Business Advisory Services
Everything you need to help you launch your new business entity from business entity selection to multiple-entity business structures.
Everything you need to help you launch your new business entity from business entity selection to multiple-entity business structures.
Designed for rental property owners where WCG CPAs & Advisors supports you as your real estate CPA.
Everything you need from tax return preparation for your small business to your rental to your corporation is here.
WCG’s primary objective is to help you to feel comfortable about engaging with us
Posted Saturday, July 6, 2024
Table Of Contents
The best reason to use a small business accountant isn’t just compliance; it’s opportunity cost. Your time is best spent in your zone of genius. Let us handle ours.
Sure, anyone can buy a QuickBooks Online or Xero subscription, connect a bank feed, and start clicking around. But the drawbacks of DIY accounting are often subtle right up until they become very broken and surprisingly expensive.
WCG CPAs & Advisors provides small business accounting services built around clean bookkeeping, useful financial reporting, tax-ready books, and practical analysis. In other words, we are not just offering bookkeeping services for small business owners who hate QuickBooks. We are helping you understand what your numbers mean and how they affect your tax planning, cash flow, and business decisions.
Accounting platforms have a way of making everyone feel like a CPA. But accounting is a profession, not a hobby, and it extends far beyond checking off boxes in a bank feed. QuickBooks accounting services should do more than confirm that transactions downloaded from the bank; they should create financial records that are reliable, tax-ready, and useful for decision-making.
We often hear, “What do you mean my books are a mess? All my accounts are reconciled!”
The reality? Business owners are usually great at making widgets, but, and to be blunt, they’re typically lousy at accounting. Keep in mind that WCG CPAs & Advisors sees over 6,000 financial statements a year. We know what looks good, what is actually good, and what is one hot mess. We see:
The list goes on (and on, and on, like a Journey song).
WCG is more than a data-entry service. Our small business bookkeeping services are built around a simple idea: accounting should be Bookkeeping + Analysis.
Bookkeeping tells us what happened. Analysis tells us what it means. Our approach is designed to:
In other words, we are not just closing the books. We are helping you understand the story your numbers are telling.
For many owners, outsourced accounting services are not about giving up control. They are about getting better information without having to become the accounting department.
A good small business accountant helps keep the books clean, the financial reports useful, and the tax planning conversations grounded in actual data. That matters because messy books do not just create tax-season stress. They can distort profit, hide cash flow problems, bury deductions, and make business decisions harder than they need to be.
When your bookkeeping, reporting, and tax planning are connected, you get a clearer picture of where your business stands and what needs attention next.
Banks, lenders, tax agencies, and other third parties review financial records all the time. They can spot accidental inconsistencies, sloppy classifications, and strange balances from a mile away.
Having a professional accounting team involved from the start adds credibility and discipline to your financial reporting. It also helps ensure that when someone asks for your financials, you are not scrambling to clean up six months of chaos the night before the deadline.
Ultimately, it comes down to a simple question: Would you rather be closing your next sale, BBQing with friends, or getting sucked into a QuickBooks rabbit hole on a Sunday afternoon? Anyone?
Focus on growing your business. We’ll focus on analyzing the data, handling the operational reporting, and ensuring your tax liability is as low as legally possible.
Our accounting services are built around the level of support your business needs, from basic tax-ready bookkeeping to more robust financial reporting, analysis, planning, and advisory support. Whether you need outsourced accounting services, QuickBooks accounting services, Xero accounting support or a CPA for small business tax planning and accounting, the right package depends on your volume, complexity, and how often you need useful financial information.
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Foundation
Organized, Tax-Ready Books
Starting at
$250/mo
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Insight
Books Plus Analysis
Starting at
$325/mo
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Horizon
Planning & Performance
Starting at
$450/mo
|
|
Core Bookkeeping |
|||
| Transaction Categorization & Coding | |||
| Maximizing Bonus, Sec 179 In Real Time | |||
| Sales Tax Filing | — | Add-On | Add-On |
| Personal Property Tax | Add-On | Add-On | Add-On |
| Bank & Credit Card Reconciliation | |||
| Financial Statement Preparation | |||
| Tax-Return Readiness | |||
| Books Updated & Delivered | 2x Per Year | 3x Per Year | 6x Per Year |
Analysis & Visibility |
|||
| Financial Statement Analysis | — | ||
| Reporting Tools (Reach Reporting) | — | ||
| Scheduled Review Conversations | — | ||
Planning & Performance |
|||
| Forecasting & Projections | — | — | |
| Benchmarking & Industry Comparison | — | — | |
| Business Performance Insight | — | — |
All starting points assume two bank accounts (one checking and one credit card), fewer than 250 transactions, and 10 manual checks per month. Do we really count each transaction? No, but we have to start somewhere.
For many small business owners, bi-monthly accounting services provide the right balance between timely information and practical cost. Six deliverables a year gives you enough visibility to make operational decisions, catch issues, and answer the always-fun “where is my money going?” question without requiring a full monthly close.
Given volume and complexity, we might require bi-monthly (or at times monthly) cadence.
Deliverables land around May/June and September/October, with a third cycle in January/February ahead of tax season. Designed for the business owner who isn’t living inside their financial statements month to month, but wants valid tax deductions captured, the books clean, and an early tax return ready to go.
When considering that our tax planning season is May, June and July, the predictability of the future based on a singular May / June financial statement can be challenging. This is where you, the savvy business owner, comes in to help use the limited history to predict the future.
Annual accounting services are best for business owners who mainly need tax-return readiness and do not rely on financial statements throughout the year to manage operations. It is not a great fit if you need bi-monthly or monthly accounting services, lender-ready financials, cash flow monitoring, or regular business financial reporting services.
Annual small business accounting is available starting in April, which comes with a real limitation worth understanding. January through March is heads-down season for our team as they wrap up monthly, bi-monthly, and quad-monthly books and build tax packages. That means your books won’t be ready until spring at the earliest, and your business tax return will need to be extended. No way around it. Two options once we get rolling:
For certain engagements that vary from time to time, we will customize a base plus model where we have a base fee which includes so many hours, and if we exceed those hours during the reporting period, we charge an hourly rate of $250. These engagements are not super common, but at times are required given the ebb and flow of your business activities.
Managing properties is its own animal, and so is the bookkeeping behind it. Between your management company’s own books, trust or separate account reconciliations, owner 1099s, and lodging tax across a pile of jurisdictions, it is a different job than standard small business accounting. We built a dedicated service for it, including the trust reconciliation discipline and STR platform fluency the work actually demands. If you are running doors, not just owning them, that is the accounting service you want.
Stop stitching it together in spreadsheets at midnight. See the bookkeeping service built for how property management companies actually run.
Ok, nobody likes little fees here and there. But…
Our quoted Accounting Services scope of work and therefore fees rely on a stable environment. At times, your spending and business habits can change or spike or make left turns, or whatever you want to call it. As such, here is a list of Accounting Services Add-On fees, and to save energy and avoid unnecessary hassles, these fees are invoiced and automatically paid with the payment information on file. We will always explain the add-on fee to you ahead of time.
| Loan Setup and Amortization Schedule | $75 |
| Rental Asset Setup | See Rental Setup |
| Bank Account or Credit Card Account | $150 |
| Transaction Exceedance (over scope, per 250) | $150 |
| Check Transaction Exceedance (over scope, per 10) | $100 |
These are the common add-on fees that we can price accordingly. The following list outlines examples of out of scope requests and accounting matters that are charged at $250 per hour. Of course, these issues are discussed with you and agreed upon before starting-
Adjusting and clean up work for accounting software modules not being used properly. Huh? Did we just blame you? Maybe. Practically, many software packages that plug into or connect with or integrate or whatever sales brochure verb is being tossed around work... most of the time. These relationships are fragile, however. An update here. A fat finger there. An accidental click here. And these things can break.
We will deliver your financials in draft form if you do not respond to our emails regarding missing information or clarifications. No biggie, but at the same time we need to move off and move along. As such, we publish Draft Financial Statements, and clearly identify the issues preventing us from finalizing the data set. Should you later clarify the unresolved issues, additional fees may apply to resolve those items after the draft is issued.
To move from reading about our services to seeing how they apply to your specific situation, the Accounting Assessment is the essential next step. By sharing a few details about your current setup and goals, we can tailor a scope of work and fee structure that fits your business perfectly.
We just reviewed the basic accounting services above, but accounting can also have several offshoots and complexity. Let’s run through some of the most common ones.
Most small business owners are cash-based (versus accrual). The IRS code recently changed, allowing more taxpayers to be cash based, and it has even expanded some hybrid methods. If you need accrual-based accounting for whatever reason, (better tax position in the near future, required by your franchisor or investors, etc.) this adds time to the accounting service.
Sales tax is not just a retail problem. Plenty of service-oriented businesses have a retail angle that triggers a sales tax obligation. Dentists selling products, veterinarians moving merchandise, contractors pulling permits on materials. Filing frequency varies between monthly, quarterly, and annually depending on volume and jurisdiction, and missing a filing is the kind of thing that compounds quietly until it does not.
WCG handles sales tax filings for a wide range of small business clients. Where we draw the line is Amazon merchants, FBA sellers, and online retailers with multi-state nexus. That world has its own specialized complexity, and there are firms that live in it full time. Our recommendation is taxjar.com.
Many counties tax not just your real estate but the equipment and furnishings deployed in your business. Do not let the word “personal” throw you off. It just means non-real estate property. It is a thing, it needs to be filed, and it is easy to miss.
Inventory ComplexityInventory opens a whole can of worms. How often are you counting? Do you even need to count (lot numbers or a tax code exemption might get you out of it)? What valuation method are you using: FIFO, LIFO, weighted average cost? Do you have direct labor or depreciation baked into your cost of goods sold? Ok, we really beat the heck out of that stuff. The point is, inventory adds meaningful time to accounting services.
Certain industries have their own quirks. Construction involves job costing, where expenses get allocated to specific projects and capitalized. Retail brings cash handling, theft adjustments, and inventory swings. Contractors like electrical, HVAC, and plumbing often want to track sales and service revenue separately. Attorneys have trust accounts and goofy 1099s that need special handling. For property managers, are you issuing 1099s in gross rent received or net proceeds to the owner? If your industry has a quirk, we have probably seen it.
Time billing systems, patient billing platforms, point of sale systems, and a zillion other operations-oriented tools all claim to integrate seamlessly with QuickBooks or Xero. Generally they do. But they can also create phantom revenue, double-counted income, and other downright stupid problems that are easy to miss and painful to unwind. As an attorney, for example, do you want to pay taxes on uncollected revenue (accrual) or on cash actually received (cash basis)? That answer matters a lot when your billing software is cheerfully dumping data into your accounting platform without asking.
This is one of the sneaky places where QuickBooks accounting services become valuable. The software may be working exactly as designed, while still producing financial reports that are wrong, misleading, or just plain weird.
We often skip the direct integration entirely. Instead, we pull reports or data exports, synthesize them into something coherent, and make clean adjusting entries in QuickBooks or Xero. Less exciting, fewer disasters.
Some franchises are basic… you pay a few bucks, and get to use their name and their processes. Others are super overbearing. It is not necessarily the franchisor’s fault… they might be required, either contractually or the Federal Trade Commission, to present consolidated financial statements of all their franchises, and therefore you must report transactions in a certain fashion for compliance. In other words, the franchisor supplies the Chart of Accounts, and determines where things go, the accounting method and how often reporting must be performed.
This isn’t a super huge deal, but when you start piling on 401k plans, disability, insurance and other benefits platforms, they create extra time during payroll entries. You pay your staff on Friday. On the same day, we must book the obligations for all the payroll stuff although you might be cash based as an accounting method. This is just to make the journal entry from the payroll activity tie out. Then we need to make sure these payables are cleared when paid. Again, not a huge deal, but certainly more complexity.
Accounting is more than memorializing transactions for a small business. Business financial reporting services should help owners understand what happened, what changed, and what deserves attention before it becomes a problem.
WCG analyzes financial statements to look for obvious misstatements, missed deductions, unusual trends, and operational opportunities. This includes:
There are two questions we want to answer. What does a financial statement mean to you? How can you use it to get more out of your business?
Additionally, one of our concerns with financial statements and accounting records that are not prepared by a CPA firm is that you might not be getting all the tax deductions you are entitled to.
Statistical comparisons and trend analysis is a service we provide to each owner to identify action items and areas needing improvement. We can leverage Fathom reporting and First Research to provide baseline data for your industry or peer group. How do you compare to yourself over time, and how do you compare to others in the same business? For example, for restaurants factoring the impact of cost of goods sold, labor and rent on business profits, the variations can be dramatic. We will work with you to keep more of your money as you continue to develop your business.
Anyone can crunch numbers. But effective small business accounting services should explain what the numbers mean, how your business compares to itself over time, and where planning opportunities might exist. We crunch the numbers, translate the story, and help you use the information to make better decisions.
We don’t believe in "call center" accounting. When you engage with WCG, you aren’t just getting a software subscription; you are getting a dedicated team of professionals who understand the nuances of your business.
Our accounting department is led by Karlee Tiesler, EA, Director of Accounting Services, and supported by our experienced Managers, Michelle Ihlefeldt, EA, Mitchell Wade, CPA and Sumit Sirwani, CA.
To maintain a small-firm feel with large-firm resources, our team is structured into agile "Pods." This allows your dedicated professionals to stay in constant communication with your tax preparer, ensuring that the person doing your books is talking to the person planning your tax strategy.
Reach Reporting integrates seamlessly with QuickBooks Online and Xero to provide real-time financial reporting and tools for financial performance data in a secure and easy way. With the built-in dashboards and report builder, WCG CPAs & Advisors connects your financial data to create powerful dashboards and enhanced visuals. Backed by their SOC 2 Type I and Type II certifications, the Reach Reporting app only retrieves data from the online platform and never modifies or replaces any information stored there.
Reach Reporting makes reporting, forecasting and budgeting easy with powerful dashboards and enhanced visuals. You, the business owner, will gain valuable insights into your business trajectory with their 3-Way Forecasting feature. By connecting your profit & loss, balance sheet, and cash flow statement, we create a comprehensive view of your financials with automated cash flow forecasting.
See it in Action! Financial statements should tell a clear story about your business health without requiring a degree in accounting to decipher. Click below to explore a sample report and see how we translate your raw data into a clear, visual summary.
We exclusively support QuickBooks Online, Xero, and REIHub. The benefit of these cloud-based platforms is real-time visibility from any device.
And for our rental property managers, your property management platform, AppFolio, Buildium, Yardi, Propertyware, Rent Manager, DoorLoop, and the like, stays the system of record for the trust side, where the trust accounting actually lives, and we reconcile and tie the two together. Right book, right place.
A Note on Data Custody: To ensure the integrity of your records, WCG maintains 100% custody of the financial data. While you will have full visibility, your access will be read-only. Think of it as a safety net- we hold the pen so you can focus on the business without worrying about accidental deletions or "un-reconciling" a month we’ve already closed. In other words, please don't help. In some cases, we'd rather pay you to just watch. Ok, that was a bit much, but you get it.
WCG provides the following core accounting services:
Most small business accounting services should not be priced like a mystery box. Your small business accounting fee depends on account volume, transaction activity, reporting cadence, entity complexity, payroll activity, integrations, and the level of analysis you need.
Does your "square peg" not fit the starting fees above? No worries. We customize fees based on your specific needs. Over 80% of our small business owners pay less than $550 per month. An extra account or a few more transactions won't dramatically compound your fee.
It’s a crummy deal, but our service fees do not include the software subscription. Historically, firms received massive discounts, but changes to Intuit’s pricing model (for example) mean those savings no longer justify the administrative hassle of WCG paying the bill. We will collect your payment information and set up your billing directly with the provider. Piece of cake.
Our accounting services are specialized. We do not provide invoicing, accounts receivable collections, or bill pay (accounts payable). Our work is typically performed on a cash-basis; if you require accrual-basis bookkeeping, let's talk.
Please note that these services are for internal management use and cannot be relied upon to disclose fraud, errors, or illegal acts. Furthermore, WCG is not providing "assurance" services—we are not engaged to perform a compilation, review, or audit as defined by industry "terms of art." No formal auditor’s report will be issued.
At WCG CPAs & Advisors, we believe your financial success requires more than seasonal tax preparation. It requires a dedicated, year-round partnership. We have intentionally built a unified, 90-person firm spanning the United States and our wholly owned operations in India, WCG Global Services Private Limited. This global footprint lets us attract and retain talent who are deeply invested in your long-term financial health.
Our India team members are just that: our team members. They are trained in the WCG way by experienced CPAs and Chartered Accountants (CA) including in-house full-time trainers who lead quality control on all accounting work. Everything is reviewed, and reviewed again, by our Accounting Managers before it reaches you.
That structure is not an accident. Direct control over our entire workforce means you get consistent, high-caliber service without the gaps that come from outsourcing to firms we do not own or manage.
Offshoring is not new to the accounting industry. Well-known firms have been sending tax return preparation and accounting work overseas for more than two decades. What matters is how it is done. WCG follows accounting industry best practices and IRS compliance directives for data security and identity protection, drawing on the experience of hundreds of CPA firms that have built responsible global practices before us. When you partner with WCG, you get one cohesive team and the confidence that your data is handled with the same care as your finances.
Please review our Accounting Services Engagement Agreement.
WCG CPAs & Advisors and Jason Watson, CPA, have released the 2025 Edition of Taxpayer’s Comprehensive Guide to LLCs and S Corps. Over 400 pages of pure pleasure! This edition has updated 2025 data such as IRA and 401k limits including Social Security wage limits, but it also has a bunch of new information spread out various chapters such as customized multi-entity structures, expanded reasonable shareholder salary sections, more tax reduction mechanics among various little tidbits gleaned from hundreds of small business consultations. Riveting!
It is available in paperback for $49.95 from Amazon and as an eBook for Kindle for $39.95. Our book is also available for purchase as a PDF from ClickBank for $29.95. Why do we all love 95 cents? We all know that 39.95 is really 40 bucks. At least we are not like gas stations… $39.949. Silly! Yet we digress. Apple iBook, Barnes and Noble Nook, among others are not utilized since their format is challenging to make mini updates here and there.
How can I avoid self-employment taxes? This simple question was the inspiration for creating an article describing the benefits of an S Corporation. That original article, which was about four pages long, quickly became a series of Knowledge Base articles on the WCG website. The articles touched on basic topics such as how to elect S Corp status, shareholder payroll, reasonable salary determination and liability protection. Those broad topics demanded much more information, both horizontally by spanning into more related issues, and vertically by digging deeper into the granular yet riveting levels of the tax code. Beyond general S Corp benefits, our book will show you-
This book is written with the general taxpayer in mind. Too many resources simply regurgitate complex tax code without explanation. While in some cases tax code and court opinions are duplicated verbatim because of precision of the words, this book strives to explain many technical concepts in layperson terms with some added humor and opinions. We believe you will find this book educational as well as amusing.
Each week we receive several phone calls and emails from small business owners and other CPAs across the country who have read our Taxpayer’s Comprehensive Guide to LLCs and S Corps and praised the wealth of information. Regardless of your current situation, whether you are considering starting your own business or entertaining a contracting gig, or you are an experienced business owner, the contents of this book are for you.
While this book’s origins were based on reducing self-employment taxes through an S Corporation election, it has dramatically expanded to sound business advice from entity structures to operational considerations to business tax deductions and retirement planning.
Enjoy! And please send us all comments, hang-ups and static. This book is as much yours as it is ours, except the tiny royalty part- that’s ours. Stop by and we’ll buy you a beer with the pennies.
While we have you, please check out our rental property book aimed at real estate investors, I Just Got A Rental, What Do I Do?
If you buy our 430-page book and think that we didn’t help you understand small business tax law or the benefits of S corporations, let us know. We never want you to feel like you wasted your money. If you are ready to add some insightful reading into your day, click on one of the preferred formats. Amazon is processed by Amazon, and the PDF is safely processed by ClickBank who will email you the PDF as an attachment.
Bookkeeping records and organizes the financial transactions in your business. Accounting takes that bookkeeping data and turns it into financial reports, tax planning opportunities, business analysis, and actual insight. Fancy, we know.
A reconciled bank account simply means the transactions match the bank statement. Neat. It does not mean expenses are categorized correctly, payroll is recorded properly, loans are tracked accurately, or your small business financial statements are useful.
Yes. Outsourced accounting services can help identify missed deductions, improve tax planning, reduce costly bookkeeping mistakes, and free up your time to focus on running the business instead of wrestling with QuickBooks or Xero on a Sunday afternoon.
That depends on your business, reporting needs, and tax planning goals. Some owners only need annual bookkeeping for tax preparation, while others benefit from three updates per year or bi-monthly financial reporting to support better decision-making.
Not always, but a CPA firm can connect bookkeeping, tax preparation, tax planning, and financial reporting into one coordinated process. That often means cleaner books, better deductions, and fewer unpleasant surprises. We like fewer surprises.
WCG works exclusively with QuickBooks Online, Xero, and REIHub. The right accounting software depends on your industry, transaction volume, reporting needs, business complexity, and how much financial visibility you actually need.
Absolutely. Small business tax planning relies on accurate financial data. If your books are incomplete, messy, or wildly creative, your tax strategy is based on guesses instead of facts. And guesses are not a great tax plan.
Nearly every small business can benefit from accounting services, including contractors, consultants, medical professionals, attorneys, franchise owners, rental property investors, and retail businesses. Each industry has its own quirks, and quirks usually require attention.
At a minimum, business owners should understand their profit and loss statement, balance sheet, and cash flow trends. The goal is not just to look at the numbers; it is to understand what they mean and what actions they suggest.
Because bookkeeping tells you what happened. Analysis explains why it happened, what changed, how your business compares to prior periods or peers, and which tax planning or operational issues deserve your attention.
Table Of Contents
Tax planning season is here! Let's schedule a time to review tax reduction strategies and generate a mock tax return.
Tired of maintaining your own books? Seems like a chore to offload?
Did you want to chat about this? Do you have questions about Small Business Accounting Services? Let’s chat!
The tax advisors, business consultants and rental property experts at WCG CPAs & Advisors are not salespeople; we are not putting lipstick on a pig expecting you to love it. Our job remains being professionally detached, giving you information and letting you decide within our ethical guidelines and your risk profiles.
We see far too many crazy schemes and half-baked ideas from attorneys and wealth managers. In some cases, they are good ideas. In most cases, all the entities, layering and mixed ownership is only the illusion of precision. As Chris Rock says, just because you can drive your car with your feet doesn’t make it a good idea. In other words, let’s not automatically convert “you can” into “you must.”
Let’s chat so you can be smart about it.
We typically schedule a 20-minute complimentary quick chat with one of our Partners or our amazing Senior Tax Professionals to determine if we are a good fit for each other, and how an engagement with our team looks. Tax returns only? Business advisory? Tax strategy and planning? Rental property support?
Everything you need to help you launch your new business entity from business entity selection to multiple-entity business structures.
Designed for rental property owners where WCG CPAs & Advisors supports you as your real estate CPA.
Everything you need from tax return preparation for your small business to your rental to your corporation is here.
WCG’s primary objective is to help you to feel comfortable about engaging with us