r/Bookkeeping

I started my own bookkeeping business about 5 years ago and I have only raised my rates maybe once since then. I know that I am egregiously undercharging my clients and I have struggled a lot with imposter syndrome so putting a price on my "worth" is hard.

I would like to raise my rates to keep up with rising cost of living (and I am going back to school for a master's in accounting) but I am not sure how much I should raise it by, when I should implement it, and how I should notify my clients.

I have several clients I charge $100 a month (I know this is so cheap) but if I raise them to $200 I worry they will complain about my rate doubling. So do I raise them slowly over time, and by how much? Do I wait until the new year to raise my rates or do it ASAP?

Reading this sub has convinced me that I need to charge more but I just don't know how to do it with confidence. To just put it in an email that is NOTIFYING them and not ASKING them if it's acceptable for them. My clients can afford to pay me more, but I had one experience where a client pushed back when I tried to bring up raising my rate and it's made me scared to revisit it.

I’m looking for advice on handling trucking settlements in Wave.

My client gets settlements with gross – deductions = net, and only the net hits the bank feed. I create a journal entry that debits the deductions and the net, and credits the gross so the full settlement shows correctly.

The issue is: on the Profit & Loss for that day, Wave shows both the gross from the JE and the net from the imported deposit as uncategorized income — basically counting the net twice.

Wave doesn’t have a feature to tell the system that the imported deposit is the same money referenced in the JE. The “match” option only works for reconciliation, not for reporting. I even spoke with a Wave agent, but they confirmed there’s no built‑in way to link the two for P&L purposes.

Has anyone found a clean workflow in Wave to avoid double-counting the net when using a journal entry for trucking settlements? The net on Wave should be 6515.18 (ignore parking expense). My goal is to understand how to do this so I can apply that template for the other 100s of settlements. Thank You in advance!!

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I came from hotel accounting, which sparked my interest in finance in general and so I got my bookkeeping license back in 2021, I didn’t keep it up, but I did keep up my education on bookkeeping in general and did a semester at the local college not that long ago just to keep my confidence up and to get a really good understanding of inventory accounting. I am CTEC certified, I am not an enrolled agent but have 6 years experience filing personal and business tax returns. I’m familiar with running payroll through QuickBooks and other software and have plenty of experience in hotel finance doing reconciliations, beverage and cash audits, watching certain GL’s etc.. so I haven’t really had a situation where I felt like I wasn’t qualified to do the work but with that said, as a bookkeeper, when should I be recommending a CPA should be handling someone’s books? I guess I’m curious as to what are some things related to my particular field where a CPA is better suited?

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.

Hey everyone!

Ive started working for a company that manages renovations. He uses contractors and a couple of labourers to manage his projects.
I’ve run into something that I did not learn through my courses and Im hoping for some guidance. We use Sage 50 for our software, Im located I’m BC Canada, and we use the accrual method.

1. When I get an invoice for materials, are these categorized as prepaid to be adjusted once the project is finished? Is there any situation where the materials are not prepaid?

2. I have invoices for contractors that require deposits and draws for their work, I’ve been posting just the deposit amounts and not the whole invoice thinking it might be easier and more accurate for gst reporting. I am now questioning if this correct according to GAAP.

If you have any other tips or suggestions for bookkeeping for a renovation company I’m all ears.

Thanks in advance for any information!

I know I need to release this client and I will soon but I need to get this off my chest.

S-Corp owned by the mother who took over from her late husband. Initially passed on to the two sons who refused to cooperate as owners and the mother had to take over but not before giving them millions of dollars each from the company which the last bookkeeper was instructed to hide on the BS. He quit soon after with two weeks notice.

A year and a half passed and they realized they needed a new bookkeeper cause the mother is disorganized and cannot focus on the task of finances having been taken care of all her life.

I come on and clean up a half a year mess for them. Their CPA had threatened to quit multiple times and his bookkeeper does not know how to use quickbooks so between the two of them it’s been fun. Basically the owner lends personal funds to the business also takes a lot out for personal uses and the CPA keeps it all in a liability account, not equity, if someone can explain why it would help me a lot.

The sons verbally abuse and the harass the mother for cash which she gives them. They are both on payroll as well as their wives and do not live in the US and they use this company’s funds to operate their own businesses and the four of them barely contribute any labor to this business. The CPA keeps all the cash disbursements in an asset account I assume as a “loan” to them that will be repaid… yeah right.

They have over a dozen bank and cc cards on the books and they all get used for personal expenses. I finally got one son to give me an expense report and receipts for six months of expenses and it was things like first class travel and fine dining and the rent for his apartment overseas and oh yeah his car payment.

They refuse to separate personal and business and don’t understand the basic laws despite the fact that I’ve explained the difference endlessly through our engagement and one son went to business school. And did I mention he is a substance abuser who promises to make this company rich he just needs more cash to get the riches he keeps promising us.

So now because of the cash bleeding from this company every month we have no money with which to operate and are quite close to closing anyway so my engagement may take care of itself.

I did take out a liability insurance policy I’m just scared this might come back to bite me in the ass. It’s been a little over a year and I know I need to GTFO. My nerves are shot dealing with all the daily drama and also thinking of the other hardworking staff on payroll who really need their jobs.

I’m so tired and anxious from this drama every day and I just need to be reassured that I won’t be f-ed for sticking around for a year, I need the income and my chosen niche is hard to find bookkeeping jobs in also our market has been in recession for two years.

Thanks for reading and sorry for the rant.

I’m doing bookkeeping for a trucking client who owns their truck but is leased onto a carrier, and they’ve never kept books before. I’m looking for advice from anyone familiar with trucking settlement statements.

Their weekly settlements always follow the same pattern:

Gross pay – deductions = net check

The net amount is the only thing that actually hits their checking account, so that’s the only transaction Wave sees.

My question is:
What’s the cleanest way to get the gross income and all deductions into the books when the only real bank transaction is the net?

Should I be using a journal entry to add the gross and deductions?
If so, how would you structure that JE so everything ties out correctly and the net stays accurate?

Any guidance or examples from people who handle trucking clients would help a lot.

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Update: The deposit shows up as uncategorized. The match wave option only works to reconcile. Reports still look like double income.

I’m at the stage where I’m trying to land my first paying client, and honestly, I’m realizing that getting the first one is probably harder mentally than technically.

I have been a bookkeeper for a few years now but never working on my own, and I’m ready to start.

For those of you who have already landed your first client:
What finally worked for you?
Was it cold outreach, referrals, networking, freelancing platforms, posting content, friends/family, or something completely unexpected?
And if you could go back to when you had zero clients, what would you do differently?

Hey all! Bookkeeper here, usually for for-profit clients. I walked into a business membership exchange to become a member and (hopefully) tap their large membership base for more clients. Well, turns out they were desperate for a new bookkeeper themselves and I decided to take them on as a client.

Things are unsurprisingly messy but I can handle it. My biggest obstacles are that credit memos were used incorrectly to track scholarships (for trades school) which masks true Receivables, and the Chart of Accounts is severely bloated.

I use job costing/cost accounting with my other clients, leveraging products/services in order to keep a lean chart of accounts. Is there a way to streamline this nonprofit’s chart of accounts by leveraging products/services and classes for expenses and funds? Yes they have both restricted and unrestricted funds that are managed. The client is in QBO for accounting software.

Appreciate any insight!

Been putting clients on an expense app for about two years now, most of them small shops, and it's been fine. One thing bit me twice this year so I'm writing it down for whoever comes next.

If the client goes into QBO and adds a new expense account, say they split Meals into Meals and Client Entertainment, the expense side doesn't know about it until someone syncs the connection and updates the category mapping. You don't find out until you're exporting at month end and half the report won't go.

Now I re-sync first thing every month before I touch anything. Curious whether other people just tell clients not to add accounts without asking first.

Edit to say thank you so very much for all the detailed and thought-through answers. It was extremely helpful.

Boy, I can’t wait for all the comments about how i have no business doing bookkeeping if I don’t know this, from all the perfect bookkeepers out there, but here I ask anyway. Hoping one or two will answer with something helpful.

Reconciling bank accounts is easy, I have a statement to reconcile against. But what do you reconcile other BS accounts against?
How do you reconcile assets or liabilities?
Why do you need to reconcile those?
Does it make a difference if you are Cash vs Accrual?
What do you use for a reference document?
And how do you technically do it in the system, just change each line to R? There is no reconciliation workflow that I have found.

I really want to master this, and I appreciate all good tips. I use QBO and Xero, and I looked through their training programs but didn’t spot anything helpful.

I took on a client last year who was associated with another client. She made it seem like the work would take an hour so I quoted $100 and she asked for $75. Next thing I know she gives me two QuickBooks accounts for her and her husband and then after a few months they start adding multiple businesses to each account and have me run payroll on a different platform. Then, the husband will call me randomly. so, basically I’m doing bookkeeping for two companies plus payroll for $75 per month total.

Working now!! 14:14 cst

I’ve tried four different client’s EFTPS login and I’ve not been successful.

Any info??

For those of you who retained an attorney to write a template T & C for your service contracts, how much did you pay and do you think it was money well spent?

I've been an accountant for 15 years, all of which have been at a $10m company with solid processes and clean books. This is my first real bookkeeping client (first stranger that is, I've done books for small businesses of friends and family) and my first time actually running a cleanup engagement rather than working with clean data from the start.

The client is bigger than what I'd normally start with as a first client, so I know I'm stepping into some unfamiliar territory here, but I'm confident in the technical accounting knowledge. What I don't have yet is a feel for the standard workflow of a cleanup specifically (not a catch-up since the transactions are already entered so just a cleanup).

The QBO file for 2025 is rough. Only the bank and credit cards have ever been reconciled, nothing else on the balance sheet. Just from a high level scan I can already see problems, for example a cash account (some sort of petty cash account) with a large negative balance. Another example is a large balance sitting in undeposited funds that's way more than what should realistically be in there. I know you might be wondering how the bank can reconcile with a large undeposited funds account, which is explained by duplicate payment entries, one via the bank feed and another one via the integration with the external AR software.

My question is: For those of you who do cleanups regularly, what's your actual process? Are you going transaction by transaction through the whole year, or do you focus on just correcting the issues on the balance sheet? I originally scoped the project as a full review of every single transaction (approximately 10,000 for the year) however the price came in very high and he is asking if there's anything I can do to reduce the scope of the cleanup so that its not a full review and more of a cleanup of just the balance sheet. Not sure how I feel about that as I'm a detail oriented person and so I'd prefer to review every transaction however I also understand that might be overkill (maybe, maybe not, your advice will be helpful here).

Just looking for any advice from the veterans out there. Thanks

I am a bookkeeper and I have a new client, a used bookstore, that is also a new business. They accept buy-backs/trade-ins for store credit, and I'm trying to wrap my head around how the accounting works for this, and how best to set it up in her POS (Square). It looks like she is issuing gift cards, but that does not seem quite right to me. (I just emailed the client to ask about her buy-back workflow.) Can someone walk me through how to set this up in QBO and how it should be treated in a POS?

Canadian non profit runs a lottery that can go on for months. I am getting conflicting direction on how to book it. Since the Lottery commission controls how and when money is spent, I believe it should be on the balance sheet until such time as it is won and/or commission tells us we can spend our portion. One accountant agrees but another accountant says income should be recorded as it happens. There are ongoing expenses and have thought about recording income to offset the expenses.

Looking for thoughts on how to handle

This is just a beginner tip I want to share. It’s good to have a system from the start, before growing and your business becomes more difficult to manage.

Have all your clients upload all documents to one destination you both have access to. Like a Google drive folder.

Have a folder for each client. In it have a folder for each category(Sales, Suppliers, Bank/Credit Statements, CRA/IRS Documents, Payroll, etc).

Inside each of these folders have a folder for each month.

Do not have multiple channels for requesting documents(email, WhatsApp, text). Have them all in one place.

You can sort transactions and expenses in quickbooks by the ones that don’t have an attachment. This is a nice way to get somewhat of a report every week or so for transactions or expenses that don’t have a supporting document and send it to the client as a reminder.

Remember, your job is to balance and categorize the books. Not to chase clients all the time to keep them compliant. That is their responsibility first.

Hope this helps.

I’m a bookkeeper and I’ve been working remotely and closely with a CPA for a small firm for a two months now. When I was hired, I was told they’d train me on tax work which I’m genuinely very interested in and excited to learn. They also said they liked my organizational skills.

The organization itself is fairly disorganized, the training that was promised hasn’t materialised and even basic work assignment has been inconsistent I I regularly have to reach out and ask for work rather than it being assigned to me. I even asked if they could assign me a two weeks worth of tasks upfront so I could plan and follow up accordingly but that hasn’t happened either.

My probation period ends mid-September and I’m torn on what to do. Part of me wants to bring this up directly before probation ends, since none of this reflects the setup I was told about when I joined. But I also don’t want to come across as complaining right before a decision is made about me.

I’ve paused my job search since taking this role but given how things have gone, I’m wondering if I should quietly start looking again just in case.

What do I do now? Should I talk to them again?

I am a starting bookkeeper and try to think up various scenarios that I want to know how to handle. All the training materials and videos assume that the bank statement uses a calendar month cycle (July 1 to July 31 for example). But what if the bank statement uses a non-calendar month cycle, say, July 10 to August 9? If you do bank reconciliation for July in QBO, would you split the bank statement transactions into July 10 - July 31 and August 1 to August 9? Also you need to find the bank statement transactions from July 1 to July 9 from the previous month's bank statement. I feel like this would be overcomplicating things. How would you handle it? Would you avoid splitting bank statement transactions and just enter August 9 as the ending date for July bank reconciliation?