When you want to grow your business or need hands-on advice, you may decide to look into monthly accounting. After speaking with thousands of small business owners just like you, our experts at CSI know that making the jump from only filing annual taxes to working with a dedicated monthly accountant is huge. 

Major changes are often overwhelming. That’s why we are sometimes asked if a business can work with us on a monthly basis while still using their annual tax accountant. 

The simple answer is yes - however, there are several reasons why you probably don’t want to go that route.

Here, we’ll go over the reasons why some business owners may think they want to use a separate accountant for annual taxes, as well as why we don’t advise this. The reasons below are specific to how CSI Accounting & Payroll operates, but any reliable monthly accounting service should provide you with similar answers.

If your small business uses accounting software to prepare your financial statements in-house, then you're putting in all of that extra time and effort for a reason!

Maybe you think your business is not the right fit for an accounting service, or maybe you trust yourself to handle your books and don't see the need to outsource. You could even want nothing more than to just balance a checkbook or file your taxes. But most likely, you're concerned that having somebody else do the work will cost you an arm and a leg.

When you use accounting software instead of outsourcing, you're counting on it saving you some money. What happens when it doesn't? Record inaccuracies can result in penalties and interest down the line or make you miss out on reimbursable expenses. Not to mention, going through an audit will take up a lot of the time that you could have put toward making profits. If you don't have a background in accounting, you may not even realize you're getting lost.

How can you tell if your bookkeeping is getting mixed up? Start by taking a look at your financial statements. Here are some common red flags.

An annual tax accountant can’t offer the same business advice that a monthly accountant does. That’s why business owners who choose to go the monthly accounting route tend to be more hands-on with their business  and, therefore, can worry that even monthly advice will not be enough. 

Certain questions can be time-sensitive, and annual tax accountants are known for charging big bucks for their time to answer your questions. That’s what leads to the questions, “Can I contact my monthly accountant with any questions that come up?” and “Will I be charged extra for that?” The simple answer is, “No, you will not be charged extra for reaching out with a question outside of your monthly meetings.”

After many decades of working with other small business owners with the same concerns, we’ve branded CSI Accounting & Payroll as the firm of experts who prioritize communication. In this article, we’ll touch on some guidelines of contact, as well as what it typically looks like when our clients contact us.

One of the first things you’re going to want to know about monthly accounting is what kinds of advice your accountant will be able to offer you. After all, monthly accounting is a much more hands-on service than just filing taxes with an annual tax accountant. 

Learning that you’ll receive monthly advice should leave you wondering what types of advice your accountant is qualified to give you. We’ve briefly touched on this in our article about what an average monthly meeting looks like, but we’ll dive into much more detail below. 

With over 50 years of accounting experience under our belts, we’re able to quickly identify common problem areas and their solutions, but we’re also able to form a deeper understanding of your unique situation and opportunities to further customize your advice.

Here, we’ll talk about the advice our accountants give based on your business’s situation, your financial documents, and your taxes.

Signing a contract of any kind is already nerve-wracking, so unclear wording can add just enough uncertainty to make anybody walk away. We get it - “additional charges may apply” isn’t exactly the most detailed sentence ever written. 

Even if you already know what the cost of monthly accounting will be, you should have the full picture of what’s included in the fee before you move forward. After working with small businesses for a handful of decades, we know that owners want both a short, concise contract and the option to view full details for additional charges at will.

Our proposals clearly list the services that are not included, but we would like to offer a more detailed explanation of:

• What they are
• Why they aren’t included in the quoted price
• How much they cost*

*Please note that prices are subject to change over time. Updated pricing will always be laid out in formal proposals.

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 can also acknowledge that we can’t do it all. 

After many decades of service to small business owners, we’ve worked out the details of what we aren’t reasonably able to provide while maximizing efficiency and minimizing fees.

Here, we’ll break down some of the things that prospective clients would like us to provide that we do not. Oftentimes, these services are expected due to the prospective client having an internal employee who handles the services along with their bookkeeping. Let’s take a further look at services we don’t provide, including:

• Bill pay
• Invoicing
• Job costing
• Some one-off items

If you’ve just started researching different accounting options for your business, you may not be very familiar with the monthly accounting process. What’s the point of meeting so often, and what do monthly meetings even cover? 

These are valid questions, especially if you’re used to only working with an annual accountant. Some business owners believe that an annual accountant provides enough service, but others see room for improvement in their accounting service and seek a more consistent approach.

CSI Accounting & Payroll is that consistent approach. Our monthly accounting services focus heavily around handling the accounting for you and bringing it all back together in the form of our monthly meetings. 

This article will briefly explain:

• The difference between our initial onboarding meetings and standard client meetings
• The details of how these meetings happen
• What kind of discussions we’ll have
• Our dedicated tax planning meetings

If you’re constantly thinking of ways to improve your profitability, partnering with a service like CSI Accounting & Payroll is a great first step. However, there’s still the question of where you can save. 

A discount for bundling isn’t unheard of, so you may be wondering if CSI offers one for signing up for both our accounting and our payroll services. 

We sure do! In this article, we’ll cover:

• What the discount entails
• Why we offer a discount
• What our services cost separately
• The advantages of bundling accounting and payroll services under the same roof

When committing to monthly accounting, you want to understand everything that the fee covers. With subscription fees of different accounting software being billed on a monthly basis, you may be wondering if the monthly accounting service at CSI Accounting & Payroll would eat the cost for you. 

It all depends on the software you use! In our more than 50 years of experience, we’ve curated a few different routes that you can take with your accounting software and fee coverage. There are two main accounting software programs, although we recommend Xero when working with us. Regardless, if you use Xero, QuickBooks, or another software, we have different fee coverage options.

In this article, we’ll discuss the differences between two major accounting systems, as well as lay out the different fee coverage and accounting system combinations at CSI.

When you’re starting with a new accounting firm, it’s easy enough to miss some of the fine print under the cost. However, a single price tag can be deceiving if you don’t know what it covers. It’s equally important to know how much you’re paying and to have a breakdown of everything you’re paying for. 

While you may already know what the cost of monthly accounting will be, there still may be questions about exceptions and specific situations. One of the most common questions we get from small business owners, especially sole proprietors, is whether our monthly accounting fee includes the preparation and filing of personal taxes.

In this article, we’ll outline the types of tax returns we work with, what the cost for those can look like, and why sole proprietorships have a slightly different situation than other businesses.