Hey everyone, I run a small IT services company (~$1M revenue, 5 employees).

I’ve been doing the same chaotic thing every year: I use QuickBooks to invoice customers, but I never reconcile bank statements or record expenses during the year. Then tax season hits and my accountant asks for everything. I end up spending a weekend manually going through 12 months of bank statements, matching receipts, categorizing expenses, before sending it all to him. He charges $2k for year-end filing.

This year it finally caught up with me. I kept postponing the filing because I was dealing with other business challenges and ended up paying penalties to the government.

I only have about 100-120 transactions per month including payroll, so it’s not massive volume. My accountant asked $800/month for bookkeeping, but I think I’d still have to send him receipts, bills, statements, answer his emails etc.. etc.. so I’m doing half the work anyway.

My question: Is there a middle ground between:

• Doing nothing all year and paying penalties
• Paying $9k/year for a bookkeeper when I’m still doing half the work

Are any of you in a similar boat? What’s working for you? Is monthly bookkeeping actually worth it, or are there tools/approaches that make DIY less painful?