u/Oldladyphilosopher

Can I just rant for a sec? I am getting so annoyed when clients think their books should work on their logic instead of accounting logic. An example (the current one that sent me here to rant) is a client who invoices and gets check for some sales, cash and sales receipt for some, and square for some. Not that weird, right? When they do their invoicing and sales receipts, they have sales tax going into different accounts…..one goes into the expense account, the other into their liability account, and square gets handled through square so I’m not even sure where that ends up. They have been doing this for years. A few years ago, they had a bookkeeper who made “monthly sales invoices” to sort out transferring clearing accounts for sales deposits. Near as I can tell, they sorted all bank transaction sales deposits through a square clearing account, as bank (invoiced sales) clearing account and a cash clearing account, capturing merchant fees as a negative on the invoice. Prior to that, they had square integrated into QuickBooks and just let it run without looking or reconciliation any of it. It looked to me like they used the “cash clearing account” (the previous bookkeeper using the invoice system) to make everything reconcile….you know what I mean…..if square is this and invoices are that, the rest must be cash……and look, it all reconciles so must be right.

Just, no. I do a monthly journal entry for square to capture fees and transfer sales to the income account, invoices and sales receipts go through the standard QuickBooks process of matching bank deposits as invoice payment when appropriate. It’s not that fucking complicated. But the clients keep talking at me because they don’t do accounting, and things like general journal entries and liability accounts confuse and frighten them. They are sure, “Well it’s logical that things should work this way” would be logical if all you are doing is reconciling your personal checking account….but you aren’t, and you don’t understand double entry bookkeeping or that every transaction you do touches 2 accounts and by account, I don’t mean bank account.

Thankfully, they are selling the business, so I just need to get through another month or so. But it gets on my nerves when clients don’t/wont understand accounting and want to argue with me.

Thanks.

Trying to find a nice way to fire a client because it’s a small town. I’ll figure it out, but thought venting here might help destress me a little.

Yard care company with 3 to five employees. Bank account constantly drops down to $100 or so, bounced 2 state payroll tax payments, still has to pay fed payroll taxes but doesn’t have enough $ in the account. Wrote a payroll check to an employee for less than what the stub says (by like $150) that says “Payroll” in the memo and then claims he has no idea what I’m talking about even though I sent the stub and a copy of the check to him. Makes over $100K in profit a year, so the money is there if he would stop with the personal draws. We worked out a trade deal so he does my yard every 2 weeks, but they leave huge weeds in the landscape and does a shitty job.

My client base is all small businesses of this size, pretty much all trade businesses like this. I love helping people who may be good with their hands, but need my skills to keep their business books and payroll compliant and in order as they don’t have those skills or abilities themselves. It makes me feel good to help a mechanic or whatever have clear, clean financials so they can be successful and focus on what they do well. But this yahoo is driving me nuts because he just won’t listen or follow through.

Vent over, thanks for reading.