Who actually closes the month
Steven Palmieri is the person who says a month is finished, working with you. If the answer is a shared inbox and nobody's name, the month will stay soft. We put a name on the close, and that name is ours, working with you.
A finished month has the bank matched, the sales tax counted, and the bills in the month they belong to. It is boring on purpose. Boring is what a lender can read without calling you on a Friday.
Who sets up payday, and who runs it
Payday has two halves. Someone maps the people, the rates, and the accounts. Someone else calculates the checks and moves the money. We do the first half and stop. The provider you already like, or the one you pick on the call, runs the second half.
Ask any practice where that line is before you share a login. A muddy line is how an owner ends up thinking a bookkeeper filed a form the bookkeeper never touched.
What a signature line does not mean
The third question is the report. If a lender wants an audit, a review, or a compilation, ask whether the practice signs that report. We do not. We will say so before any month is opened, and we will point you to the disclosures page where the limit is written in full.
The fourth question is the return. Will it be built from the months you just closed, or from a second set of numbers that appears in March? We use the closed months. A second set is how a year starts to lie.
The fifth question is what happens when the books are a year behind. We will not pretend a standing close exists while last spring is still open. Those months get finished, or we decline the work out loud before anyone signs.
Horse stalls, rooms, and a date that still arrives
A business that rents horse stalls as well as rooms has two kinds of sales. A night in a stall and a night in a room are still two sales, and neither one moves a sales-tax date or a bank match.
Picture a crew heading home while the office is still hunting a deposit from Thursday. We join that hunt by video. Thursday still has to land in Thursday's books.
Bring those five answers to a call. If we are the wrong fit, you will leave with that said in the first conversation, not after a quarter of soft months.
A late deposit still belongs to the work day.
A crew can finish for the day while the office learns about a missed punch the next morning. The books have the same shape. A deposit that hits after midnight still belongs to the day the work happened, if that is the deal you made with the customer. We ask which deal it is. A bank timestamp is only a hint about the day the work belonged to.
That question is the fifth one in work clothes. An open Thursday does not become a closed Thursday because Friday was busy. Write the five answers down before you share a login, and bring the page with the blanks filled in your own words. Potter County and Randall County do not change which five you ask.
