Many of you know how I left the corporate world to be a stay-at-home mom. I chose to make less and live more. This was a major life change in so many ways, but one I don’t regret. That’s not to say that my family and I didn’t experience some bumps along this new career path. Obviously, our bank account suffered. So, we simplified our lives and relied more on savings.

Keeping the books for a small - to medium-sized business is overarching process that separates into individual tasks. Over my years as a bookkeeper, I’ve come to identify the No. 1 bookkeeping task you don’t want to leave out. Unfortunately, your financial reports are unreliable if you do. What bookkeeping task could be so important? Reconciling your books. Even in the days of online banking, it’s critical to do these reconciliations.

If I had a dollar for every time I heard, “Nothing in life is free,” I would be a rich woman. It was a phrase that echoed in my head time and time again as we waded through the relief options offered to small businesses last spring in response to the pandemic. While my clients, and many small businesses like them, were scrambling to apply for relief before funds ran out, we were asking ourselves things like: