Bookkeeping, Tax Preparation Support and Virtual CFO Services for Houston Businesses

Texas has no state income tax, which is the first thing most new Houston business owners assume simplifies things. It doesn't remove the two taxes that actually drive bookkeeping decisions here. The first is the Texas franchise tax (sometimes called the margin tax), an annual report filed with the Texas Comptroller that is due even for businesses that owe nothing. For the 2026 and 2027 report years, a business with total revenue at or below $2,650,000 files a No Tax Due-eligible report (up from $2,470,000 for 2024 and 2025 report years); confirm the exact figure for your filing year with the Comptroller before relying on it. Either way, the return still has to be filed, and the underlying number comes straight out of your books, so revenue has to be categorized correctly all year, not reconstructed in March.

The second is sales tax. Houston's combined rate is 8.25%, the maximum allowed in Texas: 6.25% state plus a 2% local add-on split between the city, transit authorities and any special districts that apply. If you sell taxable goods or certain services in Houston, that rate has to be coded correctly by transaction, and it changes again if you also sell into a different Texas jurisdiction with a lower local add-on. We set up your books so sales tax liability is tracked automatically instead of estimated at filing time, and we flag when a Comptroller filing frequency (monthly, quarterly or annual) needs to change as revenue grows.

The Texas franchise tax report is due May 15 each year, with an automatic extension available if requested and paid on time; the No Tax Due Public Information Report or Ownership Report still has to be filed even at zero tax owed. New entities register with the Texas Secretary of State and then with the Comptroller for a taxpayer number, and most Houston businesses also need a sales tax permit before the first taxable sale, not after.

Remote sellers into Texas from outside the state have their own trigger: once total Texas revenue in the preceding twelve months exceeds $500,000, the Comptroller's economic nexus rule requires a sales tax permit and collection starting the first day of the fourth month after that threshold is crossed. That number matters for Houston companies selling online into the rest of Texas just as much as for out-of-state sellers coming into Houston. We track it against actual sales data rather than a year-end guess, and we handle the registration paperwork alongside the bookkeeping so nothing sits unfiled.

Energy services is the obvious one: oilfield services, midstream contractors and equipment rental companies running job-costed work across multiple sites, often with joint interest billing and revenue that lags the field work by weeks. Logistics and trucking is close behind, given the Port of Houston and the freight corridors running through the metro; fuel tax, per-mile cost tracking and multi-state IFTA reporting show up constantly.

Healthcare is a steady base here too, from solo dental practices to multi-provider medical groups separating insurance receivables from patient-pay revenue. Construction and job costing come up across residential, commercial and the specialty trades that feed the energy sector. Restaurants and multi-unit franchise groups need consolidated reporting across locations without losing the per-store detail an operator actually uses. And a large professional services base, from engineering and environmental consulting to law and architecture firms, needs project-level billing tied cleanly to time and cost. We build the chart of accounts and reconciliation process around the pattern that actually applies to your business, not a generic industry template.

Documents move through the accounting platform you already use (QuickBooks Online, Xero, NetSuite or Sage Intacct) plus a document capture tool like Dext or Hubdoc, so bank statements, invoices and receipts flow in without email attachments getting lost in a thread.

There's no office to visit and no local staff to manage, which is the point: the work happens through the software layer, with a senior reviewer checking the books before anything is reported back to you. If you're used to a bookkeeper who drops by the office, the change is mostly that reviews happen on a call or a shared dashboard instead.

QuickBooks Online and Xero cover most of the small and mid-size businesses we see in Houston, with NetSuite and Sage Intacct showing up more often once a company runs multiple entities or job-cost reporting gets complex, which is common in energy services and construction. Bill.com and Melio handle accounts payable for most clients; Ramp, Brex and Expensify show up for expense management, particularly at venture-backed or fast-growing companies.

On the banking side, Houston businesses bank across the national players (Chase, Bank of America, Wells Fargo) and Texas-based institutions like Frost Bank, Woodforest National Bank and Prosperity Bank, all of which connect cleanly to QuickBooks and Xero for daily feed reconciliation. If you're on a platform or a bank we haven't listed, tell us before the engagement starts; the setup step is where we confirm the integration works rather than finding out at month-end.

Pricing depends on transaction volume, entity count and whether the engagement is monthly bookkeeping alone or bookkeeping plus tax preparation support and fractional CFO work layered on top. A single-entity Houston business with clean bank feeds and a handful of accounts costs less to maintain than a multi-location restaurant group consolidating several P&Ls, or an energy services company running job costing and joint interest billing across several active sites at once.

The rate card lays out the specific tiers and what's included at each one, from basic monthly bookkeeping through full-service accounting with a controller-level review. Most Houston engagements start with a short scoping call where we look at your current books, transaction count, entity structure and any industry-specific reporting (job costing, multi-unit consolidation, IFTA tracking) before quoting a monthly number. Catch-up or cleanup work on unreconciled prior periods is scoped and quoted separately from the ongoing monthly service, since the hours involved depend on how far behind the books actually are.

The national median annual wage for bookkeeping, accounting and auditing clerks was $50,670 in May 2025, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics; that figure is a base salary alone, before payroll taxes, benefits, software licenses and the management time it takes to hire, train and cover for a single in-house employee. A controller or accounting manager role in Houston's energy and logistics-heavy market typically commands a meaningfully higher salary than that clerk-level figure once responsibility for job costing or multi-entity consolidation is added.

Outsourcing doesn't remove the need for review and judgment, but it replaces a single point of failure (one employee, one skill set, one vacation schedule) with a team and a senior reviewer, at a monthly cost that scales with your transaction volume instead of a fixed headcount cost that doesn't flex when volume drops.

We start with a short call to look at your current books, bank and software setup, entity structure and where the franchise tax and sales tax filings currently stand. If books are already in reasonable shape, we can usually start monthly service within a couple of weeks. If there's a backlog of unreconciled months, we scope a catch-up project first so the starting balance is accurate before ongoing bookkeeping begins, rather than layering new work on top of an unreliable prior-period number.

Bring your most recent franchise tax report, your last few months of bank and credit card statements, and access to your accounting software, and we'll tell you within the first call what shape the books are in, what it will take to get current, and roughly what the monthly engagement will cost going forward.