This is the most common answer to the question owners are really asking, and it is the one nobody puts on a page because it does not sell a seat.
Closed is not the same as entered. A month is closed when the cash matches the bank, the cards and the loan balances to the cent, every transaction is in a category that will still mean the same thing next year, nothing is sitting in an unanswered queue, the payroll ties to the provider's own reports, and the prior month has not moved since it was called finished.
That last one catches most files. If last quarter's numbers change every time somebody opens the software, nothing built on them holds.
Opening balances first, agreed to the last filed return, because everything downstream inherits them. Then bank and card reconciliation forward, month by month, without skipping. Then the loans and payroll, which are the two places the profit figure is usually wrong by the most. Then categories, last, because recategorising before the cash ties is work that gets done twice.
A catch up gets quoted before it starts, against the defect list rather than against a number of months, and you see the list before you decide anything.
A forecast built on an open month is arithmetic on numbers nobody has checked. It will look exactly as convincing as a real one and it will be wrong in a direction nobody can predict. That is why this desk will not take on the monthly read on books that are not closed. We fix that first or we decline, and we say which before you commit to anything.
Everything this site describes is work a person may do without a license, and it is what happens here every month. An audit, a review, a compilation or an opinion on your statements under GAAP is a different matter, because Texas keeps those for licensed firms and there is no CPA license at this desk.
So if a lender or an investor has asked you for a signed report, you will hear that inside the first twenty minutes and leave with the name of a firm that can sign it. The rest of what is out of scope, payroll runs and IRS letters included, is written out on the disclosures page.
Owners come here braced for a lecture and leave with something simpler, which is a defect list and a price. Most of them wanted a strategist and what they actually needed was a month they could trust and somebody to read it with them.
What gets handed over is the closed month and the October number, and the return is prepared at the same desk. Nothing here needs you to hand over a box of paper.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.