Who We Work With

Los Gatos: A cafe on a busy morning takes card payments, cash, two or three delivery apps and the odd gift card. Each one pays out on its own schedule, net of its own fees. Put the deposits in the bank and the sales in the register side by side and they never match. That is normal. Leaving it unmatched is the problem.

What they get wrongBooking the delivery payout as sales. The real sales are higher, and the app fees are an expense you should see every month.

Priya maps every deposit to its source, records tips as the pass through they are and keeps food cost as its own line. One bakery owner found her best selling item was her least profitable once the box and the app fee were counted. She changed the price, not the recipe.

Contractors live on deposits, progress bills and retainage held back until the end of the job. Cash can look great in March and terrible in June on the same healthy business. Without job costing, an owner cannot tell which job paid for the truck.

What they get wrongTreating a customer deposit as income the day it lands. Some of that money belongs to materials you have not bought yet.

Dana sets up jobs as their own little ledgers: materials, labour, subs and change orders, against what you billed. Once a month you see each open job's margin. One remodeler stopped bidding on bathrooms after three months of numbers. Kitchens paid. Bathrooms did not.

Therapists, designers, consultants, small law and medical offices. Revenue is steady, costs are low, and the owner is often the most expensive person in the room. This is where entity choice and owner pay matter most, and where they get set once and never looked at again.

What they get wrongPaying personal bills from the business account. It is not illegal. It is a mess that makes every other number wrong.

We split the accounts, set a sensible owner draw or salary, and check every fall in the planning meeting whether the setup still fits. One practice owner had been an S corporation for six years with no salary at all. We set a fair salary going forward and worked out the earlier years properly with the owner.

Marketplace payouts arrive as one number with fees, refunds, ads and shipping already taken out. Inventory sits in a warehouse, a garage and a fulfilment centre. And once sales cross certain thresholds in other states, those states may want sales tax filings too.

What they get wrongExpensing all inventory the day it is bought. Profit swings wildly, and the tax return ends up wrong in both directions.

Lena breaks each payout back into gross sales and every fee, tracks inventory as an asset until it sells, and keeps a simple sales tax calendar by state. Sales tax filings are $60 a state each month in our rates.