Bookkeeper QuickBooks ProAdvisorThe short list and the long list

Three reports need a signature this practice does not put on paper. An audit. A review. A compilation. Each of them is a product with its own rules, and each of them belongs with a firm built to sign it. We will say that on the first call if your lender, your board, or your buyer asked for one of the three.

Refusing the signature is not a refusal to help the file. The closed months can travel with that firm as the record underneath. A clean tie to the bank is useful to the firm that signs. A plug number is not. We would rather hand them the first.

If someone on a call promises you all three reports and the monthly close and the return in one breath, ask which signature they actually carry. The question saves a season.

The long list is the work these pages describe. Match the month to the bank. Empty the clearing accounts. Age the outstanding checks. Trace deposits that are not sales. Split household bills before they are entered. Keep a chart the return can read. Set payroll up and leave the send button with you. Prepare the return from months that have stopped moving.

That list is long because the month is long. It is still one practice. You do not hand the chart to one person in January and the return to another person in March and hope the names still mean the same thing.

Statements sit on the long list too. Once the month matches, the statements are for the owner first. A lender can see them later, when you decide to show them. We do not dress them up as a signed report.

Bring the document that worried you. If it is a bank statement, you are on the long list and we can start. If it is a request for a signed report, you are on the short list and we will say so before any letter is drafted. When the packet contains both, the month stays here and the signature is pointed to another firm.

The empty box on the home page is this short list, drawn as a gap on purpose. Five parts of the month can be filled here. The signature cannot.

Nothing on the long list requires you to live near the practice. The statement is a file. The call is a call. The federal dates do not move when the state line does.