Auto Repair Shop Books Cleanup What a shop month has to hold
A closed month is a set of papers that agree. A feed from the bank is only one of them.
The list, in shop language
A shop month contains the repair orders written in that month, the deposits that belong to them, the vendor bills for the parts those orders used, the payroll the provider already ran, the tax the tickets collected, and the bank statement. The close is the day those items agree with each other. Volume in the bay does not close the books by itself. Busyness is not a reconciliation.
The bank feed is a suggestion. It downloads what the bank thinks happened, on the day the bank posted it. The statement is the fact you reconcile to. A ticket dated on the last evening of the month can belong to that month even when the card batch lands the next morning, but only if the shop's rule says so. The opposite rule is also allowed. The rule that is not allowed is a new one every month.
Temporary piles
Undeposited funds, a clearing account for card batches, and an ask-my-accountant style bucket are places a number waits. They are not homes. A number that is still in the bucket when you call the month closed has not been closed. We name the bucket, we empty what we can from the tickets and the bills, and we leave a list of what is still unnamed. An honest list is part of the close. A hidden bucket is not.
Payroll comes in from the provider as a report. We set the accounts up so that report lands in the right month. We do not recalculate pay, and we do not run the pay run. If the provider's report and the bank withdrawal disagree, the month stays open on that point until someone can say which figure is wrong.
A month we can start from
Bring the statement, the deposit report, and one week of tickets. We will say whether the month is closable or whether it is still a pile. If it is a pile, we say what the pile is missing. We do not mark it closed to be kind.
Send one month
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.