Bad books cost you tax money twice — once in the messed-up return you file, once in the strategy you can't run because the numbers don't tie. Clean books are the foundation of every move that comes after. Pick the path that fits how you want to operate.
If you like running your business hands-on and want a CFO-style sounding board, Kick self-serve is built for you. If you want to never think about books again, ETS-as-bookkeeper takes the whole thing off your plate.
For: hands-on owners who want to drive the books with expert backup
You run the books inside Kick.co (our official bookkeeping platform partner). We're available by the hour for questions, monthly reviews, cleanup sprints, or quarter-end tie-outs. You stay in control. We're the safety net.
For: owners who want to never look at QuickBooks again
We own the books. Monthly categorization, reconciliation, P&L, balance sheet, and a 15-min monthly touch-base. Books always reconciled within 5 business days of month-end. Average bookkeeping client lands at ~$500/mo depending on transaction volume.
The three patterns we see most often. Each one costs the owner real money, every year, without them seeing it.
"My bookkeeper categorized half my owner draws as expenses. The IRS caught it three years later."
$240K S-corp · Mar 2026
"We were 9 months behind. Every month I told myself I'd catch up next month. Then we needed a loan and the lender wanted current financials."
Construction LLC · Feb 2026
"My prior bookkeeper used a chart of accounts that didn't match what the tax preparer needed. Every March we paid extra for the cleanup."
Real estate operator · Apr 2026
If you pick Path 02, here's what lands in your portal every month. The system is the system. No surprises, no monthly upsells.
Every bank, credit card, and merchant feed categorized to your chart of accounts.
Bank and credit card accounts tied out to the statement balance. Variances flagged and resolved.
Three core financial statements delivered to your portal by the 10th of the following month.
Optional. Brief recap, anomalies flagged, owner draw / contribution decisions noted. Recorded for your portal.
Books closed by mid-January. Owner equity tied. Depreciation rolled. Tax preparer (us or yours) gets clean numbers.
1099-NEC + 1099-MISC for every contractor you paid $600+. Filed January 31. Included in the monthly.
Receipts, contracts, and business-purpose notes linked to every transaction over $1,000. Pullable in seconds if the IRS asks.
Every month, every recap, every doc. Permanent. Yours forever, even if you switch bookkeepers tomorrow.
Kick is the bookkeeping platform we use for every client engagement (Path 02) and the platform we recommend for hands-on owners (Path 01). Why Kick: built for small business, AI-assisted categorization, multi-entity friendly, and the chart of accounts maps cleanly to what your tax preparer actually needs.
If you're on QuickBooks today, we'll convert your books at no charge when you onboard onto an ETS bookkeeping engagement. If you want to self-serve on Kick, we'll get you set up and trained at the $75/hr rate.
Anonymized. Numbers represent either tax savings unlocked by clean books or audit/cleanup costs avoided.
5-property landlord with QuickBooks chart-of-accounts that didn't separate capital improvements from repairs. We rebuilt the books, reclassified $80K of misallocated expenses, and unlocked depreciation that survived a Round N tax review.
Owner needed current financials for a $400K equipment loan. We caught up 9 months of books in two weeks, delivered the lender package, and the loan funded on time. Now on monthly close cadence.
Switched from a $300/mo bookkeeper whose books didn't pass our intake review. ETS rebuilt the books from bank statements, reset the chart, and the year-end cleanup cost dropped to $0 going forward.
If you choose Path 02 (ETS-as-bookkeeper), yes — we work in Kick. We migrate your books at no charge during onboarding. If you choose Path 01 (Kick self-serve), the same applies. If you insist on staying on QuickBooks, we can still support you, but at a higher monthly rate to cover the platform inefficiencies.
Volume-based. Sub-50 transactions per month: $300. 50–200 transactions: $400–$600. 200+ transactions or multi-entity: scoped on Discovery. Quoted in writing before any engagement starts.
Yes. Cleanup engagements are scoped separately based on months behind and transaction volume. Typical 12-month catch-up runs $1,500–$5,000 depending on volume. Once caught up, you roll into the monthly cadence at the standard rate.
Yes. We deliver year-end books to whoever your tax preparer is in the format they need. Bundled engagements (where we do both books and taxes) get you a discount, but you're never required to bundle.
30-day notice. No penalty. You keep your Kick workspace (you own it), your portal, and every monthly statement we've ever produced. We'll hand off cleanly to your next bookkeeper if you have one.
Yes. Most upgrades happen when transaction volume grows past what hands-on bookkeeping can absorb. Conversion is instant — same Kick workspace, same chart of accounts, we just take over the work.
The Discovery call is where we look at your transaction volume, current platform, and how hands-on you want to be. Path 01 or Path 02, we route you to the right one before any engagement starts.
Book the 15-min Discovery →