Daily Workflows
The recurring work: accounts payable and receivable, invoicing that gets paid, receipt capture, transaction categorization, and the habits that keep books current instead of reconstructed.
Start here
7 piecesNo background assumed — the pieces that build the foundation.
Guide · Intro · 8 min
A transaction categorization system that actually holds up
A repeatable discipline for categorizing every transaction: the four-question decision tree, memo standards, bank-rule hygiene, and the weekly uncategorized-to-zero habit — with a worked messy-week example.
Brief · Intro · 3 min
Daily versus weekly bookkeeping: a realistic rhythm
What genuinely belongs in the daily two minutes, the weekly hour, and the monthly close — a cadence table for owner-operators who will not do bookkeeping every day, and shouldn't have to.
Brief · Intro · 3 min
Recurring transactions: what to automate and what never to
Rent, subscriptions, and loan payments belong on autopilot; revenue and variable costs never do. How to set up recurring templates safely, and the quarterly audit that keeps them honest.
Brief · Intro · 3 min
Recording transfers between your own accounts correctly
Bank-to-bank moves are neither income nor expense — they are the same money changing pockets. The entry, the double-count trap when both feeds report the same move, and how to prevent it.
Brief · Intro · 3 min
Credit card transactions: the card is a liability account
How to book business credit card activity correctly — charges as expenses when they happen, the monthly payment as a transfer against the card liability, and why paying the bill is not an expense.
Brief · Intro · 3 min
A receipt capture system you will actually keep up
Digital receipt habits that survive contact with a busy week: capture at the moment of purchase, attach to the transaction, and keep what the IRS actually expects — with retention periods.
Brief · Intro · 3 min
Invoicing best practices: the eight elements of an invoice that gets paid
What every invoice needs to clear a customer's payables process without friction — the eight required elements, a numbering scheme, and why same-day invoicing is the cheapest collections tool you own.
The working layer
11 piecesThe day-to-day rules, mechanics, and habits.
Guide · Working · 9 min
Accounts receivable and collections: getting invoices paid
The full AR cycle for small businesses — invoicing standards that get paid, payment terms, the weekly aging report, reminder cadences, late fees, write-offs with the journal entry, and an honest look at factoring.
Guide · Working · 8 min
The accounts payable workflow, start to finish
A complete AP cycle for small businesses: capture every bill, approve it, enter it, schedule it, pay it, and match it to the statement — with the journal entries and a weekly checklist.
Brief · Working · 3 min
Vendor records and W-9 collection: before the first payment, not in January
Collect Form W-9 from every new vendor before money moves, build a one-page vendor file, and January's 1099 season becomes a report you run instead of a hunt you dread.
Brief · Working · 3 min
Gift card accounting: selling, redeeming, and breakage
Selling a gift card creates a liability, not a sale; revenue happens at redemption. The entries for both moments, and breakage — the cards that never come back — in plain terms.
Brief · Working · 3 min
Recording tips and gratuities in hospitality books
Tips are the employees' money passing through your hands — a liability from the card terminal to the payroll run. The entries at collection and payout, and where tips do and don't touch your P&L.
Brief · Working · 3 min
Job costing basics: knowing which projects actually make money
Job costing tags every income and cost line to a project so you can see per-job profit, not just company-wide profit. Here is how classes and tags work, and what a small job P&L looks like.
Brief · Working · 3 min
Billable expenses and client reimbursements
How to book costs you incur for a client and bill back — markup or pass-through, gross versus net presentation, and the entries that keep reimbursements from looking like profit or vanishing as losses.
Brief · Working · 3 min
Mixed personal and business spending: the entries that untangle it
When a personal card buys business things, or the business card buys groceries — the owner contribution and draw entries that keep books clean, and why commingling costs real money at tax time.
Brief · Working · 3 min
Inventory purchases: asset first, expense when sold
Inventory you buy is an asset, not an expense — it becomes cost of goods sold only when the item sells. Here are the purchase and sale entries, and the periodic-versus-perpetual choice in small-business terms.
Brief · Working · 3 min
Handling refunds and returns in your books
The entries for refunds you give customers and refunds you receive from vendors — and why the original transaction never gets deleted.
Brief · Working · 3 min
Recording customer deposits and retainers
Money received before the work is done is a liability, not revenue. The entries at receipt and at earning, and why booking deposits as income overstates profit and understates what you owe.
Pro details
2 piecesThe edge cases and judgment calls.
Brief · Pro · 3 min
Multicurrency transactions: invoice-date rates, payment-date rates, and the gain in between
A foreign-currency invoice is booked at the rate on the invoice date; the payment arrives at the rate on the payment date. The difference is a realized exchange gain or loss — here are the entries.
Brief · Pro · 3 min
Barter transactions: trading services is recordable — and taxable
Swapping your services for someone else's is a real transaction at fair market value: income to both sides, an expense or asset to both sides, and often a 1099 obligation. The entries.