SDO CPA LLC
18 years of experience
Bobby Huang is a partner at SDO CPA. 18 years of hands-on bookkeeping. He still reconciles real client books and built Growthy from the same review-and-approve work bookkeepers do each week.
Meals belong in a 50% deductible expense account. Entertainment belongs in a separate 0% deductible account. For TY2026, OBBBA eliminated employer-convenience meal deductions, so team meal categorization changed too.
Marketing and advertising costs go to Marketing & Advertising Expense, combined or split depending on volume.
Contractor payments go to Outside Services or Contract Labor, an Operating Expense account separate from W-2 payroll. The 2026 OBBBA rules raised the 1099-NEC threshold to $2,000, and credit-card payments don't count.
Business insurance goes to Insurance Expense, usually one parent account with optional sub-accounts by policy type. Annual premiums paid upfront sit in Prepaid Insurance and amortize monthly. S-corp owner health insurance follows special W-2 rules.
Routine attorney fees go to Legal Fees (a sub-account of Professional Fees). Acquisition, formation, real estate, and IP legal work gets capitalized instead. Plus the attorney 1099 exception every bookkeeper misses.
Cash accounting recognizes revenue and expenses when money moves. Accrual recognizes them when earned or incurred. Most small businesses run cash for tax and accrual for books. Here's why and how.
AR is money customers owe for work delivered. Here's the full lifecycle bookkeepers manage: invoicing, payment application, aging, and write-offs.
AP is the current liability for unpaid vendor bills. Full lifecycle, AP vs AR, period-end traps, and the gotchas bookkeepers hit most.
Accountant and CPA fees go in Accounting Fees, a sub-account of Professional Fees. Splitting by service type (tax prep, bookkeeping, audit, advisory) gives owners cleaner year-over-year benchmarks and tax preparers a faster handoff.
Step-by-step guide to connecting Stripe with Xero: clearing account setup, bank rules, payout reconciliation, and fee handling for bookkeepers managing Xero clients.
End-to-end guide to reconciling Stripe using the payout-period method: pull reports, build journal entries, clear the clearing account, and handle exceptions.
Stripe charges five distinct fee types, each with different GL treatment. Here's the complete chart of accounts mapping bookkeepers actually use.
See Growthy on a sample book. Read-only bank access.
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