CPA and Bookkeeping Fort Worth AlternativeThe stub and the books share a month.

The corner of the stub is the whole argument

People look at the net pay. We look at the period. If the period says the last week of the month and the books posted the wages in the next month, both documents are telling a story. They are not telling the same one.

We pick a rule and we keep it. Cash leaving the bank can be the signal, or the days the person worked can be the signal. Mixing them is how a quarter refuses to match a stack of stubs.

You should be able to pull one stub and one closed month and see the same gross. A mismatch means the month is still open, even when the export looks neat.

What usually falls out

A correction run in the following month is easy to orphan. The person got their money. The books got a second entry nobody tied back to the first. We tie them, even when the amounts are small.

A voided payment that stays in the provider and disappears from the books, or the reverse, will show up on an annual form. A voided payment should be caught inside the same month the person was paid.

Direct deposit timing can put the bank draft on the other side of midnight at month end. We do not panic about a day. We do insist the books explain the day.

Statements you can hand someone

When the stubs and the months agree, a statement for a lender is a calmer document. What we hand a lender explains the month and carries no assurance a signing firm would add. A lender who wants a signed assurance report has to be sent to a firm allowed to sign that report. We say that before we draft anything.

The monthly picture you read with us is simpler than a lender package. What came in, what went out, what is still owed, and whether payday is inside the month. One page is the goal.

A finished stub gives the month a place to stand still. The stub is filed, the bank agrees, and the next month can start without dragging the last one. We do not leave the prior period open just because Friday felt busy.

A bonus paid on the last Friday still belongs in the period the stub names, and we post that bonus in the same month as the regular wage.

If the stubs are in a shoebox and the books are a guess

That is a normal start. We begin with the oldest month that will not tie, not with the month that is easiest to finish. Backlog work is given both a date and a price before the first old month is touched.

You will not be asked to defend how it got this far. You will be asked for the bank activity and the stubs you can find. Missing stubs can often be reprinted from the provider. Missing bank access cannot.

When the cleanup ends, the stubs, the bank, and the filed wages should agree. For a lot of owners that agreement is a first.

More than net pay on one piece of paper

A stub carries more than the amount the person takes home, and only what they earned is an ordinary expense. There is also what you held back on their behalf, what you owe on top as the employer, and what actually left the bank that day. The other three need homes of their own before the first run.

Wages can stay an expense, split by job if that is how you price work. The employer share sits on its own line beside them. Anything held back, and anything owed but still unpaid, sits in liability accounts. Once those few accounts exist you can leave them alone for years.

Every provider has a screen that maps payday into the chart of accounts, and it is easy to click past. After a few months, changing that map does not go back and repair what already posted. A December cleanup cannot invent which job a crew worked in June. Those hours have to be named on the day they happen, or that job's profit stays a guess for the rest of the year.

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