The Books
Books That Can Explain Themselves
Full-service bookkeeping through the close: every transaction coded and matched, every balance supported, every month locked on a date you can put in a calendar.
Who This Is For
The usual reasons: no in-house function, or one that has outgrown the work.
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What you receive
What It Includes
These are the standard services, grouped under the objective they serve rather than sold as a menu.
- Bank and card transactions coded and matched to the statement on an agreed cadence, not in a scramble at quarter-end.
- Accounts payable entered and scheduled, and accounts receivable raised, applied and chased — with the approval step staying wherever you want it to stay.
- Payroll journals brought into the ledger and tied back to the provider's own reports.
- The month-end close: every balance-sheet account tied to a schedule, a statement or a subledger, with any difference explained rather than carried.
- Accruals, prepaids, depreciation, deferred revenue and debt run on schedules rather than from memory; the P&L movements explained in sentences; the period locked.
- Multi-entity consolidation and revenue recognition where you have them, and a catch-up of back months where you need one.
The Books — what you receive
Who owns the work
Review, With You, or For You
The same three postures apply to every category. What separates them is who owns the work: all yours at Review, shared at With You, all ours at For You. The final sign-off is your management’s on all three.
- Review
- All yours — your team keeps the books and runs the close…Review · The BooksAll yours — your team keeps the books and runs the close; we read each month's result and write back what looks wrong and what looks thin. We post nothing.
- With You
- Shared — we keep the books and run the close as preparer, inside your process…With You · The BooksShared — we keep the books and run the close as preparer, inside your process; your team supplies what we ask for, reviews each step, and a named person approves.
- For You
- All ours — we keep the books and run the close end to end, for a scope named in the engagement letter, and bring your management the closed month to sign off…For You · The BooksAll ours — we keep the books and run the close end to end, for a scope named in the engagement letter, and bring your management the closed month to sign off; their signature, never ours.
What goes into The Books, and who does it at each posture
| The work | Review | With You | For You |
|---|---|---|---|
| Code and match every bank and card transaction to the statement | You | Us | Us |
| Enter and schedule payables; raise, apply and chase receivables | You | Us | Us |
| Bring payroll journals into the ledger and tie them to the provider's reports | You | Us | Us |
| Tie every balance-sheet account to a schedule, a statement or a subledger | You | Us | Us |
| Run accruals, prepaids, depreciation, deferred revenue and debt on schedules | You | Us | Us |
| Explain the P&L movements in sentences and lock the period | You | Us | Us |
| Supply documents and answers when asked | You | You | Us, we fetch |
| Review each step as it happens | You | You, a named person approves | you receive the finished month |
| Read the month's result and write back what looks wrong and what looks thin | Us | — | — |
| Sign off the closed month | You | You | You |
The final sign-off is your management’s on every posture; we never sign off on the books or on any engagement.
The boundary
What This Does Not Cover
We do not file your taxes — the books are the records your preparer works from, and we will work directly with whoever that is. And every package that leaves the building, the monthly management package included, is Stakeholder Reporting, priced per package; The Books' price covers the books.
What It Runs On
We do this work on Automate Accounting, which has its own page for the same objective. That page says what the software does; this one says what we do with it.
What you hold first
Before You Sign Anything
Three things you have in hand before anything is signed: the first from this site, the other two from the engagement letter.
Your Own Estimate
Before you write to us
A Written Scope and Price
Before we start
An Exit Named in Advance
Before we start
The first conversation is a look at your books and an honest answer about whether we are the right firm for this.