FAQ

We’ll start with a conversation about your business, your current bookkeeping setup, and what you need help with. From there, we’ll review your books, get the necessary access and information, and create a plan for getting everything organized.

For ongoing clients, we’ll maintain your books on a consistent monthly schedule, reconcile your accounts, review transactions for accuracy, and provide clear financial reports so you know where your business stands.

Yes. Ivy Counting House is based in West Monroe, Louisiana, but bookkeeping services can be provided remotely to businesses in other locations. Most work is handled securely online, so your business does not need to be nearby to work with us.

We work primarily in QuickBooks Online. If you already use QuickBooks, we can work within your existing file and help clean up or improve the setup where needed.

If your books are currently maintained somewhere else, we can discuss whether moving to QuickBooks Online makes sense for your business.

Absolutely. Falling behind happens, especially when bookkeeping is competing with everything else involved in running a business.

We offer clean-up and catch-up bookkeeping to bring prior periods up to date, reconcile accounts, correct inconsistencies, and establish a clean starting point for ongoing bookkeeping. The scope depends on how far behind the books are and their current condition, so we’ll review what you have before recommending the best path forward.

Ongoing bookkeeping is priced at a flat monthly rate based on the needs and complexity of your business. Factors such as transaction volume, number of accounts, and the amount of monthly bookkeeping required all affect pricing.

Most monthly engagements fall between $600 and $1,500 a month. A simple business with one bank account and a hundred or so transactions sits at the low end. Several accounts, high transaction volume, loans, multiple locations, or more than one owner sit at the high end, and unusually complex books can run higher.

Clean-up, catch-up, and other one-time projects are scoped separately after we review the work involved. You’ll know the price and scope before work begins.

Ivy Counting House provides bookkeeping services, not income tax preparation or filing.

Our goal is to keep your books accurate, organized, and ready for your CPA or tax preparer. When tax time arrives, you’ll have clean financial records to provide to them, and we can work alongside your tax professional when bookkeeping questions come up.

We oversee it; we do not run it. Payroll stays with your payroll service, whichever one you use, and you approve each run, because only you can vouch for the hours.

Around it, we do the rest. When someone is hired, we help get the required paperwork to the payroll provider. Every payroll that hits the bank is recorded as what it actually is: wages, taxes, and fees. The liabilities are reconciled, and we confirm the filings were made. If you need a payroll service set up, we can help with that too. We do not give HR advice.

No. Sales and use tax is calculated and filed by your CPA or a sales tax preparer, not by us. Louisiana parish rules and out-of-state jobs make it specialist work. What we do is keep the books current so the figures they need are ready every month, and record the payments once they are made.

No. Most of our clients invoice and track what they are owed in their own software, such as FreshBooks, Jobber, or Housecall Pro, or in a spreadsheet, and prefer to keep it that way. We record the money when it arrives and reconcile it to the bank. We do not send invoices or follow up on past-due balances.

A bookkeeper keeps the books current every month: transactions categorized, accounts reconciled, and a profit and loss statement and balance sheet you can act on. A CPA prepares your tax return and advises on tax and structure, usually once a year. Both are needed, and they work best when the bookkeeper hands the CPA a finished file.

If you are unsure which you need, ask when you last saw a profit and loss statement. If the answer is at tax time, you need a bookkeeper first.

We keep the books. Your CPA gets a reconciled, closed file in January and prepares the return from it. Bookkeeping questions come to us, tax questions go to them, and we are glad to talk with each other directly. If you do not have a CPA, we can suggest one.

Because they are rarely for the same thing. A low monthly figure is often for books brought up to date quarterly or at year end, for the tax return, by whoever is available. Ours is for books closed every month, with reconciled accounts and reports you can read, by the same person every time.

Ask any quote three questions: when will I see a profit and loss statement, who reconciles the accounts and how often, and has anyone looked at my books before naming the number.