What does honest bookkeeping look like from the outside?
Mostly it looks like books that agree with the bank and reports that arrive when promised. You should also be able to open the file yourself. You don't need to learn bookkeeping to check any of that. You need your bank statements, an hour, and the willingness to ask for a couple of reports.
It helps to know what you're looking for. The checks below are built for the ordinary failures: a card account nobody reconciled since spring, a pile of transactions sitting in an uncategorized bucket, reports that stopped coming and nobody asked why. They can turn up something worse as well, though no single check catches everything, which is why the last section covers what to do then.
Which situation are you in?
Find the row that sounds like your situation, then do the one thing recommended for it.
| Situation | What you notice | What to check | What to do next |
|---|---|---|---|
| Reports arrive and look right | A reconciliation and a few reports every month | One account's ending balance against its statement | Spot-check one account each quarter |
| Reports are late or thin | Weeks pass with nothing, or one total and no detail | Which accounts were last reconciled, and to which month | Ask in writing for each account's reports by a set date |
| You can't open your own books | The software login belongs to the bookkeeper | Who holds the main admin user on the subscription | Take the main login this week and give the bookkeeper a user |
| Something doesn't add up | A notice, a missing deposit, a payee you don't know | The bank, EFTPS and state records directly | Confirm at the source, then have the books reviewed |
Reports arrive every month and the balances match
Keep going, and spot-check one account a quarter. Pick a month, put the bank reconciliation report next to the bank statement and compare the ending balance. Then pick three transactions off the statement and find them in the books. The IRS page on what records to keep says supporting documents should show the payee, the amount, proof of payment, the date and a business description, so each of those three should have a receipt or invoice behind it.
Reports are late, thin or never arrive
Ask, in writing, for a reconciliation report on every bank and card account for the last three months, and give a date. IRS Publication 583 tells businesses to reconcile the checking account each month, so three months of reports is a modest request. If the answer is that the work is behind, that's honest and fixable. If the answer is vague, you've learned more than the reports would have told you. Bank and credit card reconciliations are routine work, and a bookkeeper who is doing them can print the reports without much effort.
You can't open your own books
Fix the access before anything else. The software subscription should sit in the business name, with you as the main administrator, and the bookkeeper should work under a separate user you can remove in one step. Asking for this accuses nobody of anything. It keeps the books yours if the person doing them gets sick, moves on, or stops answering email.
Something doesn't add up
Go to the source first: your bank's own website, your EFTPS account, the state notice. Then have someone with no stake in the answer reconcile each account month by month against the bank statements before you decide what happened. If the file needs rebuilding first, that's a bookkeeping cleanup and catch-up conversation.
Start a conversation with Brittany about what your monthly reports should show and how your accounts reconcile today.
Call (860) 234-7704How do you check payroll deposits yourself?
Register for EFTPS with your own PIN and look. The IRS page on outsourcing payroll duties says the employer is ultimately responsible for depositing and paying federal employment taxes even when someone else sends the money, and it tells employers to use their own EFTPS PIN to verify payments from time to time. Once registered, you can see 16 months of payment history.
The same page says a red flag should go up the first time a provider misses a payment or pays late, and it strongly suggests you don't change your address of record to the provider's. Keep IRS letters coming to you. Connecticut has its own pieces as well: employers remit CT Paid Leave deductions every quarter and file and pay unemployment contributions electronically with the Department of Labor. Whoever handles your payroll, ask them to send you the confirmation for each one every quarter, so you aren't relying on silence.
What should a Manchester owner ask for before November?
Ask for the list of equipment the business owns, pulled from the books. The Manchester Assessor's personal property page says everyone doing business in town on October 1, including home-based businesses and remote employees, has to file a personal property declaration, and that late, incomplete or missing filings carry a 25% penalty. Under Connecticut's property assessment statute the declaration is due November 1, or the next business day when that falls on a weekend.
The town publishes an Asset Listing worksheet for owners to track and organize their business property, and the Assessor's page adds that not receiving a form doesn't excuse anyone from declaring. If every equipment purchase was recorded as it happened, filling in that worksheet means running one report. If your bookkeeper can't produce the list, the purchases probably went into the books as one lump, or didn't go in at all. More on what the town asks of local businesses is on the Manchester bookkeeping page.
When is it a mistake and when is it something worse?
A wrong category, a duplicate entry or a month left unreconciled is a mistake, and every set of books has a few. Ask, get it fixed, move on. A payment to someone you've never heard of, a deposit you made that never shows up in the books, or a check made out to cash deserves a direct question the same day. Publication 583 tells businesses to avoid writing checks payable to cash, so that one runs against plain IRS guidance on its own.
If the answer doesn't settle it, keep copies of everything, remove the bookkeeper's user access, and get the accounts reconciled by someone with no stake in the result. Do it calmly. The explanation may well be ordinary, and you'll have books you understand at the end either way.
