Short answers
Who closes the month, and on what day?
We do, with you. The day is named in the scope, and the month is not called finished until the bank agrees. You should hear a day from any firm you are comparing. A range like ongoing is not a day.
Who drafts the return from the closed months?
The return is drafted here from the months that already closed, and you read that draft before anything is filed. If a firm goes quiet when you ask about the return, the books and the tax work are about to be split, and you will be the one explaining the year twice.
Can the file leave with you?
The software login stays yours. The records are yours. If you stop, you leave with the file. A useful proposal says that in a sentence. Ask for the sentence before you start, not after a disagreement.
Which signature will you refuse?
An audit, a review, and a compilation. When a contract asks for one of those, the first call names it and points you toward a firm allowed to sign it. The close and the return can still be prepared here so that firm has something true to read.
What if I do not need a firm yet?
Then we should say so. A quiet company may need one month closed and nothing else. A marketplace implies you should hire. This page does not. Ask us to tell you to wait if that is the honest read.
The shape behind the answers
Every answer above is trying to show a thing you can check, not a mood. A close should work like a mark you can see from across the room. You should know whether you are looking at the real month, the way you know a familiar building from the road, and you should not need a tour to tell.
Price is the question people are shy about and firms are loud about. A useful price names the work. We still print no figure of our own here. Bring their number to a call if you want it compared with the rows, not with a second number on a web page.
Two more questions that change the scope
Ask who sets payroll up, and who actually runs payday. Setup is the people, the pay dates, and the provider you already use. After setup, the payday button stays with you. A firm that wants to take payday over is selling a different job. Ask whether a second company with no employees gets a payroll account anyway. If the answer is yes, you are paying for symmetry, not for work.
Ask what happens to estimates already paid, and to the next federal estimate while the year is still open. Those estimates remain on the return as money you already sent. We leave them in place, and we do not act as if they never happened. The next estimate should come from the same books as the close. A firm that treats the estimate as someone else's spring problem is splitting the year in half.
Ask whether a month that changed hands in June still starts from January. The return does. Filings already sent to the state stay on the record where they were sent. What moves is the open months, plus any older month that never tied to the bank. If a proposal starts the story in the month you signed, last year's return is about to be written with no beginning.
Write the close day the proposal left blank, or name the October meeting it skipped. A day, a return, an exit, or a wait is enough to start. We answer that one before anyone talks about a monthly rhythm, and we say when the honest read is to wait rather than to hire.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.