Bookkeeping
Alpine Accounts provides bookkeeping for small businesses in Hervey Bay, Toogoom, Burrum Heads, Maryborough and across the Fraser Coast in Queensland, and works remotely with businesses anywhere in Australia. The work covers bank reconciliation, coding and categorisation, payroll, accounts payable and receivable, and keeping the books current so the numbers can be trusted at any point in the year. Laurence Ward has spent more than 50 years on Australian business books. The practice works inside whichever accounting platform the business already uses.
What the work actually involves
Bookkeeping is the part of a business that is invisible when it is done well and extremely expensive when it is not. Transactions get coded as they land rather than in a panic at the end of the quarter. Bank accounts, credit cards and payment platforms get reconciled to the statement, not to a guess. Payroll runs on time with super and leave accruals current.
The result is that when you want to know something, the answer is already there. Most business owners have had the experience of asking a simple question, such as whether last month was actually profitable, and finding that nobody can answer it without a week of work first. That is a bookkeeping problem, not an accounting problem.
How it runs day to day
Bank feeds are connected so transactions arrive automatically. Receipts are captured from your phone rather than accumulating in the ute. Recurring items are set up with rules so they code themselves. What is left is the genuinely ambiguous transactions, which is where a human is actually worth paying for.
You get a regular cadence rather than an annual scramble. For most businesses that is a weekly or fortnightly pass, with a month end close that produces reports you can act on.
Who it suits
Sole traders and small to medium businesses that have outgrown doing the books themselves but are not large enough to justify a finance team. If you are doing reconciliations on a Sunday night, or your accountant sends back a list of queries every year that takes days to answer, this is the gap.
Common questions
Do I have to change accounting software?
No. Alpine Accounts works in Xero, MYOB, QuickBooks Online, Reckon, Sage, Zoho Books, Saasu, Wave, Hubdoc and Dext. Laurence logs into your system rather than moving you onto his.
How often will my books be updated?
Most clients are on a weekly or fortnightly cycle, with a month end close. The right cadence depends on transaction volume. A business with daily takings needs a different rhythm to one that invoices monthly.
What if my books are years behind?
That is common and it is fixable. The first step is a catch up to bring historical periods up to date, then an ongoing cadence so it does not happen again. Laurence will tell you honestly how big the catch up is before you commit to anything.