What Is Monthly Accounting? A Different Type of Accounting Service
January 15th, 2024 | 5 min. read
Once you’re sure you want to outsource an accounting solution for your small business, you have a few options. There may even be more options than you’re aware of!
At CSI Accounting & Payroll, we’ve offered monthly accounting services to small businesses for over 50 years.
While we know the value of our service, we can acknowledge that we may not be the best solution for every small business. We know it’s important to compare all of your outsourced accounting options, including:
- Bookkeeping services
- Tax services
- Monthly accounting services
What Are Bookkeeping Services?
Outsourced bookkeeping services benefit small businesses by saving them a lot of grunt work that goes into accounting.
Usually, businesses want to outsource bookkeeping if the owner or administrative staff struggles to keep up with it on the side or doesn’t understand how to do it properly. (After all, if your bookkeeping is done wrong, then your taxes will be done wrong!)
Many bookkeeping services only provide bookkeeping. Since this is only a portion of accounting, business owners often pair a bookkeeping service with a separate tax service or tax software to try to do their own taxes (often with a lot of difficulty and potential errors).
As a limited service, this is often used by newer or smaller businesses, and it’s a somewhat fair deal for the price.
What Are Tax Services?
When small business owners work with an outsourced tax service, they have only a short time to work with an accountant to get their annual taxes done.
Tax services are beneficial to small businesses that already have bookkeeping handled but struggle with doing their taxes (even with tax software). Maybe they aren’t confident in their work or they don’t know which credits or deductions to claim.
However, due to the limited timeframe of tax services, they can’t offer year-round, complete tax strategy. They only meet with you annually to record the history of your prior year, so they miss the opportunity to minimize taxes.
In general, annual accounting by itself is often a cheaper, limited service - but how do you know if this option is good enough for your business?
What Are Monthly Accounting Services?
Now we get to the lesser-known outsourced accounting option: monthly accounting. This is our specialty at CSI Accounting & Payroll. So, what is monthly accounting?
Monthly accounting services are like having a bookkeeping service, annual tax service, and consulting service all in one.
It’s far from a limited service, so it can cost a bit more than a bookkeeping service or a tax service alone. However, it’s much more bang for your buck with a lot of free perks, and there are lots of benefits of bundling these services under one roof.
Not to mention, monthly accounting services work with you to achieve things that other services can’t: minimized taxes through year-round tax strategy and unlimited one-off advice paired with unparalleled customer service.
With monthly accounting, the following is included in your set monthly fee:
- Monthly bookkeeping, financial statements, and bank reconciliation
- Expert financial help
- Year-round tax planning, projections, preparation, and filing
- Payroll support
Get a Monthly Accounting Quote From CSI!
Now that you know about the options for outsourced small business accounting services – bookkeeping, tax, and monthly accounting – are you ready to check out monthly accounting services?
If so, please consider CSI Accounting & Payroll! To see if we can be a good fit for your business, click the button below for a free consultation:
Not ready to talk? That’s okay! First, learn more about what it's like to work with CSI by clicking the image below:
Brian began working at CSI in 1996, and he purchased the business in 2002. As Owner, his primary role is in the management and growth of the firm. Since 2002, the firm has more than quadrupled in size. In 2009, Brian started CSI’s payroll service to complement CSI’s accounting and tax services. Brian received his Bachelor’s degree from the University of North Dakota, with a double major in Accounting and Financial Management. He’s a member of both the National Society for Tax Professionals and the National Society for Accountants, and he serves on the board of directors for the Professional Association of Small Business Accountants, where he was once president. Brian also serves on the business advisory council for Opportunity Partners, an organization that helps people with disabilities find employment. He’s also contributed to several business books, including Six Steps to Small Business Success and The Lean Mean Business Machine. Fun Fact: To help put himself through college, he used student loans, delivered pizzas, and worked summers in a salmon processing plant in Alaska.