Bookkeeping Made Simple

What should you ask your bookkeeper before the year ends? A clean-looking profit and loss statement doesn't always mean your books are accurate. In this episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc, discusses the essential year-end bookkeeping questions every small business owner should ask. Learn why reconciliations matter, what your balance sheet should tell you, how to identify...

Is your business actually making money, or does it just look that way? Your profit and loss statement can tell you a great deal about your business—but only if your bookkeeping is accurate and you understand what you're looking at. In this episode of Books & Backbone , Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc, owner of Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC, explains how to review your profit and loss statement befor...

November is the perfect time to get your small business bookkeeping in order before the year-end rush. In this episode of Books & Backbone , Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc, owner of Bookkeeping Made Simple LLC, explains why accurate financial records require more than categorized transactions and automatically generated reports. We'll cover six essential November bookkeeping priorities: Closing O...

Before you hire, buy equipment, change your prices, or make plans for 2027, there's one question worth asking: Can you trust your financial statements? In today's episode, Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc, founder of Bookkeeping Made Simple, walks through five important year-end business decisions that depend on accurate bookkeeping. You'll learn why profit isn't the same as cash, how unrel...

Just because your bookkeeping software has categorized every transaction doesn't mean your books are accurate. In this episode of Books & Backbone , Donna Harris of Bookkeeping Made Simple explains the difference between automated transaction categorization and a genuine bookkeeping cleanup. Learn why bank reconciliations, balance sheet reviews, and accounting judgment still matter—even wh...

What does it really take to catch up months—or years—of neglected bookkeeping? In this episode, Donna Harris, owner of Bookkeeping Made Simple, walks through the professional catch-up bookkeeping process, from identifying the starting point and gathering records to reconciling accounts, investigating discrepancies, and correcting errors. Learn why entering transactions isn't the same as produc...

Getting nine months behind on bookkeeping doesn't simply mean you have nine months of transactions to enter. Each unreconciled month can carry problems into the next. Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc, explains what legitimate catch-up bookkeeping actually involves: establishing a reliable starting point, reconciling accounts period by period, investigating discrepancies, correcting balance-sheet errors...

What actually happens when a business goes nine months without reconciling its books? Usually, nothing dramatic—at first. Transactions continue downloading, QuickBooks keeps producing reports, and the P&L may look perfectly reasonable. Meanwhile, duplicate transactions, missing activity, incorrect balances, unapplied payments, loan discrepancies, and other problems can quietly accumulate under...

What bookkeeping problems have quietly followed your business into Q4? In this episode, Donna Harris walks through a practical review business owners can use to spot missing reconciliations, unresolved discrepancies, questionable balance-sheet accounts, old receivables, inaccurate loan balances, and other issues before year-end. The goal isn't to turn business owners into accountants. It's...

Whatever is wrong with your books on December 31 doesn't disappear when the calendar turns to January. In this episode, Donna Harris explains why October is the time to identify unreconciled accounts, questionable balances, old receivables, loan discrepancies, and other bookkeeping problems that may have accumulated quietly during the year. She also explains the difference between simply categ...

Q4 is almost here. But finishing the year intentionally isn’t about scrambling in December to hit arbitrary goals—it’s about knowing where your business actually stands and deciding what you want the final quarter to accomplish. In this episode of Books & Backbone , Donna Harris talks about what an intentional year-end really looks like: reviewing your numbers, identifying what still needs att...

Don't start your 2027 plan with an arbitrary growth percentage. Start with what 2026 actually taught you. Donna Harris explains how to use revenue, margins, cash flow, staffing, capacity and owner goals to build a forward-looking plan grounded in real financial information. The books may record the past—but their real value is helping you decide what to do next.

The September estimated-tax payment is behind us. Now it's time to look at Q4. Donna Harris explains why estimated payments shouldn't simply run on autopilot, how changes in profit and income can make an earlier estimate obsolete, and why tax reserves should be treated as unavailable operating cash. Taxes are easier to manage when the money is reserved while it's earned—not searched fo...

100% bonus depreciation can make year-end equipment purchases attractive—but a deduction doesn't make an unnecessary purchase smart. Donna Harris explains bonus depreciation, Section 179, the importance of placing property in service, and the financial questions an owner should answer before spending money solely because December 31 is approaching. Buy what makes the business stronger. Then us...

Q4 brings equipment purchases, estimated taxes, distributions, hiring decisions and year-end tax strategies. But the right decision for one business can be exactly wrong for another. Donna Harris explains why good Q4 planning starts with reliable financial information—and why cash in the bank isn't necessarily cash available to spend. Clean books aren't the objective. They're what allo...

Can you file a tax return from unreliable books? Certainly. But can you establish that the business numbers on that return accurately reflect what happened? That's a different question. In this episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris explains why a P&L isn't automatically reliable simply because accounting software produced it, why revenue is more complicated than deposits hittin...

A bookkeeping cleanup isn't just categorizing transactions and making QuickBooks look tidy. In this episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris explains what a legitimate cleanup actually establishes: whether the transactions are complete, whether bank, credit-card and loan balances agree with independent records, whether receivables represent money customers actually owe, and whether the fi...

If your books are behind, it is not too late. September and October are the cleanup window — the last real opportunity to identify what's wrong, do the work to fix it, and enter year-end with financial information you can actually use. In this solo episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris walks through what a legitimate cleanup actually involves, how long it takes, and what you have on th...

Q4 revenue often looks strong. And then you look at the gross margin — and it's lower than it's been all year. Strong revenue masking margin compression is one of the most common and least visible financial patterns in small business Q4s. In this solo episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris explains the four specific dynamics that compress gross margins in Q4 even when revenue is gro...

Whatever is sitting in your 30-day receivables bucket today is at risk of becoming a 60-day problem by mid-October. Q4 extends payment timelines for everyone — holiday distractions, year-end cash management, accounts payable departments that slow in December. The slow-paying clients you have right now are going to be slower-paying clients in Q4. In this solo episode of Books & Backbone, Donna...

Today is September 11th — the 25th anniversary. This is not a regular episode. No framework, no financial concepts. Just a brief reflection on what this day means — the before and the after, what ordinary mornings are worth, and what it means to keep building something in a country that absorbs hard things and continues. Back to regular content tomorrow. Donna Harris, MBA, MAcc CEO, Bookkeeping Ma...

Q4 has cash flow dynamics that other quarters don't. Holiday inventory gaps. December slow-pays. Year-end bonus payroll. Annual expense clusters. Q4 tax reserves. None of them are surprises — if you're looking at the forecast before October arrives. In this solo episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris walks through what makes Q4 specifically challenging from a cash flow perspective a...

Your year-to-date financials contain eight months of information about what's really happening inside your business. The question is: are you actually reading what they're telling you? In this episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris explains how to look beyond the totals on your financial statements and start reading the story behind the numbers. Revenue may be growing while margins...

What should you know about your business finances before Q4 starts? In this episode of Books & Backbone, Donna Harris breaks down four things every business owner should understand before October 1: • Actual cash position • Year-to-date gross margin • Accounts receivable aging • Expense trends Revenue alone doesn’t tell you whether your business is financially healthy. Sales can increase while...

Why does September matter so much to your business finances? Because you finally have enough information to see how the year is really going — while still having enough time to do something about it. In this episode of Books & Backbone, Donna explains why September is the ideal window for reviewing your financial position before Q4. You'll learn what to look for on your Profit & Loss,...