Bookkeeping · Tools & Practice · Brief · Intro level
The monthly client note: what changed, what needs answers, what's ahead
One short, structured note each month — what changed in the numbers, what you need from the client, what is coming — turns invisible bookkeeping into a visible service and keeps the question list from becoming a year-end excavation.
Bookkeeping done well is invisible, which is commercially dangerous: clients cancel services they cannot see. The monthly note fixes both problems at once — it makes the work visible, and it forces the open-question loop that keeps books clean in real time instead of theoretically clean until year-end. It takes twenty minutes once the close is done, and it follows the same three-part structure every month.
Section one: what changed
Two or three observations a non-accountant can use, drawn from the statements you are attaching. Not a recitation of the P&L — a reading of it:
- "Revenue was up 12% over April, mostly the Hendricks project; margin held."
- "Software subscriptions have crept from $410 to $640 a month since January — worth a cancellation pass?"
- "Cash covered about six weeks of expenses at month-end, down from nine — the two large receivables below are why."
The bar: each line should be something the owner did not already know or had not connected. This is also where an alert bookkeeper earns the "first line of spotting" role — a big equipment purchase or new-state hire noted here should also be flagged to the CPA, per working with the tax accountant.
Section two: what needs answers
The working heart of the note. Numbered, specific, with a deadline:
- $840 charge on the card, May 14, "SPX Holdings" — what was this?
- The $3,000 deposit on May 22 — customer payment or owner contribution? They post very differently.
- Still missing: April statement for the equipment loan.
State the deadline and the consequence plainly: "Answers by the 25th, please, or these carry as uncategorized and June's close slips." A question list that ages is how books rot; every item on it is a transaction the feed could not resolve — the exception queue from bank-feed hygiene given a voice.
| Account | Debit | Credit |
|---|---|---|
| Cash | 3,000 | |
| Owner contributions (equity) | 3,000 |
If it was a customer payment instead, the credit goes to revenue — and the business just became $3,000 more profitable. Guessing is not an option.
Section three: what's ahead
The next 60 days of dates the client should not be surprised by: quarterly Form 941 due at month-end after the quarter; January's W-2 and 1099 deadline flagged from November; estimated-tax dates; anything engagement-specific ("year-end package goes to your CPA the second week of January"). Owners forgive many things; they do not forgive deadline surprises.
Making it stick
- Same subject line, same structure, every month — the client should be able to skim it in ninety seconds.
- Send it with the statements, as one package; the note is the cover letter that makes the statements legible.
- Track response times. A client who never answers the question list is a fee-and-fit conversation waiting to happen — and the paper trail if it becomes a screening or exit decision.
- Write the note's cadence and the client's reply obligation into the engagement letter, so the deadline has teeth from day one.
Frequently asked questions
- What should a bookkeeper send clients every month?
- A short note in three fixed sections — what changed (two or three observations from the financials, in plain language), what needs answers (a numbered list of open transactions and missing documents, with a response deadline), and what's ahead (deadlines and expected events in the next 60 days) — attached to the financial statements after the close.
- How does regular communication reduce a bookkeeper's year-end workload?
- Open questions answered monthly stay small and answerable; the same questions saved for December become an excavation, because nobody remembers a March transaction in December. A standing monthly question list with a reply deadline keeps uncategorized items near zero, which makes the year-end package for the tax accountant a compilation rather than a project.