Bookkeeping, Tax Preparation Support and Virtual CFO Services for San Francisco Businesses

Every LLC doing business in California owes an $800 annual tax to the Franchise Tax Board, due whether or not the business made money, and a separate LLC fee on top of that once total California income clears $250,000: $900 from $250,000 to $499,999, $2,500 from $500,000 to $999,999, $6,000 from $1,000,000 to $4,999,999, and $11,790 at $5,000,000 and over, per the FTB's 2025 Form 568 instructions. C corporations pay California's 8.84% franchise tax rate on California-source income, with the same $800 minimum due in the first quarter of the accounting period (waived in year one for a newly formed corporation). S corporations pay 1.5% instead of 8.84%, plus the same $800 minimum, also waived for a first-year filer.

San Francisco layers its own tax on top through the Gross Receipts Tax, administered by the city's Office of the Treasurer & Tax Collector. Following Proposition M, most businesses with $5,000,000 or less in combined taxable San Francisco gross receipts are exempt from filing it, but everyone doing business in the city still has to register with the Treasurer's office and file the annual Business Registration and Tax Form. A separate Overpaid Executive Gross Receipts Tax applies if a company's highest-paid managerial employee earns more than 100 times the median compensation of its San Francisco-based staff, though a business exempt from the Gross Receipts Tax as a small business is generally exempt from this one too. Two June 2026 ballot measures that would have changed this structure, Proposition C (raising the small-business exemption to $7,500,000) and Proposition D (restructuring the Overpaid Executive tax), both failed, so the $5,000,000 exemption threshold from Proposition M stands as of this writing. We track which bracket applies to a given entity structure and flag it before a filing deadline, not after.

A new LLC's first-year $800 tax is due by the 15th day of the 4th month after it registers with the Secretary of State, and every year after that on the same schedule. Calendar-year C corporations file Form 1120 and pay by April 15, S corporations file Form 1120-S by March 15 (March 16, 2026, since the 15th falls on a Sunday), and partnerships file Form 1065 on the same March date. On the city side, San Francisco's Business and Tax Regulations Code requires registering with the Treasurer & Tax Collector within 30 days of starting business in the city, with registration renewed annually. If the business sells tangible personal property, California's Department of Tax and Fee Administration requires a seller's permit before the first taxable sale, separate from the city registration. Out-of-state sellers cross into California's sales tax system once combined sales into the state pass $500,000 in the current or prior calendar year, a threshold that catches more remote-first SF companies than founders expect once revenue scales. We keep a dated list of what is owed to which agency and when, tied to the entity's actual fiscal year rather than a generic calendar.

Most of our San Francisco clients sit in a handful of recognizable categories. SaaS companies need revenue recognition on annual contracts handled correctly rather than booked as cash, deferred revenue tracked as upgrades and downgrades happen, and MRR and churn numbers that tie back to the general ledger instead of living only in a dashboard. Venture-backed startups more broadly need a 13-week cash runway number ready before every board meeting, a clean cap table reconciled against the accounting file, and financials formatted the way a Series A or Series B diligence team expects to see them, not reformatted the week the term sheet lands. Fintech and payments businesses carry their own weight: reconciling processor payouts against gross transaction volume, tracking money movement across escrow or custodial accounts, and keeping records clean enough to support a banking partner's own compliance review. Agencies and consultancies need project-level profitability, not just a company-wide P&L, because a studio running five retainers at once needs to know which one is actually profitable. And a growing number of crypto and web3 teams headquartered in the city need wallets, exchange activity, and token transactions turned into a ledger a CPA or auditor can actually work from, built around the same reconciliation discipline as any other business, not a special exemption from it.

We are not a San Francisco office and do not claim to be one; this is a remote engagement, contracted in the United States through Northlane Solutions Inc. Documents move through a shared, permissioned folder structure tied to your QuickBooks Online or Xero file, which you own from day one, not a mailbox full of PDF attachments that someone has to chase down every month. Bank and card feeds connect directly rather than relying on emailed statements, so reconciliation does not stall waiting on a document to show up. A senior reviewer signs off on your file before anything is marked closed. If your bank, card program, or billing tool changes, hand-offs get documented in writing rather than left to institutional memory, so a change in your stack does not mean a gap in how quickly your books get closed that month.

We work inside the tools already common across Bay Area startups rather than asking a company to switch systems to fit us. On the bookkeeping side that is QuickBooks Online, Xero, and NetSuite once a company outgrows either of those. On banking, Bay Area startups lean heavily on Mercury and SVB's successor relationships alongside traditional business banking, and on the spend side Ramp and Brex show up constantly for corporate cards and bill pay. Payroll and HR run through Gusto, Rippling, or Deel depending on headcount and whether the team has contractors outside the US. Billing and revenue tools are usually Stripe for a SaaS company or a dedicated subscription platform like Chargebee layered on top. Where a company already has Dext or Hubdoc set up for receipt capture, or A2X for marketplace reconciliation, we work inside that setup instead of replacing it. Where none of that exists yet, we help pick and configure the stack rather than defaulting to whatever we personally prefer.

Pricing is set by transaction and expense volume, not by a flat "San Francisco" surcharge or a guess at how complicated your business feels. The published rate card starts with a plan sized for solo founders and small LLCs under roughly $50,000 a month in expenses, moves up to a plan built for businesses running payroll, contractors, and multiple accounts, and tops out in a custom-quoted tier for multi-entity or high-volume companies that need controller-level oversight and a CFO-style reporting pack. That base plan is bookkeeping only; California's $800 minimum tax, the LLC fee tiers, and San Francisco's own registration and Gross Receipts Tax filings are separate line items handled under our tax preparation support and business-setup scopes, not folded silently into a bookkeeping quote. A fundraising-stage company that needs investor reporting or a financial model built for a raise is scoped and quoted separately from monthly bookkeeping too, since that work has a different shape and a different time commitment. See the full rate card for current tier pricing and what is included at each level, or compare San Francisco with Chicago and New York on the locations hub.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks wages for bookkeeping, accounting, and controller roles by metro area through its Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics program, and the San Francisco-Oakland-Berkeley metro consistently sits near the top of that list; check the current BLS OEWS release for the exact figure for a given role, since it updates annually and Bay Area pay moves with it. A single in-house bookkeeper or controller hire in San Francisco also carries payroll tax, benefits, equipment, and the ramp-up time of training someone new, on top of whatever base salary the offer letter shows. An outsourced monthly plan replaces that with a named pod that already knows SaaS revenue recognition, investor reporting, and California's tax calendar on day one, priced against expense volume rather than a single salary line. For a company still small enough to be deciding between the first finance hire and an outsourced setup, that is usually the more direct comparison than headcount versus no headcount.

We start with a short call to understand your entity structure, which state and city registrations already exist, and what your current books look like, whether that is a clean QuickBooks Online file or three years of bank statements that never got entered anywhere. From there we scope which rate-card tier fits your expense volume and confirm what is included. Once you engage, we get access to your existing accounting file, or set one up in your name if you do not have one yet, and begin with a review of the trailing months to catch anything that needs cleanup before regular monthly bookkeeping starts. California and San Francisco registrations get checked against what you actually have on file, and anything missing gets flagged early rather than found at tax time. From there it moves to a normal monthly cadence: reconciliation, close, reporting, and a standing time to ask questions.