Monthly Accounting
The service in full: what the close covers, the software setup, and what arrives each month.
Learn moreMonthly Accounting · Manhattan Beach, CA
Monthly accounting for Manhattan Beach founders and professionals.
Books closed every month for agencies, consultancies, tech founders, and professional practices. Numbers that support a decision now, not a reconstruction next spring.
Book Your Free ConsultationService businesses fail differently on the books
Manhattan Beach businesses are mostly people and contracts rather than inventory and equipment. Agencies, consultancies, medical and legal practices, founders drawing from a company they also own. The bookkeeping risk is not miscounting stock, it is revenue that lands in the wrong month and owner money that nobody classified.
Retainers billed ahead, milestone work spanning a quarter, deposits taken before delivery: recorded on receipt, all of them make a good month look better than it was and the next one worse. The profit and loss stops being a management tool and becomes a record of when cash happened to move.
The second recurring problem is owner compensation. When the founder is also the payroll, the line between salary and distribution has to be drawn deliberately and recorded consistently, because it carries a real tax consequence. This page covers the monthly bookkeeping. The planning those numbers support sits on our Manhattan Beach tax planning page.
What the monthly close covers
Built around how service businesses actually earn.
- 01Bank and card reconciliation
Every account tied out to statements, with unmatched items raised as questions rather than buried.
- 02Revenue timing
Retainers, deposits, and milestone billing recorded in the period the work belongs to, so a strong month reflects work delivered rather than invoices paid.
- 03Owner compensation split
Salary and distributions tracked separately and consistently through the year, which is the record an S corporation position rests on.
- 04Contractor and 1099 tracking
Subcontractors and freelancers tracked as you pay them, so January is a report rather than a reconstruction.
- 05Client profitability
Revenue and direct cost coded so you can see which clients and which service lines carry the business.
- 06Statements and a short review
Profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash position, with a plain note on what moved.
What we usually find in the first close
The same handful of issues, across most service businesses we take on.
- 01Everything recorded on cash receipt
Deposits and retainers booked when the money arrived, making revenue swing for reasons that have nothing to do with the business.
- 02Owner draws never separated
Salary and distribution treated as one, leaving no clean record behind the compensation position.
- 03Software and subscriptions unreviewed
A long tail of monthly tools nobody has looked at since signup, coded to one catch-all account.
- 04Contractors tracked only at year end
1099 obligations discovered in January, when addresses and tax IDs are hardest to collect.
- 05No view of client profitability
A healthy top line hiding two or three accounts that consume more time than they return.
How the month runs
Feeds connect directly to your accounts, so the work spreads across the month instead of arriving in one block. Anything unclear comes back as a short batched question rather than a stream of emails.
The close lands on a fixed date. You get statements, a note on what changed, and any open items. For founders raising or reporting to a board, that predictability matters more than the format.
Because the same firm handles the return, the books close in the shape the filing needs, and the compensation record the plan depends on is built through the year rather than assembled at the end of it.
Where this connects
Clean books are the input. These are what they feed.
Tax Planning in Manhattan Beach
Entity structure, owner compensation, and retirement design, run against current numbers.
Learn moreTax Preparation in Manhattan Beach
Business and personal returns prepared from books that were already closed and reconciled.
Learn moreCFO Services
Forecasting, pricing, and hiring decisions for founders past the point where instinct is enough.
Learn moreGet numbers you can actually make decisions from.
Book a discovery call. We will look at how your books are kept today, what the statements are hiding, and what a monthly close would change.
Book Your Free Consultation No pressure, no obligation. Just clarity.Questions we hear most.
01Should my business be on cash or accrual books?+
Most service businesses get a far more useful monthly picture from accrual, because it puts revenue in the period the work was done. The tax return can still be filed on a different basis where that is allowed and advantageous. We keep the books in the way that makes them useful to manage from, and handle the conversion at filing.
02I am a solo founder. Is monthly accounting overkill?+
It depends less on size than on structure. If you are an S corporation with owner payroll, or you are making decisions about hiring and pricing, monthly matters. If you are a straightforward sole proprietor with a handful of transactions, we will tell you honestly that quarterly or annual work is enough.
03Can you work with my existing bookkeeper?+
Yes. In some cases the right answer is that your bookkeeper keeps recording and we take on the close, the reconciliations, and the review. We will say plainly which arrangement fits rather than assuming we should take all of it.
04Do you handle multi-state issues for remote teams?+
Yes, and it comes up often with Manhattan Beach founders. Contractors and employees in other states can create filing and registration obligations. We flag those as they arise on the books rather than letting them surface in a notice.
05How quickly do I get statements after month end?+
On a set date each month, agreed at the start. The point of monthly accounting is that the date is predictable, so you can build a review rhythm around it.