Sage bookkeeping

Monthly work covers transaction coding inside your existing Sage ledger against the chart of accounts you already run, reconciliation of every bank, card and payment-processor account to its statement, and a full month-end close that includes accrual entries where your business reports on an accrual basis. Standard Sage reports, profit and loss, balance sheet, job-cost or project reports where relevant, are delivered on a schedule you agree with us in writing before the engagement starts.

For Sage Intacct specifically, close also covers dimension tagging (department, location, class, project) so reporting can be sliced the way the business actually needs it, and multi-entity consolidation where more than one subsidiary rolls up to a parent. For Sage 50 and Sage 100, the scope stays closer to single-entity coding, reconciliation and close, with job costing layered in where the business tracks costs by project or contract.

What is not included: audit or attest work of any kind (we produce audit-ready books and PBC support, an independent licensed firm performs the audit itself), and tax return preparation, which is a separate engagement filed by a credentialed signer.

We start with read or edit access to your existing Sage subscription, no new software, no migration unless you specifically want one. A short review of the current file surfaces anything that needs a one-time catch-up before ongoing monthly work can start clean.

Each period follows the same rhythm: transactions are coded as the bank feed lands rather than in a month-end scramble, accounts are reconciled to statements as they close, and the month is finalized on the agreed close date with accruals and job-cost allocations booked according to your existing structure. A short written note calls out anything unusual, an unexplained transfer, a vendor billed twice, a cost that landed in the wrong job.

Reports go out on the schedule set in your engagement letter. If your fiscal year does not run calendar-year, which is common among Sage users with a specific industry cycle, the close calendar is built around your actual year end, not a generic one.

Manufacturers running job costs or standard costing in Sage 100, contractors tracking work-in-progress and retention in Sage 50 or Sage 100 Contractor, and mid-size or multi-subsidiary businesses running Sage Intacct for its dimensional reporting and consolidation. It also fits a controller who inherited a Sage file from a predecessor and needs someone to keep it current while bigger structural questions get answered.

It does not fit a brand-new small business with no existing Sage investment; for a fresh start we would usually recommend QuickBooks Online or Xero, and we will say so rather than set up a new Sage file just to keep working inside a familiar product.

A Sage 50 file where job costs have been posting to the wrong project for months because the job list was never cleaned up after a merger. A Sage Intacct consolidation where two subsidiaries use different account numbering, so the roll-up report requires a manual spreadsheet every quarter instead of a native consolidation. A bank reconciliation that has carried a stale $4,200 outstanding-check balance for a year because nobody traced it to the actual check that never cleared.

We also see standing accruals that were booked once and never reversed, inflating expenses every period after the real cost already hit cash, and a chart of accounts with duplicate expense categories created independently by different bookkeepers over time, making the profit and loss harder to read than it needs to be.

We work across Sage 50 (desktop and cloud-hosted), Sage 100, and Sage Intacct, plus the bank-feed and receipt-capture tools that connect to each: Sage's own bank feeds, and where the client already uses them, Dext or Hubdoc for receipt capture ahead of coding. Sage Intacct's native multi-currency and multi-entity modules are used directly rather than worked around with spreadsheets.

Where a client is evaluating a move off Sage entirely, we work with QuickBooks Online or Xero on the receiving end of that migration, mapping the existing chart of accounts and job-cost structure so historical comparisons still hold after the switch.

Pricing depends on transaction volume, the specific Sage product (Sage Intacct's dimensional and consolidation work runs at a different scope than single-entity Sage 50 coding), and whether a catch-up is needed before ongoing monthly work begins. Published tiers and what each includes are on the rate card; a Sage-specific engagement is usually scoped at or above the Growth tier given the added complexity of job costing or multi-entity consolidation most Sage users carry. Your exact fee is confirmed in writing before anything starts.

Every close is reviewed by a senior reviewer before it reaches you, and reconciliations are checked line by line against the bank or card statement rather than accepted because the ending balance happens to match. Books close on the day agreed in your engagement letter, and any change to a schedule, a class list or a cost-center structure is sent to any controller, outside preparer or auditor you name, with a short memo explaining what changed and why, so nothing shows up unexplained at quarter end.

Sage's real advantage over a simpler small-business ledger is job costing and, in Intacct, native multi-entity consolidation with dimensional tagging. That strength only pays off if the underlying structure was built correctly in the first place. We work inside whatever structure exists, but we also flag, in writing, when the job list, the dimension setup, or the intercompany elimination logic is the actual reason reports take three days to produce instead of one. Fixing that structure is scoped and priced separately from ongoing monthly bookkeeping, precisely so a client never pays cleanup rates for routine coding, or vice versa.