Goldsmith Accounting

💵 COGS means Cost of Goods Sold. In QuickBooks Online, this is where you can track costs that are tied right to the work that makes you money. If you sell a product, that may be the cost of the product or materials. If you sell a service, it may be the pay for the people doing the work.
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👩‍💻 For us, the bookkeepers who work on client accounts are a direct cost of providing our service, so that pay belongs in COGS. An admin team member is different. We need that role to help run the business, but that person is not doing the work we sell to the client. That cost belongs with the other expenses that support the business.
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📊 When you separate those costs, your reports become much more useful. You can see how much money is left after paying the direct cost of making the sale, and then see what it costs to run the rest of the business. If everything is mixed together, that story is much harder to see. We can help you set up your accounts so your reports actually help you understand how your business makes money.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404

📚 Retained Earnings is a running total that carries from year to year on your balance sheet. It comes from the profit and losses your business has had over time. It is not cash sitting in the bank, and seeing a big number there does not mean you have that much money available to spend.
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🧾 That number can also get out of sync. Your books may look right all year, but when the tax return is prepared, the tax preparer may make changes for things like depreciation, missed expenses, owner activity, or other year end items. If those changes never get posted back to the books, Retained Earnings can carry forward the wrong amount into the next year.
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💡 There is no one perfect Retained Earnings number, and the balance by itself does not tell you how much tax you owe. What matters is that the number can be explained and agrees with the history of the business after the tax return is finished. If you are looking at Retained Earnings and wondering where that number came from, we can help you understand it.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404

🧠 A good bookkeeper should help you understand your numbers, not make every business decision for you. Education means explaining what your reports show, why something is recorded a certain way, what changed from one month to the next, and what questions those numbers may bring up.
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🚀 Advisory goes a step further by helping evaluate choices and possible next steps. That can be valuable too, but your knowledge as the owner still matters. You know your customers, your operations, your goals, and what is happening inside the business every day.
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🖤 We believe bookkeeping should help you feel more confident and informed about the financial side of your business. Our role is to organize the accounting, answer your questions, and help you understand what the numbers are telling you so you can make decisions with better information.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404

⚠️ Business can change fast. A slow month, a big repair, a customer who pays late, or an expense you did not expect can throw off the plan before you have time to adjust.
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💵 That is why current bookkeeping matters. When your books are up to date, you can see what cash is available, what bills are coming, and what your business can realistically handle before you make the next decision.
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🧭 You cannot control every surprise, but you can control how prepared you are when it happens. If you want your books to give you useful information instead of more questions, we can help you get there.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404

😬 A bookkeeping problem can feel like one more thing that went wrong. Maybe the bank will not reconcile, receipts are missing, or the same expense keeps getting recorded differently.
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🔎 But those problems can also show you where the process needs to change. Maybe information is not getting to the right person. Maybe there is no clear routine. Maybe something that worked when the business was smaller no longer works now.
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🧾 Fixing the books matters, but fixing what caused the problem matters too. That is how you keep the same issue from showing up month after month.
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💡 When something in your bookkeeping keeps going wrong, do not just clean it up. Use it as a clue to build a better process.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404

💥 Owning a business can make it easy to measure a good day by how much you got done. More emails answered. More tasks checked off. More hours worked.
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🥺 But being busy all the time is NOT the same as building a healthy business. You are allowed to have a day when nothing gets crossed off the list.
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☀️ The work will still be there tomorrow. Rest gives you room to think, recharge, and come back to your business with MORE of yourself to give.
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🩷 So today, close the list for a little while. 𝐘𝐨𝐮 𝐝𝐨 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐡𝐚𝐯𝐞 𝐭𝐨 𝐞𝐚𝐫𝐧 𝐲𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐒𝐮𝐧𝐝𝐚𝐲.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404

😩 You work all week running the business…then Saturday becomes the day you finally sit down with receipts, bank transactions, and everything you did not have time to deal with.
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🧾 Bookkeeping is important, but it should not take over every free hour you have. A good process keeps the work moving throughout the month instead of letting it pile up until you finally have time.
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🧠 Rest is part of running a business too. Having your financial side organized means you can step away without wondering what is sitting unfinished in the background.
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🤝 If your books keep following you into your nights and weekends, it may be time for a better process. Let's talk.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404

🤷🏼‍♀️ Have you ever looked at your QuickBooks Online report and thought, “That is not what is in my bank account”? You may be looking at your books on accrual instead of cash.
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💵 Cash shows money when it is actually spent or received. If a customer pays you today, the income shows today. If you pay a bill today, the expense shows today.
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🧾 Accrual works differently. If you send a customer an invoice, the income will show before they pay you. If you enter a bill, the expense will show before the money leaves your bank.
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💡 One is not better than the other. They just show your business in different ways. QuickBooks Online lets you switch between Cash and Accrual when you look at your reports.
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🩷 Knowing which one you are looking at can make your numbers a whole lot easier to understand. And we love teaching business owners what their reports are actually telling them.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404

😬 Making an SCorp election changes more than the tax return your business files. If the bookkeeping continues exactly the same way it did before the election, there may be pieces missing.
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🧾 How you pay yourself changes. W2 wages need to run through payroll. Shareholder contributions and distributions need to be tracked separately. Reimbursements need to be handled correctly. Money moving between you and the business needs to be recorded for what it actually is.
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📊 Your balance sheet becomes even more important. Payroll liabilities, shareholder equity, loans between you and the business, and other accounts all need to tell the right story. These are not just bookkeeping details sitting in QuickBooks Online. They help support what eventually gets reported on the business tax return and your K1.
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💡 That information ultimately affects your personal tax return too. An SCorp owner should understand how the books, payroll, business return, K1, and personal return connect. The election may happen with one form, but maintaining it correctly is an ongoing accounting process.
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🩷 If you have made an SCorp election, we can help make sure your accounting reflects the new designation and help YOU understand why these changes matter.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404

⁣😬 Your SCorp made $100,000 this year, but you only transferred $30,000 to your personal account. It would be easy to assume you are only dealing with taxes on the $30,000 you actually took out. That is not how it works.
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🧾 An SCorp is a pass through entity. Your share of the business profit is reported to you on a K1 and flows to your personal tax return. That can happen whether the money stayed in the business bank account or was distributed to you.
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📊 This is also why profit and distributions are not the same thing. Profit comes from the activity of the business. A distribution is money you take out as an owner. Moving cash to yourself does not create the profit, and leaving cash in the business does not make the profit disappear.
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💡 Understanding that difference matters when you are deciding how much cash the business needs to keep, how much you can distribute, and what information from the business will ultimately show up on your personal tax return.
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🤝 If you own an SCorp, you should understand where the numbers on that K1 came from and what they mean. That is the kind of accounting education we believe every business owner deserves.
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🌴 Goldsmith Accounting
📍 316 S McKenzie St, Suite 125, Foley
📅 By appointment only
☎️ (251) 313-1404