Setting an LLC’s books up
A separate business account, a chart of accounts that suits the work, and what has to stay apart from the owner’s own money.
Bookkeeping for LLCs
The books an LLC keeps, worked one close at a time.
Write-ups of the software and the services an LLC uses to keep its books — what each one does, where it stops being enough, and which one suits the work you actually have.
Nothing is published here yet. This board is the plan: the five modules on the left are what the site is being built to cover, and the rows beside this are their current scope.
Close board Scope
- Business money, kept apart from the owner’s Locked
- Bookkeeping software, weighed against the work Locked
- Reconciliation and the monthly close Open
- Doing the books, or handing them to a service In review
- Getting the books ready for a tax preparer Open
- Locked scope settled
- In review scope still being decided
- Open on the list, not yet written
These describe where a topic sits in the queue. They are not ratings, and they say nothing about how good anything is.
The five modules
The ground this site is being built on, listed so you can judge whether it is worth coming back to.
Bookkeeping software, compared
QuickBooks, Xero, Wave, FreshBooks and the rest, read against the bookkeeping a small LLC actually has to do each month.
Reconciling the month
Bank feeds, uncleared items, owner draws and the checks that make a month’s books worth relying on.
Software against a bookkeeping service
Where a service such as Bench or Pilot earns its fee, and where software plus an hour a month is already enough.
Close, and the handoff at tax time
What month-end asks of you, and the shape the books need to be in before a tax preparer opens them.
Control notes
Controls applied to every entry
Worth stating before there is anything to read, because it is what the writing will be held to.
CTRL-01
An entry carries its reasoning
No scores, no stars, no tier boards. Where one option is preferred over another, the argument for it is on the page in words you can disagree with.
CTRL-02
A figure carries its source
Prices, plan limits and feature names are read off the vendor, and the entry says when they were read. Nothing is estimated into existence.
CTRL-03
Claiming a test means the test happened
No described methodology standing in for work nobody did. If a tool was not run on real books, the entry says what it is based on instead.
CTRL-04
Commissions are disclosed and do not set the order
Some links earn a commission. That is stated wherever it applies, and it never decides which option leads an entry.
How an entry gets posted
01
Open the line
Each entry starts from a bookkeeping job an LLC actually has — a reconciliation, a handoff, a decision — not from a product page.
02
Post the detail
Pricing, plan limits and what a tool refuses to do get written down together, because the refusals are usually what decides it.
03
Review the wording
Anything reading as a test, a score or a count comes out unless the work behind it exists. This is the step that removes most of a first draft.
04
Lock the entry
Once the wording holds, the entry is locked and filed under the module it belongs to. Until then it stays off the board.