Most owners hire their first bookkeeper without a clear picture of the job. Then expectations mismatch: you thought taxes were included, they thought you were sending the receipts. Here is the actual scope, in plain terms.
The core monthly work
Categorizing every transaction from your bank and card feeds into a chart of accounts. Reconciling each account against its statement so the ledger matches reality. Recording what feeds miss — checks, transfers, loan payments split into principal and interest. Then closing the month: producing a Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet you can actually rely on.
The deliverable that matters is the close. If months end without reconciled reports arriving on a predictable date, you have data entry, not bookkeeping.
What a bookkeeper usually does NOT do
Tax strategy and filing belong to your CPA or enrolled agent — a bookkeeper prepares the clean records the CPA files from. Audits and reviews are CPA territory. Financial forecasting and pricing strategy sit closer to a fractional CFO. Payroll is sometimes bundled, often not — ask explicitly.
The handoff works like this: bookkeeper closes the year, hands a CPA-ready package over, CPA files. When one person claims to do all of it for one small fee, ask which part gets skipped.
What to expect from a modern service
Concretely: every account reconciled monthly, transactions categorized under consistent rules, a close delivered on a stated date, and 1099 prep at year-end. That is exactly the scope of our $199/month flat service — reports in your inbox by day 2 of each month, no contracts, and an instant quote from the homepage form if you want a number for your own volume.