How a Bookkeeper Makes Tax Season Easier

The tax deadline is looming. How are you feeling? Stressed? Frustrated? Frantically trying to get your paperwork together so you can figure out how much you owe?

I see you. And I get it — taxes are no fun, and it’s tempting to wait until the last minute. But procrastination hits hard when you’re trying to catch up on a whole year’s worth of paperwork in a couple of weeks. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. If you keep your books updated all year long, tax time is so much better. It might not be fun, but it is manageable. Plus, bookkeeping makes the rest of the year easier too, because you always know where your business finances stand. 

So let’s take a look at what a bookkeeper can do for you during tax season — and year-round.

Bookkeeper vs. CPA: They’re not the same!

Why do you need a bookkeeper if you’re hiring a CPA to do your taxes? Because bookkeepers and CPAs aren’t the same!

• CPA: Prepares and files your taxes and can help with tax strategy to make sure you’re not paying more than necessary.
• Bookkeeper: Manages and tracks your business’s financial transactions and creates the report used to calculate your taxes.

Bookkeepers and CPAs have very different jobs and skill sets. So even if you hire a CPA to file your taxes, you still need a bookkeeper if you want to know exactly what’s going on with the money in your business all year long.

Can you just hire a bookkeeper for your taxes?

Sure, having a bookkeeper organize your books once a year is better than nothing, but it’s not really enough. If you want to know everything that’s happening in your business, you need to keep your books updated year-round. That means monthly bookkeeping!

Trying to get through a whole year of bookkeeping in a few weeks so you can file your taxes isn’t fun — and it sets the stage for errors. But when your books are up-to-date, all you’ve got to do is pull a P&L, general ledger, and balance sheet, and send those off to your CPA.

Plus, there are plenty of other benefits of monthly bookkeeping:

• It’s easier to identify deductible business expenses.
• It keeps your business and personal transactions separate.
• It makes your quarterly estimated tax payments more accurate because you’re calculating them with recent data.
• It’s easier for your CPA to find legitimate tax-saving strategies — which doesn’t mean just spending extra money in December “for the write-off.”
• It gives you the information you need to decide when to make changes in your business (like switching from an LLC to an S Corp.)
• It helps you decide when you can afford to hire a new team member — so you can spend more time on income-generating activities.
• It shows you when you’re ready to make a big purchase or take time away from your business.

Monthly bookkeeping gives you all the information you need to make the best decisions for your business.

Get year-round benefits with a bookkeeper

Business finances are complicated, especially when it’s tax time. But when you have a bookkeeper on your side, things get so much easier. You won’t be scrambling to get your paperwork together for your CPA every April. And even better, you’ll know exactly what’s going on with your business finances all the time, so you can make the right decisions for your business.

And the best part of hiring a bookkeeper? You don’t have to spend your time digging through receipts and learning accounting software. You can focus all your energy on growing your business and leave the bookkeeping to someone else.

My team of bookkeepers and I would love to help you get — and keep — your books up to date! If you want all the benefits of monthly bookkeeping without having to do it yourself, let me know!

Here’s what you get when you work with me:

• Transaction management and categorization (we’ll take the tedious stuff OFF your plate!) by the 15th of every month
• A financial summary delivered each month, so you know where your money came from and went!
• Quarterly custom Loom videos to dive deeper into your financial reports, so we can make sure you feel completely confident in knowing your numbers.
• Access to our entire library of digital products!
• Quarterly visual reports, complete with pie charts, bar graphs, and high-level helpful info about your monthly bookkeeping. This makes it easy to see your numbers in a way that works for your brain — and that isn’t a total snooze.
• Voxer access to me, where you can ask clarifying questions about expenses, get help with your reports, and more!

Interested in that kind of support for YOUR creative online business?

---