r/AskAccounting

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Public accountants and Law firms issue sensitive, high-stakes documents to their clients, that then get passed on to other users such as lenders. Does it concern you, as a CPA for example, that someone (client or a third party) can use basic pdf editing software to change some numbers on the statements and use them for lending purposes? A lot of mortgage fraud happens on fraudulent documents. You would probably avoid any liability, but it can cause reputational damage and unnecessary headache. Would you pay for a solution that helps prevent this tampering?

- A full weekend with zero guilt
- Opening Netflix without that voice in your head
- Sleeping in on a Saturday like a normal human
- Telling people you're a CPA and meaning it

lol, thought I'd let yall either celebrate seeing this or it will push you to experience it!

I need advice on what to study for finance and accounting since I’m wanting to double major them ( if you think I should do something different please recommend me anything ). I want to study the basics of each one just to be a little ahead and get a taste or hint on what I should be expecting and learning.

I’m wanting to do CPA and CMA, it’ll be hard but I feel like I can achieve both, I am also looking into going for my master’s doing all six years. If I should do otherwise please inform me for anything.

Hello Accountant Redditors,

I hope all is well. My fiance and I have been going back and forth on how we should handle making official our marriage - we see marriage as a choice and the need for documentation with the government almost seems unnecessary (fully aware this is an opinion but not the topic of debate for this post so I respectfully ask we don’t dig into this part unless helpful to the main question). Long story short, we have rings and did the whole proposal thing and are living together and all that you would expect from a married couple. We just didn’t officially sign for the government piece - mainly due to these rumors we hear from our work colleagues about a marriage penalty tax. I wanted to ask about this because I do want to officially get married now but just not sure what to expect or what our options might be and if the feedback we’ve heard was even true.

For context, we earn a decent combined income - hers around 185k annually (hospital worker; eligible for overtime) and myself around 240k (salary all in), employed in NYC. We heard that from coworkers that if we get married officially we’ll have to pay a ton in marriage penalty taxes but some sources say the amount would be insignificant.

Ultimately, my question is what should we expect? I would want to avoid being surprised come next April and so we can start saving now for it but is it really that tolling? Some folks have mentioned it could be tens of thousands of dollars. Like 40k. That seems steep and unheard of but maybe it’s like one of those things that just don’t get talked about in society (like money. People don’t talk about it really).

Any thoughts or help/ advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you!

Hi,

I work as a Data Scientist at a top-tier fintech product company( google like) and am currently part of the AI team.

I’m looking to use my skills to help accounting businesses automate repetitive/manual processes. I don’t have an accounting background, so I’m not going to pretend I do—but I’m happy to understand your workflows and explore where AI/automation can help.

I’m starting with lower pricing as I’m primarily looking to learn and build experience. I can’t offer it completely free since I’ll be investing my time outside of my full-time job.

If you’re in accounting and have a process you think could be automated, feel free to DM me. We can discuss the requirement and pricing based on the scope.

Helping a friend get her first LLC off the ground. Went to set her up with books. Both Wave and Puzzle quietly killed their free tiers. So the free beginner option just… doesn’t exist anymore.
She doesn’t need real accounting software yet. She needs something a non accountant founder can use to track money in and out without turning it into a mess someone else has to fix later.
What are solo founders actually doing here? Spreadsheet? Something scrappy? Just biting the bullet and paying for Xero early?

Hi All, I have been reselling clothes on Vinted as a source of secondary income alongside my full time job since February 2025. I submitted my tax return for the 2024 / 2025 FY myself with approx. 2k turnover. This has grown since then, and for the 2025 / 2026 FY, I have done approx. 85k turnover. (Keeping below the 90k VAT threshold).

I am registered as a Vinted Pro member, and keep comprehensive records of all items purchased and sold. I’m wondering if it’s best to hire an accountant to help submit / file my tax return for me, with the information I can provide. However I am unsure on the necessity for doing so, and may struggle to find one to help correctly. (I have been ignored by an accountant already).

Would people recommend hiring an accountant for this, and if so, what things should I look for and ask them to do for me? Thanks for any advice in advance.

I've spent years building construction software, but always on the project side (budgets, estimates). The compliance and AP side is more unknown to me, and the more I ask around the more it seems like everyone has their own duct-taped solution for it.

Trying to understand how this actually works day to day. Not selling anything, not linking anything, I just want to know how people handle it.

If you deal with this:

* Where do you track waivers today? Spreadsheet, software (which one?), folder?
* Do you actually hold a payment until the waiver is in, or does it go out and you chase after?
* How do you find out something's missing ?
* Same question for COIs and certified payroll if you do public work.
* What's the one part of this you'd hand off tomorrow if you could?
* How do you issue payments? Through QB, or paper check, or something else?

One-line answers are totally fine. DM me if you're willing to jump on a 15 min call.

Running a Saas startup and our stripe reconcillation is a disaster. Refunds, upgrade/downgrade proration, chargebacks , deffered revenue. our current bookkeeper just lumps it all together and calls it a day, which is going to bite us come audit time. I need done-for-you bookkeeping that handles payment platform complexity, not someone who treats Stripe payouts like a simple bank feed. What I really want (and can't seem to find easily) is a service with some kind of in-app visibility into what changed and why, locked periods, maybe approval gates before anything gets posted. Basically transparent controls, not just a PDF dropped in my inbox on the 20th of the month. Monthly deliverables by the 10th would honestly be a relief. If you've found a startup-focused bookkeeping service that does real reconciliation and gives you actual observability into the books, drop a rec below.

Hi All. Best accounting software for someone who has NO accounting experience (me) and hates numbers (also me.) Also how do you set up your business bank account? I made buckets for Owner Pay, Taxes, Operating Costs, Buffer, and Quarterly Owner Draw. What do you guys do (in your real life experience, not hypotheticals please!)

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?

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 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?

I run the operations for a 90 person company and a big chunk of the travel I book is for people who aren't on our payroll. Candidates flying in for on sites, a couple of board members, contractors we bring in for installs, the odd spouse when its a visit.

None of them have a login for our booking tool and I'm not setting one up for someone who flies once, so it goes on my personal card and I expense it back, which means half the trips sit in the booking tool and the other half sit as a lump on my expense report, and finance ends up pinging me to work out who each one was for. I'm not doing anything dodgy but nobody except me could really tell either way, which cant be great for them

Finance asked me last week what we spent flying candidates in for Q2 to see if my number matched their total, and I had to go through my own card statements line by line to work it out. Anyone else booking for non employees, how do you keep it out of your own expense report

Hace un tiempo pregunté aquí sobre cómo gestorías y clientes vivís el tema de facturas y documentación, y los comentarios que recibí (gracias en especial a quien compartió su experiencia como cliente de gestoría) me ayudaron a cambiar bastante el enfoque: ahora todo entra por email como ya hacéis, con confirmación automática de recepción, y una bandeja donde se revisa y aprueba antes de que nada se dé por bueno.

Ya tengo un prototipo funcionando.

Una duda nueva que me ha surgido: muchas empresas guardan sus facturas ya organizadas en carpetas por proveedor y fecha. ¿Vosotros (o vuestra gestoría) hacéis esto? ¿Sería algo que valorarías que se guardara así automáticamente tras aprobar cada documento, o no le veis tanta importancia frente a que los datos ya estén extraídos?

Cualquier experiencia o punto de vista es bienvenido, como la otra vez.

For those who actually work with lease accounting, how do you determine the discount/interest rate in practice?

Let’s say you receive a new lease contract that needs to be recorded. How do you actually get the rate you use for the lease calculation?

Does your company already have IBRs available based on things like lease term, currency, etc.? Do you reach out to Treasury for the rate? Or does the accounting team actually determine it themselves?
I understand the theory behind the rate implicit in the lease vs. incremental borrowing rate, but I’m more curious about what the actual process looks like in practice.

I know it probably varies by company, but would love to hear how you guys actually do it.

We have been paying additional tariffs on imported goods during 2025/2026. Up until this point, those costs have been entered under its own category within Cost of Sales on the Income Statement from the monthly financials/P&L. Over the course of the last couple months, we have applied and received refunds on these tariffs due to changes in policy/court rulings and these should continue throughout this year. The first of these refunds was entered under a new category on the Balance Sheet "Customer Prepayments" but does not appear to affect the Income Statement in any way. Will the Customer Prepayments section get updated monthly as new refunds are received? And will the Income Statement/Net Income be affected at year's end?

I understand that actual Customer Prepayments are Liabilities until goods/services are rendered, but that isn't exactly the case in this instance.

My annual bonus is based on a percentage of our net income and has been negatively affected by the tariffs so am trying to understand how the refunds should positively affect my future bonus as they are refunded.

I have a full-time salaried position (100k) and also a 1099 position (50k/annual) as a mental health practitioner. I want to reduce my personal income and not sure if creating an LLC to receive 1099 payments would be an effective option. I do not ‘need’ the 1099 income for living expenses so saving that
100% is an option.

Most investors read the income statement and balance sheet, but miss critical details hidden in the 10-K about where a company actually makes its money.
This guide walks through exactly how to find and analyze geographic revenue breakdowns in SEC filings, including:
• Which sections to check
• How to interpret country and region exposure
• Why geographic concentration risk matters
• Common pitfalls to avoid
Full step-by-step breakdown here:
https://metricshour.com/blog/how-to-read-a-10-k-filing-for-geographic-revenue-data-2/
Have you ever dug into the geographic revenue notes in a 10-K? Worth the effort?

I’m researching how asset managers, wealth managers and family offices reconcile positions, cash and transactions across banks, brokers, custodians and internal systems.

If you have worked directly with this process:

1. How does the data arrive?
2. What creates the most manual work?
3. Which reconciliation breaks occur repeatedly?
4. How much time does reporting or month-end consume?

We’re exploring a ledger and reconciliation product with a Finnish family office. I want to understand whether other investment teams experience the same problem.

An anonymized one-line answer is welcome. Please mention your role or type of firm if possible.