Bookkeeping
Bank and card activity sorted into the right place every month, so nothing is left hanging at year end. Your books are never more than a month behind.
Bookkeeping · Consultation · Financial reporting
Twenty years of books that balance, and a year-end package your preparer can work from.
Owner-operated businesses, mostly. Eight figures of client activity kept clean, and every judgment call written down where you can see it.
Small business consultation
How the money should move before it moves: which card pays for what, how you pay people, and what your preparer will ask for in January. Advice on the books, nothing more.
Financial reporting
A profit and loss and a balance sheet you can read in five minutes, with your own money shown separately instead of buried in the expenses.
Who you are working with
One bookkeeper, twenty years in.
I have kept books for twenty years, mostly for owner-operated businesses: the kind where the owner's money and the company's money spend the year moving through the same cards, and somebody has to sort out which was which before any of it means anything. Add it up and it is well past ten million dollars of activity, sorted, checked against the statements and handed to a preparer.
Two habits carry the work. Nothing gets invented: where the records do not answer a question, the question goes on a list instead of being guessed at. And every call I make is written down next to the line it touches, so you or your preparer can undo it with one question instead of a rebuild.
What lands on your desk is a clean month, every month, and one document in January.
Dan Randolph, Randolph Ledgerworks
What I do
The work.
Most clients start with one of these and add the rest once the first clean month lands.
Monthly bookkeeping
Every bank and card line sorted the same way every month, so the same vendor always lands in the same place. Deposits matched to the invoices they paid. Money moved between your own accounts counted once, not twice.
Small business consultation
A working session on the ground rules: keeping personal and business spending apart, which card carries what, how to pay the people who help you so the year-end paperwork is a list and not a hunt, and what to have ready by January.
Financial statements
Profit and loss and balance sheet on a fixed schedule, in plain language. Where the timing of cash and invoices makes the two views differ, you see both.
Your money and the business's money
Clearly personal spending stays out of the business result, listed where you can see it. Gray spending, meals, fuel, the hardware store, is booked to the business and tagged so any line can be pulled back. Cash with no name waits in your column until a name arrives. Anyone you pay by check, transfer or app is tracked by name.
Catch-up and cleanup
Back months brought current in one engagement. Old copies of the books retired, holding accounts cleaned out, and if your books move to a new system, they only count as moved when the numbers match on both sides.
Year-end close and preparer package
One document your preparer starts from: the year summarized by account, the balance sheet, every judgment call stated, and the open items in a list they can clear in one call.
How it works
Three steps, and you are current.
01 Access and the ground rules
Statements or account access for every account, the invoices you issued, whatever books already exist, and a short conversation about what counts as business for you.
02 The monthly close
The month is sorted, checked against the statements and closed, and your reports go out. Anything I could not resolve comes to you as a short list while you can still remember the answer.
03 January
You get the year-end package and your preparer gets a starting point instead of a shoebox. Most of what they would have asked is already answered in it.
Engagements
Three ways this usually starts.
Scope drives price: number of accounts, monthly transaction volume, and how far behind the books are.
Monthly close
Ongoing. The books never get more than a month old.
Quoted monthlybilled per month
Every account, every month Reports on a fixed schedule Personal and business spending kept apart A short list of open items, not a pile Year-end with no catch-up first
Most common
Catch-up
Back months brought current, in one engagement.
Quoted on scopebilled per engagement
Every month in scope sorted and closed Old or duplicate books retired Moving to a new system if one is needed Personal spending listed for your review Closing reports for the whole period
Year-end package
Everything your preparer needs, in one document.
Flat fee, set per yearbilled per year
The full year in one document Income and expenses by account, totaled Balance sheet at year end Who you paid and how much, ready for your preparer Open items your preparer can clear in one call
What the work looks like
A real year-end package.
The cover of the summary a client received at the close of 2025. Ten pages behind it: the letter, the figures, the judgment calls, and the review list. Client details are redacted.
What this is, and what it is not
Randolph Ledgerworks keeps books and advises on how to keep them. It does not prepare, sign or file tax returns, holds no PTIN, and is not a CPA or an enrolled agent. Bookkeeping work product is not a tax return and not tax advice. Nothing produced here is audited, reviewed or independently verified, and no opinion or assurance is given on it.
That boundary is the point. Your preparer handles the filing. My job is to hand them books they can rely on.
Questions
The ones that come up first.
If the answer you need is not here, ask. A straight question gets a straight answer before anyone signs anything.
Do you do my taxes?
No. I keep the books and hand your preparer a package built for them. The filing is theirs.
I took cash out and there is no receipt. What happens to it?
It sits in your column with a review tag, where you can see every line. Give me the name of who was paid and it moves to the business side. Without a name it stays with you, because a guess is worse than a question.
I pay people through payment apps. Is that a problem?
Not a problem. Each payment is tracked by name, so at year end you have a clean list of who was paid and how much.
What do you need from me each month?
Access to the accounts or the statements, the invoices you sent, and answers to a short list. Most months it is a handful of lines and ten minutes.
Do I have to change software?
Not to start; your records come in as they are. If moving your books to a new system is the right call later, it is its own step and its own conversation.
Do the reports show cash or invoices?
Both views. The books record income when it is earned and costs when they come due, and the reports also show what happened by the time cash actually moved, wherever the two differ. Which view your preparer uses is their call.
Get in touch
Tell me where the books stand.
How many accounts, roughly how many transactions a month, and how far behind things are. That is enough to quote from.