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.
Demo 7 — Lock the Books
The last step of a proper month-end close, and the one almost every DIY owner skips. Reconciling the accounts and posting the adjustments only holds if nobody can quietly edit a month you already closed. Setting a closing date takes ten seconds in QuickBooks Online — and without it, every report you reviewed can be rewritten behind you.
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™