looking for direction on bookkeeping apps for small operation

[yseent]

Hi Entrepreneurs,

First time poster here. Hoping to find some good recommendations for a bookkeeping app to use.
I'm a one man show when it comes to my business at this point in time. More specifically, about half of my income is w2, the other half is 1099 that I run through an LLC.
I'm making a decent living for one person, but nothing that gets me into a "high income" tax bracket.
My business & transactions are fairly uncomplicated, and not enough in volume to hire & have communication with a bookkeeper every month, but just enough to make it a pain & small project when I let my transactions pile up all year, so I'd like to find an app where I can do my bookkeeping on the fly and not let it build up. I've used apps for employers I've worked for and found it easy to do a few transactions here and there when I had a down minute or two when i had a good app.
I've tried a couple of times doing my own research to find an app or service to fit my needs, but unfortunately don't understand the accounting, bookkeeping, or industry lingo to understand all the features of the apps or what the terms mean. This is where I'm hoping someone who has a background in this and that understands small business can help point me in the right direction.
Ultimately the key features & capabilities I'm looking for are as follows:

*Ability to easily manage multiple sets of books (one set for LLC & one set for personal)
*Can easily log/categorize/distinguish monies going in and out of the LLC from my personal account correctly (usually from LLC to personal, but sometimes the other way around) and keep track of in a comprehensible way come tax-time.
*Easy to expense per diem's I give myself or other contractors from my LLC to my personal when traveling (if this is any different than a regular transaction?)
*Expenses that auto-populate from my online banking/online statements into a Que or something of the like, making it easy to go there as a reference and take care of each transaction one by one as they populate.(can also dismiss from the que without logging as transaction for the case of my personal account/business, if possible)
*Easy to access just as easy from a computer/desktop as it is from an app. App for on-the fly management & notating records, but desktop for compiling records, printing reports, etc.
The quickbooks online/app version is too expensive and more involved than I need. For that price I could hire somebody.

Any tips, reccomendations, etc?

 

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[LightHouse]

Why not just get a bookkeeper? You haven't been doing your books until this point so it's a weak point. Do not let it get screwed up by buying software you think you may use in the future.

A good bookkeeper will cost between $25-55/hr and take care of it monthly for you. This enables you to remove a "Low Value Task" from your list so you can focus on things that matter, like business development.

Unless you are @CareCPA , you probably shouldn't be doing your own books.

 

[CareCPA]

Wave is a free option.
Paid options include Xero and QBO.
For any of these, you'll need separate subscriptions for business and personal.
I'd do something like Xero/Wave/QBO for business, and Personal Capital or Mint for personal. No need to pay for a software if you don't need the business functionality.

 

[CareCPA]

Unless you are @CareCPA , you probably shouldn't be doing your own books.

That reminds me, I should have one of my bookkeepers do our books. I don't think I even need to be spending the time at this point.

 

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[LightHouse]

That reminds me, I should have one of my bookkeepers do our books. I don't think I even need to be spending the time at this point.

Yes! You've got to grow the business!

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

@CareCPA -

Can you recommend what we should be looking for when hiring a bookkeeper?
What should they be doing?
What's the easiest way to work with them (what kind of access) so that they do their job?
How can we make sure we're not being ripped off?

 

[CareCPA]

@CareCPA -

Can you recommend what we should be looking for when hiring a bookkeeper?
What should they be doing?
What's the easiest way to work with them (what kind of access) so that they do their job?
How can we make sure we're not being ripped off?

Sure, we can highjack this thread.

Some of these are subjective. For example, are you looking for a solo bookkeeper because you're trying to save some money? Or do you want a firm so you know there's continuity if your bookkeeper leaves?
If you hire a random person off Upwork and they disappear, you need to search for another one. At a firm like mine, if a bookkeeper leaves, we can slot a new one in and you shouldn't notice a change other than the name on the emails. That's not to say ours is right for every situation, the cost savings may be worth it to you.

If you're using an online software, they'll obviously need advisor access to that. Since we specialize in Ecom, we also get Seller Central, Shopify, Bigcommerce, etc. You can restrict what is seen, but they need enough info to do their jobs.
We also request read-only access to the bank accounts. This helps us reconcile the accounts (sometimes bank feeds get interrupted or stop working properly), and we can see check images if the client is writing physical checks.

At it's most basic, bookkeeping is categorizing the transactions, that's it. So generally your bank account will integrate with the software, and the bookkeeper will categorize and classify all your accounts. Anything beyond this you should be explicit about. For example, we calculate Cost of Goods Sold on the accrual basis for 95% of our clients - this isn't strictly bookkeeping, it's more in the realm of accounting.

Most companies want to hire a bookkeeper, and have them act as bookkeeper, accountant, controller and CFO, so you really need to define the tasks you want them to do, and be willing to pay accordingly.

Our clients get monthly financials, that's how you know we're doing our jobs. If that is not your goal, then you should have defined deliverables to make sure your bookkeeper is doing what you want them to. Even if it's just popping into the software once in a while to make sure there aren't too many unreconciled transactions, you should have some kind of oversight.

 

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[PetePreneur]

The two biggest ones from what I know are Quickbooks and Xero. Either of them will pretty much do all you could realistically expect from bookkeeping software.

 

[AgainstAllOdds]

Sure, we can highjack this thread.

Some of these are subjective. For example, are you looking for a solo bookkeeper because you're trying to save some money? Or do you want a firm so you know there's continuity if your bookkeeper leaves?
If you hire a random person off Upwork and they disappear, you need to search for another one. At a firm like mine, if a bookkeeper leaves, we can slot a new one in and you shouldn't notice a change other than the name on the emails. That's not to say ours is right for every situation, the cost savings may be worth it to you.

If you're using an online software, they'll obviously need advisor access to that. Since we specialize in Ecom, we also get Seller Central, Shopify, Bigcommerce, etc. You can restrict what is seen, but they need enough info to do their jobs.
We also request read-only access to the bank accounts. This helps us reconcile the accounts (sometimes bank feeds get interrupted or stop working properly), and we can see check images if the client is writing physical checks.

At it's most basic, bookkeeping is categorizing the transactions, that's it. So generally your bank account will integrate with the software, and the bookkeeper will categorize and classify all your accounts. Anything beyond this you should be explicit about. For example, we calculate Cost of Goods Sold on the accrual basis for 95% of our clients - this isn't strictly bookkeeping, it's more in the realm of accounting.

Most companies want to hire a bookkeeper, and have them act as bookkeeper, accountant, controller and CFO, so you really need to define the tasks you want them to do, and be willing to pay accordingly.

Our clients get monthly financials, that's how you know we're doing our jobs. If that is not your goal, then you should have defined deliverables to make sure your bookkeeper is doing what you want them to. Even if it's just popping into the software once in a while to make sure there aren't too many unreconciled transactions, you should have some kind of oversight.

Awesome reply. I wish the +rep feature was still around. Thanks for hijacking this thread.