Updated 7/24/26
When you’re looking for an accounting service, you’ll find that different solutions offer different levels of service.
While CSI Accounting & Payroll claims to be the small business owner’s one-stop shop, we also know that we can’t do it all. After 60 years of service to small business owners, we’ve worked out what we aren’t reasonably able to provide while maximizing efficiency and minimizing fees.
In this article, we’ll break down some of the things that prospective clients would like us to provide that we don't provide, including:
- Bill pay.
- Invoicing.
- Job costing.
- Inventory management.
- Some one-off items.
Bill Pay
Bill pay is a service to enter a business's bills and to pay them. This is something that can be standardized, but we don’t currently have the manpower required to do this.
What can we do instead? We can show you how to enter your bills into our software so we can incorporate that into your monthly statements. Or, if you operate on an accrual basis, you can run your bills outside of our system and tell us what your A/P (Accounts Payable) is each month.
If you do none of the options above, we can still do your accounting, but we’ll treat your bank account’s cash in and cash out as bill payments.
Invoicing
Not many accounting services will provide an invoicing and collections service, unless they're very small and looking for extra work.
Invoicing can’t be standardized. Each business wants invoicing done in a different way, whether that involves process, wording, or something more. This makes it a process that is not easily repeatable across our client base, which would slow down our accountants.
There's also collecting funds from invoices, which directly impacts the business’s ability to pay their bills and their employees. To focus on our areas of strength and maintain the best relationship possible with clients, we can’t take on the responsibility of a collection agency.
What's an alternative? Much like with bill pay, we’ll show you how to use our software to invoice and collect payments.
Job Costing
Job costing is a service to track bills by a project, or job. It's essentially the same as time costing, except time costing is assigning time to a job, whereas job costing includes materials and overhead expenses.
We are not in your books on a daily basis. When a charge comes through, we won’t know which job it’s for unless we ask you about each transaction. There’s no way to define a process for job costing, and it slows our efficiency. We want to avoid having to raise our fees because of this, so we aren’t able to provide job costing.
Inventory Management
We can't do your inventory management because we are not onsite to see your physical inventory, meaning we don't truly know what's going in and out of your business.
What do we do instead? If you work with us, we just need you to send us the current information (periodical inventory) at the end of the year so we can make your tax return. For larger businesses, we recommend spot-checking monthly (perpetual inventory) just for your own records to make sure your inventory matches your numbers. Otherwise, you can always hire a third party for this... although we don't personally recommend any over the others.
One-Off Items
Personal Financial Statements
Banks require a personal financial statement when you’re getting a loan. We do everything else involved with the loan, but we can't create personal financial statements because we work with your business accounting, not your personal accounting. We don’t know about things like your mortgage, car loans, or other personal loans.
Keep in mind, we do offer individual tax filings for our business owner clients. However, those differ from personal financial statements in that they focus on how your year went, not what you own.
Business Valuations
While we assist in buying and selling of businesses, we do not offer business valuations. They would show how much your business is worth. However, this requires a certification, and we don’t hold one.
Financial Audits
We offer support and take agent responsibility in the case of tax audits, but we don’t do financial audits. These are very different things! A tax audit is when the IRS takes a look at your financial information to make sure it was reported correctly, whereas a financial audit may be requested by a bank to renew a line of credit for larger businesses.
Is CSI Really a One-Stop Shop?
We know that “accounting services” can mean something different to everybody, which is why we want to be transparent about what ours don’t include.
While we can’t offer bill pay, invoicing and collection, job costing, and one-off items like personal financial statements, business valuations, and financial audits, we include just about everything else related to accounting that will keep efficiency high and fees low! We’ve also made valuable connections throughout our 60 years of service that we can refer clients to for many of the services mentioned in this article.
If you know that we can’t do it all, but we do enough for you, feel free to schedule a free consultation by clicking the button below!
Otherwise, you can learn more about what happens during our monthly meetings.
