What should you receive from monthly bookkeeping
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A completed month includes recorded transactions, reconciled accounts and useful reports. Your agreement should also say who handles payroll, filings and unresolved questions.
Download the checklist · text file
What happens before the reports
We gather the records, categorize transactions and reconcile accounts to their statements. We separate transfers from income and check for duplicates. Items that need your explanation stay on a question list until they can be resolved.
Read the monthly report pack
| Report or record | What it helps you check |
|---|---|
| Profit and loss | Income, expenses and the result for the period |
| Balance sheet | What the business owns and owes at the reporting date |
| Reconciliation status | Which bank and card balances have been checked |
| Open questions | Missing documents and decisions still needed from you |
Compare the current month with the previous period and ask about large changes. Cash in the bank and profit answer different questions: borrowing can increase cash without creating sales, while buying equipment may not appear as an ordinary operating expense.
A fictional report example
A fictional service business reports CAD 12,000 of revenue and CAD 8,000 of expenses for a CAD 4,000 profit. Its bank balance also includes a CAD 5,000 loan received that month. The loan increases cash and liabilities, not revenue. This simplified example illustrates the report relationship; it is not a client result, a price or a tax calculation.
Confirm the work included in your plan
Transaction volume, payroll, sales-tax filings and software affect the monthly scope. Orbis publishes plan inclusions and exclusions and supplies your price in a written quote. Catch-up work, migrations and income tax returns should be explicitly covered in the engagement or quoted separately.
If another provider prepares your year-end return, agree the handoff reports they need. Monthly bookkeeping and the annual return remain distinct tasks even when the same practice handles both.
What should I receive each month?
Transactions recorded, every account reconciled to its statement, a profit and loss and a balance sheet, and a list of items still needing your explanation. What else is included — payroll, sales-tax filings — depends on the plan, and the written quote states it.
Why is my profit different from my bank balance?
They answer different questions. A loan increases cash without creating revenue; buying equipment reduces cash without being an ordinary operating expense; an unpaid customer invoice is revenue with no cash behind it yet. The balance sheet is where the difference is visible.
Is my tax return included in monthly bookkeeping?
No — the annual T1 or T2 return is separate work, whether or not the same practice does both. Monthly bookkeeping is what makes that return cheap and quick to prepare, which is a different thing from being included in it.
What is not included in a monthly plan?
Catch-up work on prior periods, software migrations and income tax returns are quoted separately rather than absorbed. If a month turns out to need one of them, we say so rather than doing it silently.
Want this handled for you
This is the work we do for clients every month. Tell us what you sell and where your books stand, and a written plan and a fixed monthly price follow within one business day.