CPA Firms Houston Alternative starts from a year that already closed

If the return is already filed

A filed return is a fact. We read it against the bank for that year if you want the new year to start clean. If the filed return and the cash cannot be reconciled, we say what we see. Amending is a separate decision, quoted on its own, and only when the difference is real.

We do not reopen a year to chase a feeling. We reopen it when a number is wrong and the correction is worth the disturbance. You hear that judgment before any form is touched.

If the year never closed

An unfiled year with open months is catch up work. We rebuild from the last month anyone trusts, one month at a time, until the return has something to stand on. The fee follows the number of months and the number of accounts, which is why we will not quote it blind.

You may have a folder of statements and no categories. A folder like that lets us begin the questions. It is not enough to file. The categories are the part only you can finish, and we will group the questions so the year does not stall on one unknown wire.

Hurricane season runs from the first of June to the end of November. Every Texan who has watched a storm cross the Gulf knows that stretch. We respect it the way you do. We also ask whether a disrupted month was ever reconciled, or whether the cash from those weeks is still unlabeled.

The year after that

Once the old year is understood, the current year should not repeat it. Monthly closes are how. We would rather be in the present month with you than meet again next spring to explain a silent year.

Tell us whether the old return was filed and whether you trust the books under it. Those two answers pick the path.

What to gather

For a year that was filed, send the return, the statements you had at the time if you still have them, and the bank files for the last month of that year and the first month of the next. That pair of months shows whether the beginning balance of the new year is real. We can often tell from those two files whether the old year needs a deeper read.

For a year that was never filed, send every bank and card file you can find and a note about the software you tried to use. You do not need to finish the software. We would rather see the exports than a half built file nobody trusts. Tell us about loans, sales tax, and payroll even if they were handled by someone else.

Do not send a box and go silent. The work stalls on your answers, not on our typing. We will batch the questions. A week of answers can move a quarter of months. A month of silence moves nothing, and we will say so rather than pretend the year is in progress.

Loans, goods on the shelf, and tax collected that year

An old year often hides a loan posted as income, or a sale posted as a loan. We ask for the loan papers and for the deposits that should match them. When the papers and the deposits disagree, that point stays open. We do not pick the treatment that makes the bill smaller.

If you sell goods, the year needs a count or a method you already live with. A figure invented on cleanup day is not a count we will pretend is one. Tell us what you actually held, even when the memory is rough, and we will label the roughness. A labeled estimate can be corrected later. A silent plug waits to trip the next year.

Sales tax collected that year may still be sitting inside income. Pulling it out changes profit and creates a liability. A filing you already sent is the check. If you never filed, that liability is part of the cleanup, and we will say whether a separate filing project has to happen before the income tax return can be honest.

Draws that were never categorized look like cash that vanished. We list them and you mark which ones were personal. The rest stay unexplained until you remember. That list is often the slowest part of an old year, and only you can finish it.