Is Your QuickBooks Tax-Ready?
Most business owners think their books are ready for tax season — until they sit down with their CPA.
Watch this short overview to find out where you stand.
The Tax Ready Bookkeeping Method — in Seven Short Videos
This series walks through the complete Tax Ready Bookkeeping methodology — six demos, start to finish. It begins with a maturity assessment of your QuickBooks file, moves through onboarding, policy enforcement, and the payables cycle, and ends with the full order-to-cash chain: invoicing, approval, collection, and proof. Each video is short and self-contained — use the table below to jump to the one you need.
| Demo | What it covers |
|---|---|
| 1 — Maturity Assessment | Score your QuickBooks file against 51 tax-readiness criteria. |
| 2 — Customer / Vendor Onboarding | Capture every onboarding decision once, so nothing has to be guessed later. |
| 3 — Policy-to-Rego | Turn a written bookkeeping policy into code that runs on every transaction. |
| 4 — Inbound Invoice (AP) | Capture vendor bills cleanly, however they arrive — portal, email, or card. |
| 5 — Periodic Reconciliation | Match your books against the bank — the one task whose whole job is proof. |
| 6a — Cash-In, Part A: Invoicing & AR | Get the invoice built from an authorization, approved, and chased. |
| 6b — Cash-In, Part B: Cash-In Matching | Match every deposit back to the invoice that earned it — and prove it. |
Demo 1 — Maturity Assessment
The front door of the methodology. We score a representative QuickBooks file against 51 tax-readiness criteria — chart of accounts, 1099 setup, reconciliation discipline, and more — to show exactly where a business stands and what it would take to be genuinely tax-ready.
Demo 2 — Customer / Vendor Onboarding
Onboarding is the cheapest place to get things right. This walkthrough shows the standardized sequence for setting up a new customer or vendor — W-9s, 1099 eligibility, certificates of insurance, payment terms — capturing every decision once so no transaction downstream has to guess.
Demo 3 — Policy-to-Rego
The engine behind the method. A bookkeeping policy written in plain English is compiled into machine-enforceable code, then evaluated against real transactions — so a firm’s rules are applied consistently and automatically, not left to memory.
Demo 4 — Inbound Invoice (AP)
The payables side. Bills arrive in messy ways — vendor portals, email PDFs, credit-card charges with names that match nothing in QuickBooks. This demo shows how Tax Ready captures each one cleanly, with the right vendor, the right account, and a 1099 flag set correctly.
Demo 5 — Periodic Reconciliation
Reconciliation is the one bookkeeping task whose entire purpose is proof. We match a month of statement lines against the books in three passes — exact, date-tolerant, and fuzzy — and surface the one line that never matched. Every match becomes a record you can defend, not just a checkmark.
Demo 6a — Cash-In, Part A: Invoicing & AR
Part A of the order-to-cash cycle. Onboard the customer, build the invoice from an accepted estimate, run it through an enforced approval gate before it ever sends, then track what’s owed with an A/R aging report and a graduated reminder ladder. Getting paid starts long before the money moves.
Demo 6b — Cash-In, Part B: Cash-In Matching
The capstone. When cash lands, it gets matched to the invoice it’s paying — including Stripe deposits where a processing fee makes the numbers not line up. Then one receipt is pulled forward to reveal the whole audit trail: receipt to payment to invoice to approval to customer to contract, every link already connected. You’re not just paid — you’re provably paid.
Ready to Get Your Books in Order?
At ProjectBits Consulting, we help small businesses and professional service firms get their QuickBooks set up right — so tax filing is seamless, not stressful.
Chart of Accounts Review
Is your chart of accounts structured for clean tax reporting?
1099 Compliance
Missing 1099s can mean $310+ per form in IRS penalties.
Monthly Close Process
A consistent close process means no year-end surprises.
Don Lovett | ProjectBits Consulting | don@projectbits.com | 703-434-1660
Learn more about Tax Ready Bookkeeping™