Accounting Services

It is essential that you keep accurate books so you can understand how your business is doing and fulfill the associated tax and other obligations you are responsible for. By engaging us to take on this responsibility, you can focus on the aspects that matter most: running your business and making profits. The accounting and bookkeeping services we offer include:

Reconciling your bank and business credit card accounts
Generating standard financial statements (e.g., balance sheet and income statement
Maintaining and cleaning up your general ledger
Consulting on business-related financial matters

Taken together, the above tasks can serve as the core of your small business accounting system. You can also add to and customize the services you receive with payroll, tax preparation, and other value-added services. Below is a more in-depth overview of our offerings:

General Ledger Maintenance

Your general ledger serves as the centerpiece of your company's financial recordkeeping system. If your general ledger is not clean and accurate, it can lead to costly errors and a mistaken impression about how you are doing. By engaging us to tackle this job, we can identify and fix such discrepancies as double billing and payments that have not been properly recorded.

Bank Reconciliation

Ensuring the accuracy of your business checking account(s) is essential to your business, enabling you to keep your finances, taxes, and accounting systems properly up-to-date. By engaging Aristide CPA to reconcile these accounts each month, you can:

Identify lost or unauthorized checks, deposits and wire transactions.
Uncover and put a stop to excess or unwarranted bank charges, and ensure that your bank is posting transactions correctly.
Detect and minimize the risk of embezzlement.
Gain an accurate and clear grasp of how your business is doing.
Manage your cash more effectively, improving efficiency and profitability.
Protect yourself from the risks associated with unauthorized, fraudulent or forged transactions by being able to promptly notify your bank when they occur.
Be secure in the knowledge that your bank accounts are reconciled and in balance, and that all checks, disbursements, deposits and escrow funds are correctly accounted for.

Income Statement

Having an accurate and comprehensive income – profit and loss – statement provides you with solid insights on how your business is doing. Specifically, this essential overview of operating performance can help you to:

Properly track and understand revenues and expenses.
Figure out which areas of your business are operating over- or under-budget.
Identify expenditures that may be having an adverse impact on your bottom line, including excessive phone, fax, mail, and supply expenses.
Keep close watch on product returns or cost-of-goods-sold as a percentage of sales for any signs of big changes.
Monitor income tax and other liabilities.

Balance Sheet

As with an income statement, having a clear picture of the financial condition of your business is critical to understanding where things stand – and where they may be headed. With a properly prepared balance sheet, you can:

Quickly ascertain the resiliency and capabilities of your business.
Identify and evaluate financial trends that may need to be addressed, including those related to payables and receivables, which can reveal opportunities for greater efficiency and profitability.
Consider whether the time is right to expand your operations.
Understand whether your business can easily accommodate normal variations in revenues and expenses.
Decide whether you need to boost cash reserves.
Determine whether payables have been extended in an effort to forestall a cash crunch.

Taken together, the above financial statements are essential for describing the health of your business to current and prospective lenders, investors and vendors, who will use them to determine the support they will provide and the nature of the financial relationship they will have with you.