Austin CPA alternative. Close it before April.

How a month actually closes

The cards above are the choice. The note below is for the owner who wants to see how cash is matched to the bank before sending anything.

Stay with the note if you want that match written out. The form under this page is where you ask us to do the work.

A year is decided while the months are still moving

An April that lands louder than the number in your head almost always started the previous autumn. The books were still moving then. A conversation could still change a purchase, a payroll setup, or the way a deposit was labeled. By the time the envelope arrives, the year has already happened.

We close one month at a time. Cash on the statement and cash in the account have to match before we call the month finished. Transfers between your own accounts come back out of sales. Bills that belong in the month stay in the month. After that match is written down, the return can repeat the year without inventing a story.

Owners often ask whether a company should stay a sole owner or become an S corporation. That question is a conversation about profit, wages, and the shape of the year. It is not a slogan. We will not pretend a threshold we have not measured. We read the months first, then we talk about the shape.

October still leaves time to change a wage, a purchase, or the label on a deposit. An estimate written in October from closed months is a plan. An estimate written in October from a stack of unopened statements is a wish. We would rather show you the wish for what it is than dress it up.

Payroll is set up here, and then it is yours to run with a provider. Registrations, a deposit rhythm, and a clean list of who is paid are the setup. The Friday people are paid stays on the calendar of the provider you already chose. We do not stand in for that provider on payday.

A personal deposit booked as income will follow you all the way to the return. We look for money that moved between your own accounts and for cash that was never a customer. Taking it out of sales does not shrink the business. It stops the return from describing a year you did not have.

The same habit covers the Texas filings that sit beside the federal return. Sales tax at a point inside this city has been totaling 8.25 percent, with the state piece at 6.25 percent and the transit piece at 1 percent inside that total. The franchise report is due on May 15 for the entities that file one. The no-tax-due line sits at 2,650,000 dollars of revenue for the report years we are working from, and the rates beside it are 0.375 percent for retail or wholesale and 0.75 percent for other businesses. None of those figures is a promise about your own point on the map. They are the public numbers we put on the calendar so December is not the first time you hear them.

Business property lists for the appraisal district ordinarily land on April 15, and a written ask can push that due date out to May 15. We build it from the asset list already in the books. A number remembered in the parking lot is not a rendition.

If a lender later wants a signed audit, review, or compilation, that signature is not this practice. That limit is the first thing we put on the table when we talk. The close, the setup, the statements without that signature, and the return stay here.

What you get, if we are the right fit, is a month you can read, a payroll setup a provider can run, and a return that matches the months. On that work the Tax CFO title and the Entrepreneur's CFO title both belong to Steven Palmieri. The longer note under this reel is the part to read when April has already surprised you once.

A wage set in October changes the rest of the year in a way a wage set in March cannot. The months that are already closed show whether the company can carry that wage. We would rather have that talk while a purchase can still wait and a deposit can still be labeled correctly.

Owners also ask what to do with a plan contribution once a wage exists. The contribution follows the wage. We do not size a plan on a year that is still a pile of statements. The close comes first, then the wage, then the question of what the plan can hold.

A return that is already past its ordinary date is still a return from closed months. Relief from a penalty is a separate conversation, and this page does not promise it. What we can promise to attempt is a month the bank agrees with, written down before anyone talks about the envelope.

The statements we draft from those months carry no opinion. They are the picture the close produced. If a lender later wants a signed opinion on them, that request leaves this practice, and we say so before the work is scoped. The close itself stays.

What we want you to feel in December is ordinary. The cash matches. The transfers are out of sales. The dates for May and April are already on a calendar. April can still be busy. It does not have to be a surprise about a year you could have seen in the fall.

A lease deposit can sit in a clearing account from the day the lease starts until someone finally asks what it is. We ask in the month it landed. The account is a holding place, not a kind of income, and a payout that shows up after the guest has gone home still belongs to the month the guest paid.

Owners who live by a campus calendar sometimes expect the franchise report to follow the term. It follows May. We write that date down in the autumn, beside the federal dates, so a spring surprise is not the first time the report has a name.

Before a fee is named we look at the open months, at whether the bank already agrees, and at whether payroll was ever set up. That look is the quote. A number borrowed from another company's year would describe their file, and we will not hand you theirs.