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The Learning Center
Answers to the money questions owners actually ask.
Clear, useful answers to what Shopify, retail, and contractor owners ask us most, plus free checklists, from two CPAs who do this every day.
Grab the checklist for your business.
The routines and worksheets two CPAs use, free, one email. Pick what fits.
Shopify & Ecommerce
The Shopify Bookkeeping Checklist
The monthly routine that keeps Shopify books clean, sales tax handled, and your pay-yourself number clear.
Retail & Boutique
The Retail & Boutique Bookkeeping Checklist
Inventory, merchant deposits, sales tax, and real margin, done right, month by month.
Contractors & Trades
The Contractor’s Bookkeeping Checklist
Job costing, owner pay, equipment, and 1099s handled, so you know which jobs actually made money.
Real Estate Investors
The Rental Property Bookkeeping Checklist
Per-property tracking, repairs versus improvements, and deposits handled right, so you know which door actually pays.
Pay Yourself First
The Pay Yourself First Starter Kit
The four account system that makes sure the owner gets paid, with starting percentages and a bank visit checklist.
Taxes
The Tax Set-Aside Cheat Sheet
The 15 percent habit that makes April boring, with the set aside table and the three mistakes that undo it.
Owner Pay
What Can I Pay Myself?
A six step worksheet from last month's deposits to a pay number you can trust, worked example included.
Shopify & Ecommerce
The Shopify Payout Decoder
A real $10,000 month decoded line by line: real revenue, hidden fees, and the sales tax that was never yours.
Cash Flow
The Monthly Nut Worksheet
Twenty minutes to the number your business must earn every month, with an A, B, C sort that usually finds cuts.
Bookkeeping
The Clean Books Grader
Ten yes-or-no questions, one score out of ten, and what to fix first. Question 10 is the one that matters.
Guides from two CPAs.
Our Process
The Client Journey
Every client moves through the same five stages, from behind on the books to paying yourself first. See the whole map.
Shopify
Is Your Shopify Payout the Same as Your Revenue?
No, and treating it like it is quietly breaks your books. What’s really inside a payout, and how to record it.
Owner Pay
How Much Can You Actually Pay Yourself?
The bank balance lies to you. The pay-yourself-first way to set owner pay without starving the business or the tax bill.
Cost & Price
What Should Bookkeeping Cost? The 1 to 2% Benchmark
The benchmark accountants use on themselves, what it works out to at every revenue tier, and why it scales as you grow.
Cost & Price
How Much Does Shopify Bookkeeping Actually Cost?
Real pricing ranges, what drives the differences, and how to evaluate what you’re actually getting.
Problems
What DIY Shopify Books Really Cost You
DIY bookkeeping looks free until it isn’t. The real cost in missed deductions, tax exposure, and the cleanup later.
Comparison
Can AI Do Your Shopify Bookkeeping?
AI bookkeeping tools have raised a lot of money and shut down a lot of businesses. What they can and can’t do.
Sales Tax
Does Poshmark Remit Your Sales Tax?
Poshmark collects Tennessee sales tax for you. Your own Shopify store usually doesn’t. Who handles what, channel by channel.
Owner Pay
Owner Draws vs. Contributions vs. Loans
A deposit into your business account isn’t automatically income. How to tell them apart before the books guess wrong.
Taxes & Cash
How to Set Aside Cash for Taxes All Year
A simple, numbers-based way to set money aside all year so tax season stops being a surprise.
Retail & Boutique
The Retail & Boutique Cash and Inventory Guide
Why your money hides on the shelves. Inventory, COGS, margin, and how much to pay yourself.
Shopify
Shopify Bookkeeping for Smaller Stores: A2X and the DIY Starting Point
Not ready for monthly service yet? The one tool and the simple routine that keep DIY books clean.
Quick answers on video.
Short videos from two CPAs on the questions we get asked most. New ones every week.
Your Shopify payout is not your revenue.
How much of every deposit should go to taxes?
The rest of the shelf.
Shorter pieces and reference reading, all written by the two CPAs who do the work.
Job costing for contractors: how to see which jobs made money
A healthy P&L can still hide a job that lost money. How job costing actually works, and how we set it up.
How much does bookkeeping cost for contractors?
Job costing, retainage, and progress billing: the vocabulary that actually drives the price.
How much should you pay yourself from an LLC?
Draws, distributions, and reasonable compensation. An LLC has three answers, not one.
How much does bookkeeping cost in Knoxville?
Local pricing instead of national averages, and what actually drives the number.
Does your accountant check your books before taxes?
Books and the return are two different jobs. What falls through the gap between them.
What does a QuickBooks diagnostic review actually find?
Six specific things that turn up almost every time, from uncategorized piles to sales tax sitting in income.
How to read a balance sheet
What your business owns and owes, in plain language.
How to read a profit and loss statement
The report most owners glance at and few actually use.
Cash vs accrual accounting
Which method fits your business, and why it changes your numbers.
The costliest bookkeeping mistakes
The errors we find most often, and what they end up costing.
The monthly bookkeeping checklist
The routine that keeps a set of books clean all year.
Bookkeeping, explained
What the service actually covers and what good looks like.
Who we work best with
An honest look at who we fit, and who we do not.
Ready to talk?
Reading is a great start. A CPA conversation is better.
The articles answer the general questions. A call answers yours specifically.