Mixing personal and business spending
The most expensive habit on this list. Every mixed transaction is a decision someone has to make again later, usually without the context. A separate business account and card removes the problem entirely.
Resource · Guide
Small business
bookkeeping in Texas
A practical guide for owners doing their own books, or about to hand them over. What to keep, how often to close, when spreadsheets stop working, and the four mistakes that cost the most time at year end.
What to keep
The working rule: keep whatever would let someone else reconstruct a transaction without asking you. In practice that means bank and credit-card statements for every account, invoices you issued and bills you received, receipts for expenses, payroll records, loan agreements and their statements, and anything documenting an asset you bought.
Digital is fine and generally better, provided it is organised and backed up. A folder of photographed receipts with meaningful filenames beats a shoebox; an unsorted camera roll does not.
Retention periods are a tax question rather than a bookkeeping one, and they vary by record type and circumstance. Your CPA is the right person to set them — see bookkeeper vs CPA for where that line falls.
How often to
close the month
Monthly. The reason is not diligence for its own sake — it is that a month you closed six weeks ago is still recoverable from memory, and a month you closed fourteen months ago is not.
A close means a cut-off: accounts reconciled to that date, transactions categorised, ledger reviewed, statements produced. After that the month is finished and the next one starts clean. Businesses that skip this end up with one enormous close in the spring, done under time pressure, against records nobody remembers.
The practical test: can you answer “how did last month go?” in under a minute? If not, the close is not happening.
When to stop using
spreadsheets
Spreadsheets are genuinely fine for a very small, very simple business — one account, few transactions, no payroll, no inventory. They stop being fine at identifiable points, and it is usually one of these:
You added a second account or a credit card. Reconciling two sources by hand is where spreadsheet bookkeeping starts silently drifting.
You started invoicing on terms. The moment money is owed to you rather than simply received, you need receivables, and a spreadsheet tracks those badly.
You put someone on payroll. Payroll touches expenses and liabilities across every period, and it does not forgive approximation.
You cannot answer a question without rebuilding the sheet. That is the general signal, and the honest one.
Avoid these
Four mistakes that
cost the most time
Treating the bank balance as profit
The balance says what has cleared, not what you have earned or what you owe. Unpaid bills and uncollected invoices both sit outside it.
Leaving the bank feed to categorise itself
Feeds and rules are labour-saving, not judgement-replacing. A rule set up once and never reviewed will miscode for years without complaining.
Closing only at year end
A year closed in one go is a reconstruction. Twelve closed months are a record. Only one of the two can inform a decision you make in June.
Handing it over
When the books stop being a good use of your week, the handover is straightforward: secure access to the accounting file and bank feeds, a conversation about how the business actually works, and — if things are behind — a catch-up before any monthly rhythm starts.
See small business bookkeeping for what that looks like in practice.
Ready when you are
Get it set up
properly, once.
A free 30-minute consultation to look at where your books stand and what would make the biggest difference first.