What arrives
One PDF packet and one Excel file for one business and one period of up to twelve months. The PDF has a cover, a cash-basis Balance Sheet and Profit and Loss (optionally month by month), a Basis of preparation page, a proof page (the account tie-out), a tax-line worksheet, the 1099 candidates, and the transaction detail. The Excel file has every transaction with its account, date, description, amount and category, which is the sheet most preparers import or sort first.
How it was built
The client uploaded the bank, card and loan statements, as PDFs or as CSV, Excel or QBO/QFX/OFX exports. Each statement was read and proved against its own printed beginning and ending balances before it was used; a statement that did not agree was shown to the client to correct and was not used until it did. Each account had to be covered for the whole period with no month missing. Transfers between the client’s own accounts were matched so they appear on neither side of the Profit and Loss. Every transaction received a first category, which the client could change by line or by payee; owner draws and contributions were separated into equity, and for a partnership or corporation can be assigned by member. The proof page lets you verify all of this against the statements instead of taking it on faith.
What it is not
- Not a tax return and not tax advice. The tax-line worksheet is a map from each category to the line it usually goes to; you decide.
- Not accrual. No receivables, payables, inventory, prepaid or deferred items, and no current-year depreciation.
- Not assured. The financial statements are prepared from the bank statements provided, by the owner, or by the firm that built the packet when it carries the firm’s name; nothing is audited, reviewed or compiled, and the packet says so.
- Not complete for cash. Cash sales never deposited and cash expenses never reimbursed are not on any statement and are not in the packet.
- Not grossed up. Deposits from a card processor or marketplace (Square, Stripe, PayPal, Shopify, Amazon and the like) are recorded as Sales at the amount deposited, net of the processor’s fees; the fees are not shown as a separate expense, so the gross figure on a Form 1099-K will be higher than Sales here.
What you still do
The judgment calls: unusual items, the mixed-use payee the client treated one way all year, depreciation and other adjustments, officer compensation versus distributions, who actually gets a 1099, and anything the client should have asked you about. What you no longer do is read a year of statements and sort them by hand.
If you want to build it yourself for a client
Firms that build packets for clients in their own name — one sign-in for every client, the firm’s name and logo on the packet, a question sheet for the owner and a purchases list to bill from — have their own page: For bookkeepers and tax firms.
Anyone the client gives the statements to can build the packet. A firm keeps every client’s packets under one account and pays only per packet downloaded. The whole packet is shown free before purchase. $49.99 covers one business, one year, and up to two accounts. Each additional account is $15. Buy every year at once and each extra year is $25, plus $10 for each account beyond two; a year bought on its own later is $49.99. The years come out as one packet with a column per year, and your firm’s name and logo in place of ours is $15 per document, re-downloads free. There is no subscription and no minimum number of packets. Up to 60 statements are read free before purchase, which covers a four-account year, and up to 120 across everything you have not yet purchased; if your year needs more, purchase the packet and upload the rest. Pricing in full.
See a packet
The sample is a fictional studio with one checking account and two cards, put through the same steps and rendered by the same code that produces a client’s packet.