You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.
What a useful firm can say
You opened this page with a pile of firm names, and you still need the month closed. The work you actually need is ordinary. The books get closed against the bank. Payroll is set up on the provider you already use, and you keep the payday button. Statements get written so you can read them. The tax return is prepared from those same months, while there is still time to change a decision.
A firm that leads with a logo is asking you to trust a picture. A firm that can talk has a day of the month when the close is finished, a way to look at cash for the next few weeks without inventing a target, and a plain answer about who prepares the return. If the file would leave with you when you stop, that sentence should be just as easy to hear. If someone needs an audit, a review, or a compilation, that work goes to a firm that can sign it, and you should hear that limit in the first conversation.
Some older months do not match the bank statement. We clean those up once, until you can point at a balance and say which bank it came from. The present is the month you are in, closed on the day you were told. The future is the decision you can still make this fall, about pay, a purchase, or a quiet company that does not need a bigger engagement yet. We would rather tell you to wait than sell you a month you do not need.
How a first month is built
We start with the checking account you already use. Deposits land in the month the money arrived. Bills land in the month they belong, not in a bucket called ask later. The owner's own draws stay out of wages. What you collected as sales tax waits in a liability row until it is sent, and the profit line never includes it. We put the cash in the month it arrived, even when the invoice was dated in a different month. When those pieces match the bank statement, the month is readable, and only then do we talk about the next one.
A 13 week look at cash is a list you refresh, not a promise. Money you expect in, money you expect out, and the bank balance that follows. Rent, vendors, the payroll you run, sales tax set aside, and your own draw each get a row if they are real in your company. We do not print a healthy number of weeks, because no honest page can know your bills from here.
Price depends on how many accounts, how far behind the months are, and whether payroll setup is part of the first scope. No average fee is printed here, because your accounts are not a stranger's accounts. Bring the newest month you believe already ties, and the software you already open. That pair tells us whether a close can begin or whether the older months have to be cleaned up first.
If the books changed hands
The return still opens in January even when we first meet you in June. Anything already sent to the state stays sent. Paychecks already issued remain on the provider that issued them. The work that actually moves is whichever months are still open, and any older month whose balance you cannot trace to a bank.
Bring last year's return so this year's draft has a beginning. A month you can already read is left where it sits. A month you cannot read is the one we open. Cleanup is finished when the balance has a source, not when the question list grows longer.
What payroll setup covers
Before the first payday you want to run yourself, the roster, the pay calendar, and the company that pays them are in place. After that, you still press the button on payday. We do not take that button, and we do not open a second provider so the engagement looks bigger.
A quiet company with no employees does not get a payroll account just to match the company that has them. Pay for an owner who works in the business gets decided with the real months on the table, while the year can still change.
What you can still decide
Start in July or in October and a few choices are still alive. Which company pays you. Whether a purchase is dated before December. Whether one month gets finished on purpose. Those are ordinary owner decisions. None of them promises that a refund will appear.
Money you already sent in as estimates stays on the return as money already sent. We do not wipe those payments, and we do not pretend they were never made. The fall draft and the spring filing should tell one story, unless you and we change a decision while it can still count.