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Employee benefits go to Employee Benefits Expense, but the employer portion and employee portion hit different accounts. The employer match is expense; the employee deferral is a liability. S-corp owner-employees follow special rules.
Double-entry bookkeeping records every transaction with two equal sides (debits and credits) that must always balance.
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.
Bank reconciliation matches your book balance to the bank statement balance, line by line. It's the single best fraud-detection tool a bookkeeper has, and the QBO Reconcile workflow takes about an hour a month when the books are clean.
Bank fees and interest split into three accounts, not one: Bank Service Charges, Interest Expense, and Merchant Processing Fees. The biggest error is booking net Stripe deposits, which understates revenue every month.
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.
If you've spent any time shopping for AI bookkeeping software, you've noticed something: every vendor says AI. The landing pages all have the same bullet points. Automated categorization. Smart suggestions. Learns from your books.