Accounting Articles > Record Keeping / Bookkeeping:

Basic accounting procedures

You: Capture the evidence.
We: Create a fair accounting of the entity in question.
We: Prepare a tax return inside existing tax law.
We: Document everything.

Simple for you, right? Complicated for us, but it's what we love to do.

Frankly, there’s only one thing that I need you to do, and that’s number one, capture the evidence. Keep your receipts. Don’t throw them away. Keep your invoices. Make sure that you have original documentation. If it looks, acts, or even smells like accounting, keep it in its original form. Don’t scan it into a computer. Electronic records are by definition tainted, and therefore are not evidence in the event of an audit. Bank statements, copies of canceled checks, payroll registers, you name it. Keep it together. If your return gets examined in an audit, they want to see original evidence. They are generally trained to not listen to anything that you say which will benefit your cause. They physically need to see it.

Just bring it all in. We'll add it up, organize it, and make sense of it.

Your next accounting procedure should be to give it to me. Don’t think that you can do this yourself. You need an unbiased professional to protect you, your family, and your business. Call today.