What to expect from the first meeting
The first meeting is not a sales appointment. It is the hour where we find out what the books actually say, and it runs better when the paperwork is in the room. Here is the whole sequence, start to finish.
What to bring
Ten minutes of gathering changes this meeting more than anything we bring to it. The list is short.
- Statements for the last twelve months, for every account the business uses, plus the card terminal settlements for the same period.
- The invoices issued, in whatever order they are in. Sorting them is our job, not yours.
- Purchase invoices and receipts, including the shoebox. Especially the shoebox.
- Payroll records, contracts and the last set of payslips, if anybody is employed.
- The last closing figures a previous bookkeeper produced, if any exist.
- Any letter with a date on it, opened or not.
- Leave passwords at home. A first meeting needs statements and documents, never access to an account.
The one that matters most is the first: statements for every account, across the whole twelve months. A ledger can be rebuilt from statements and documents. It cannot be rebuilt from a memory of what a good month looked like.
When we meet
We meet at the office, or at your counter after closing if shutting the shop for an hour costs more than it saves. Either way there is a call ahead, and the first few minutes are deliberately uneventful: papers out on the table, a short conversation about what the business actually does, and no forms.
Then we ask the questions the statements cannot answer. Who invoices, who chases, who opens the post, where receipts land before they reach a folder, which account pays the wages, and what changed in the last year even if it seemed too small to mention.
The first look at the numbers
We work backwards through the statements to the last month where the ledger and the bank agreed, and mark everything that happened after it. Where a note of the previous closing figures exists, the two are compared before anything else is discussed.
Nothing is entered on the day. The meeting is for establishing what is there, what is missing and how long the catch-up will take; entering a month against half its documents only produces a tidy ledger that is wrong.
Seeing the counter is part of the meeting
A lot of what makes a small ledger difficult is physical. A till roll nobody keeps, a card terminal that batches at a different hour than the takings are counted, two accounts used interchangeably, receipts that live in a van until the end of the month. Those are noticed by standing in the room, and the fixes are usually a folder, a second envelope or a fixed day rather than a system.
What you get afterwards
- A written summary of what the books currently show and where they stopped agreeing.
- A list of the documents that are missing, named one by one rather than as a category.
- A calendar of the dates that matter in the year ahead, with the closing date fixed.
- A named point to write to, so a small question does not wait until the month is closed.
Where the scope changes later, the change is written down too, so that a second person in the business is not working from a different set of instructions.
What should not wait for the next close
Some things should not sit in the pile until the month is closed. Write or call as soon as any of these appears, whatever the closing date happens to be.
- A letter with a filing date that has already passed.
- A pay run approaching with a starter, a leaver or a changed contract inside it.
- A line on a statement that nobody in the business recognises.
- A card settlement that has stopped matching the takings, in either direction.
- A change of legal form, a new partner, or a second business sharing the same account.
- A penalty notice, whatever the date printed on it says.
A monthly rhythm is what keeps the ordinary work calm, and it is exactly the wrong thing to apply to a dated letter. A date that has already passed does not become less late by waiting for the close.
If the next step belongs elsewhere
Where the finding needs an auditor, a signature on a return, or advice this office is not licensed to give, the handover is written the same day and the reconciled figures travel with it. You are told what that professional will probably ask for and what to ask them, so that you arrive as a participant rather than as a passenger.