someone outside the business needs your numbers. A lender, an investor or a buyer will ask for financial statements, and statements built on unreconciled books do not survive the first follow-up question.
One of these on its own is a warning. Two or three together usually mean the time you spend on the books, and the decisions you make without them, now cost more than a bookkeeper would.
What a bookkeeper is, and is not
A bookkeeper keeps the record of what happened: every transaction categorized, every account reconciled, every month closed, and statements produced that reflect the business accurately.
A bookkeeper is not your tax preparer. Preparing and filing returns and giving tax advice belong to a CPA or an enrolled agent. A good bookkeeper makes that work faster and cheaper, because your preparer starts from books they can trust instead of rebuilding them first. Feather is a bookkeeping firm. We work alongside your CPA rather than replacing them.
What you should get every month
"We'll keep your books" is not a deliverable. This is what our monthly bookkeeping clients receive, and it is a reasonable standard to hold any bookkeeper to:
- A profit and loss statement and a balance sheet for the month, from a file that has actually been closed.
- A reconciliation report for every account: each bank account, credit card and payment processor matched to its statement, not just to the feed.
- Accounts receivable and payable summaries, so you can see who owes you and what you owe.
- A short written summary of what changed: why profit moved, what looked unusual, and anything that needs a decision from you.
- At year end, a package your CPA can work from: reconciliations through December, a log of corrections, owner activity separated and the supporting detail organized.
If what you get each month is a set of reports with no reconciliations behind them, you are paying for data entry.
Questions to ask any bookkeeper before you hire
Who will actually do the work? Some firms assign a different person every month. We assign one dedicated bookkeeper to each client, so the person reviewing your books already knows your vendors, your seasonality and what normal looks like for you.
Do you reconcile to the statement or to the feed? The answer should be the statement, for every account, every month.
How do you handle payment processor deposits? Listen for "gross sales, fees and refunds recorded separately". If the answer is that the deposit is the income, your revenue will be understated.
What does it cost, and what makes it change? Hourly billing makes every question you ask more expensive. We quote one flat monthly rate before we start, based on your transaction volume, how complex your accounts are and the state of the books, and that number holds unless the business genuinely outgrows it.
What access do you need? Bank feeds should be read-only, documents should be exchanged securely, and access to your file should be limited to the people working on it.
What software do you work in? We work mainly in QuickBooks Online, as certified QuickBooks ProAdvisors, and also in Xero and Sage. We connect the tools you already use, such as Stripe, Square, Shopify, Gusto and Bill.com, rather than asking you to change them.
What happens if the books are already behind? Monthly bookkeeping only works on a clean starting point. If the file is months or years behind, that backlog has to be reconciled first, as a separate project with its own quote.
Where to start
If the books are current and you want them kept that way, look at our monthly bookkeeping service. We work remotely nationwide; our pages for Philadelphia, San Antonio, San Diego and Dallas cover how monthly bookkeeping fits the businesses in those cities. If they are behind, start with catch-up bookkeeping, and if the QuickBooks file itself is the problem, with QuickBooks cleanup and consulting. The pricing page shows how monthly rates are set, and a short call is enough for us to tell you which of these you need.