Absolutely. This is how most small business bookkeeping works today, and honestly it tends to work better than the old way of dropping off a box of receipts at your CPA’s office in March.

With cloud-based accounting software like QuickBooks Online, your bookkeeper and your CPA can both access your company file from anywhere. Your bookkeeper maintains the books throughout the year, and when tax time comes, your CPA logs in and has everything they need. Clean financials, categorized transactions, reconciled accounts, and reports ready to go. No USB drives, no emailing spreadsheets back and forth, no confusion about which version of a file is current.

Here is what that handoff typically looks like in practice. Your bookkeeper closes out the year by making sure all transactions are categorized, bank and credit card accounts are reconciled through December, and the financial statements are accurate. Then they either invite your CPA to the QuickBooks file directly or export the reports the CPA requests. Most CPAs want a profit and loss statement, a balance sheet, and sometimes a general ledger or trial balance. Your bookkeeper can also answer any questions the CPA has about specific transactions or account balances.

The key is that your bookkeeper and CPA are on the same team even though they handle different pieces of the puzzle. The bookkeeper keeps the books accurate throughout the year. The CPA uses those clean books to prepare your tax return and provide tax planning advice. When the books are a mess, your CPA spends billable hours sorting through problems instead of focusing on tax strategy. That costs you more money and often means missed deductions.

Many of our clients at Speak Easy Financial Services come to us specifically because they have a CPA who told them to get their books in order before tax season. Catch-up bookkeeping to clean up months or years of backlog and then hand organized financials to a CPA is one of the things we do most often. We work with CPAs across Jacksonville and beyond because the tools make geography a non-issue.

If anything, working with a QuickBooks ProAdvisor in Jacksonville who manages your books virtually gives your CPA a better experience than what most of their clients provide. Instead of a shoebox full of bank statements, they get professionally maintained books that are ready for tax preparation. Your CPA will thank you for it.