BACK-OFFICE EXPERTS FOR GROWING BUSINESSES

Bookkeeping Services, Explained Plainly

“Bookkeeping services” covers a wide range of work, and firms rarely make it obvious which one you actually need. An owner two years behind needs something very different from an owner whose books are current but unreadable.

Hanson Ledgers is based in Arlington, Texas and provides bookkeeping to businesses across the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. This page lays out what each service is, so you can work out what you are looking for before you call anyone.

Call 682.304.7152 or request a free consultation.

The Four Services, and Which One You Need

Monthly bookkeeping keeps current books current. Transactions categorized, accounts reconciled, reports delivered on a schedule. This is the ongoing relationship most businesses eventually want, and it is our Bookkeeping Support service.

Catch-up bookkeeping is about missing time. The books have not been done for months or years and the work is building that period from bank and card statements. Project-based, with a fixed quote.

QuickBooks cleanup is about accuracy. The transactions are there but wrong, duplicated, or miscategorized badly enough that the reports mislead. Also project-based.

QuickBooks setup and training is about starting correctly. New business, coming off spreadsheets, or migrating from Desktop. Getting the chart of accounts right at setup is far cheaper than restructuring it after two years of history.

Plenty of businesses need more than one, and the order matters: structure first, then the missing period, then reconciliation across the whole timeline.

What Monthly Bookkeeping Actually Includes

• Transaction categorization. Every transaction assigned to the right account, consistently, so comparing one month to the next is meaningful.
• Account reconciliation. Bank, credit card, and loan accounts reconciled against statements so the software matches reality. This is the step most commonly skipped and the one that catches errors.
• Accounts payable and receivable. What you owe and, for cash flow, what you are owed and how long it has been outstanding.
• Financial reporting. Profit and loss, balance sheet, and cash position delivered rather than left in the software for you to find.
• Tax-ready organization. Records structured so your CPA does tax work instead of data correction.

What it is not is tax filing, which is your CPA’s role, or financial strategy, which is fractional CFO territory. Bookkeeping is the foundation both stand on.

Pricing, Without the Runaround

Bookkeeping is priced on accounts and transaction volume rather than revenue, which is fairer to a high-revenue business with simple books and to a smaller business with complicated ones.

• Clarity, $397/month. 2 accounts, up to 100 transactions. Suits a solo owner.
• Momentum, $597/month. 3 accounts, up to 300 transactions. Adds AP/AR light support, payroll reconciliation, month-end close call, KPI summary.
• Scale, $897/month. 6 accounts, up to 600 transactions. Adds AP/AR management, payroll liaison, class and location tracking, monthly review call.
• Premium, $1,297/month. Unlimited accounts and transactions. Adds consolidations, inventory tracking, advanced reporting.

Cleanup and catch-up are quoted per project once we have seen the file, with larger cleanups starting around $3,000. Full detail is on the Bookkeeping Support page.

Industry-Specific Needs

Some businesses are poorly served by a generic setup. Contractors need job costing, retainage, and year-round 1099 tracking, without which margin by job is invisible. Real estate agents need commission splits recorded separately and mileage captured as it happens rather than reconstructed each April.

Getting that structure right at the start costs a fraction of retrofitting it later.

Serving the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex

We work with businesses across the region: Arlington, Fort Worth, Dallas, Grand Prairie, Mansfield, and surrounding communities including Kennedale, Burleson, Cedar Hill, Irving, Euless, Bedford, and Hurst.

Delivery is virtual, so nobody is driving paperwork anywhere, but being local means a shared time zone, familiarity with Texas franchise tax deadlines, and established working patterns with DFW CPAs.

Bookkeeping Is Usually the Entry Point

Once the numbers stop being a worry, the next constraint tends to surface, and it is almost always the inbox, the process, or the technology. Hanson Ledgers is built as a back-office team for that reason:

• Administrative Support for inbox, calendar, and client communication.
• Operations support for documented workflows, SOPs, and project coordination.
• Technology support for cybersecurity, systems, and automation.
• Strategic Financial Guidance for forecasting, budgets, and financial strategy.

Heather Hanson leads bookkeeping, executive support, and operations. Kevin Hanson leads technology. More on our about page.

How to Tell Which Service You Need

Most owners calling about bookkeeping cannot name what they need, which is fine, but it does make comparing quotes difficult. Three questions usually settle it.

When were your accounts last reconciled against a bank statement? If the answer is “I don’t know” or “never,” the file almost certainly needs cleanup before ongoing bookkeeping is worth paying for.

Are there months with no entries at all? Gaps mean catch-up work. Inaccuracy inside populated months means cleanup. They are priced differently and sequenced differently.

Can you answer a question from your reports right now? Pick something concrete, like what you spent on subcontractors last quarter. If the reports cannot answer it in under a minute, the chart of accounts is the problem rather than the data.

We ask these on the consultation call. They take about five minutes and they are the difference between a real quote and a guess.

What Bookkeeping Does Not Include

Being clear about scope prevents the most common source of friction in these relationships.

Bookkeeping is not tax filing. Your CPA files returns and advises on tax strategy. We keep the records they need accurate and organized. The two roles are complementary and we coordinate directly with your CPA at year-end.

Bookkeeping is not financial strategy. Recording what happened is different from deciding what happens next. Forecasting, budgets, pricing analysis, and hiring models are fractional CFO work.

Bookkeeping is not payroll processing. We reconcile payroll and liaise with your provider, but running payroll itself sits with a dedicated service.

Anyone quoting you bookkeeping that quietly includes all of the above is either mispricing the work or planning to do a thin version of each.

Working With a Team Instead of a Single Person

One structural point worth raising, because it is invisible until it matters.

Independent bookkeepers do good work, and many of our clients came from one. The risk is not competence, it is concentration: if that person is ill, on holiday, or has taken on too many clients this quarter, your month closes late and there is no second option. For a business where the books feed a lender covenant or a quarterly estimate, that is a real exposure.

Hanson Ledgers is a team. You still work with a consistent named contact, because that continuity is what makes bookkeeping useful rather than merely accurate. But coverage does not depend on one person being available, and the work is supervised rather than unreviewed.

The same structure is why we can pick up adjacent work without you starting another vendor search. Bookkeeping problems have a habit of turning out to be process problems or technology problems wearing a disguise.

Find Hanson Ledgers on Google

If you are comparing bookkeepers, our Google Business Profile is a reasonable place to start. It carries our hours, service area, contact details, and reviews from business owners we actually work with, which will tell you more about what the relationship is like than anything we write about ourselves.

View Hanson Ledgers on Google

If you are already a client and the work has been useful, leaving a review genuinely helps other owners across the metroplex find us. It takes about a minute and it is the single most useful thing a happy client can do for a local business.

Start With a Conversation

Tell us what the business does, roughly how many accounts and transactions it runs, and what condition the books are in. We will tell you which service you actually need, what it costs, and what the first month looks like. If we are not the right fit, we will say so.

Call 682.304.7152, email info@hansonledgers.org, or request a free consultation.

Find Out Which Service You Actually Need

Tell us what condition the books are in and we will tell you whether you need monthly bookkeeping, cleanup, catch-up, or a fresh setup. Call 682.304.7152.

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