Your books, kept current

• •Bank reconciliation kept up to date, not caught up at GST time
• •Coding your spend properly — so job costs and overheads don't end up in one pile
• •Bills in: supplier invoices entered, matched to statements, ready to pay
• •Bills out: customer invoices raised, sent and followed up
• •Chasing the overdue ones, politely and on a schedule
• •Xero kept tidy — chart of accounts that makes sense, no dumping ground

We work to a rhythm rather than a scramble. Through the month the bank is reconciled and coding is kept current. At month end everything is squared off, supplier statements are checked against what's in Xero, and anything that doesn't add up comes back to you as a short list of questions — not a mystery.

You get a straight answer to "how are we going?" any week of the month, because the books are never three weeks behind.

Access to Xero, your bank feeds connected, and a way to get us the paperwork — a shared folder, an email address, or a receipt app. That's it to start.

The habit that makes the biggest difference: send it through as it happens rather than in a shoebox at the end of the quarter. We'll set that up with you in the first fortnight.

Day-to-day bookkeeping is charged by the hour, because the work moves with how busy you are. A quiet month costs less than a flat-out one, and you're not paying a retainer for work that didn't happen.

After we've looked at your books we'll tell you the hours we expect a normal month to take, so there are no surprises. If it starts drifting, you hear it from us first.

Most people ring when the bookkeeper has left, the books are months behind, or GST has caught them out twice in a row. If there's a backlog we clear it first as a defined piece of work, then move into the ongoing rhythm — so you're not paying catch-up rates forever.