CPA San AntonioWhen one practice should hold both

A campus on a quarry, and records someone had to carry

Trinity's campus sits on an old lime quarry north of downtown, between Monte Vista and Olmos Park, and the school moved to this city in 1942. We are Texans, and a move like that is a story the city keeps. A move only works when someone carries the records. A business that adds a second firm is a smaller move, and the records still have to arrive. If they do not, the new year starts without the old one's last changes.

This page is about the moment to put the close and the return in one practice. It is not a pitch that every owner needs that. Some owners have a books person they trust and a return person who actually talks to them. If the opening month has a name on it, leave the arrangement alone. Call us when the month does not.

Signs the month has nobody

You are forwarding a portal login in March because the return person cannot see the books. Adjustments from last year's return are sitting in an email. The statements for January look exactly like December, with none of the year's last changes in them. A letter names a period, and each person thinks the other one has the file.

Payday reports arrive and nobody posts them, because each person thinks posting is the other's job. Sales tax gets filed from the bank deposits, not from a liability account, because the close never split them. Owner pay is a round number that does not appear on a statement. Any one of these can be a bad week. Three of them together mean the month has no owner.

A lender's letter asking for an audited statement is a different sign. That signature does not move into this practice just because the month does. We will say so immediately. Holding the close and the return together does not create an assurance report, and the disclosures page is the long version of that sentence.

Signs a smaller close would do

The books already tie to the bank. The return person gets them every spring and posts the changes back. You want a second set of eyes on one messy quarter, not a new home for the year. Say that. We would rather do the quarter, or tell you to stay where you are, than sell a relationship you do not need.

A brand new shop with a handful of deposits and a provider already running payday may not need a monthly close yet. A quarterly look can be enough until the volume makes a month matter. You will hear that answer while we are still on video. The fee should match the job, and the terms page is where that match gets written down.

October is the kindest time to decide. The prior return is filed. The current year can still change. Estimates and a retirement contribution are still choices, with no dollar promise attached on this page. Waiting until a letter arrives is allowed. It is just more expensive, in attention if not in fees.

What holding both looks like from the inside

Same practice. Same close date every month. Payroll set up on your provider, reports posted by us. Statements you can read. A May franchise page from that year. A federal return after the May page. A conversation in October while the year can still move. Video, shared books, no office in the city.

You can leave. The terms say so. Records come back. Fees stop at the work already done. The point of holding both is not a lock. It is a month with a name on it, and a return that starts from that month instead of from a guess.

What the first months feel like

The first month is usually a rebuild of trust in the bank match, rather than a new return. We list what ties and what does not. We post the stranded changes into the month they belong to, and we show you the list before anything else moves. The second month is an ordinary close, on a date you can put on a calendar.

The third month is the first one that should feel boring. Boring is the compliment. It means the hole is no longer the subject of the call. If month three is still a surprise, we say so, and we say whether the job is bigger than the scope you signed. The terms page is where a change of scope gets written, not in a chat thread.

A school that has carried records since 1881

The university the Sisters of Charity founded in 1881 is the largest Catholic university in Texas. We are Texans, and a school with that long a memory is a point of pride. We do not keep their books. The wink is the memory. Holding the close and the return in one practice is an attempt to give a much smaller shop the same kind of continuity, one month at a time.

A shop is not a campus, and we will not talk as if it were. The useful part of the comparison is the file that survives a change of hands. If you step away for a season, the next person should be able to open January and see what December decided. A file the next person can open is the bar.

What we will turn down

We turn down an assurance signature, every time. We turn down payday processing. We turn down a request to backdate a close so a lender packet looks older than the work. We turn down a year we have not been allowed to see. A no on those points is part of the service.

The yes is narrower, and that is the point. The month, the May page, and the federal file, in that order, with the books shared on a video call. If what you need sits outside that yes, the first conversation will say so and point you to the disclosures page. You should not have to discover the limit in April.

Pages that go further.