Bookkeeping Essentials SiteSearch

Hello and welcome to Bookkeeping Essentials SiteSearch . You'll find all about how to ... Find Basic Bookkeeping Information on This Site .

Useful Sidebar Chats Found On The Site

✔ How To Record Online Business Income in QuickBooks.

✔ Standby charges and your T4.

✔ How to track construction holdbacks in QuickBooks.

✔ When should you incorporate in Canada?

✔ A series of payroll sidebar chats including with How to Proof CPP and EI Tax Rates and How to Pay Employees With Cash.

✔ Owner manager remuneration for incorporated businesses.

✔ How to reconcile vendor statements.

✔ Amending a tax return to avoid penalties.

✔ Is it amortization or depreciation?

✔ Things to consider when gathering home office expense information.

✔ How to determine if a transaction should be expensed or capitalized?

✔ Do you need GAAP prepared financial statements?

✔ Basic entity concept, materiality, and consistency - three accounting principles.

✔ The risk of not having business insurance for your personal vehicle.

You will find basic bookkeeping tips, good bookkeeping practices and other useful information throughout this site on managing the accounting side of your business. Time sensitive data is updated regularly and along with the addition of new pages so I hope you visit often.

Watch throughout the site for these four features:

GAAP Update or ASPE Update,
Good To Know
The Bookkeeper's Tips ... on good bookkeeping practices, cash flow, and tax compliance, and
Let's Chat About ....

As the Bookkeeping Essentials site has grown (it is 700 plus web pages now), it has become trickier to see The Big Picture and to find what you are looking for, so ...

... did you read something on this site and now can't remember where to find it? I've talked and chatted about debits and credits, financial statements and bookkeeping help. Even I have trouble finding what I'm looking for! :o)

This SiteSearch is at your disposal to solve your dilemma. The way I see it ... you have three options ...

Your FIRST option is to use the Bookkeeping Essentials Search Box you see in the right hand column of the site at the top of most pages. The box setup is customized to search this site ... just be aware that if the page is fairly new and it has not been indexed by Google yet, it will not come up in the search. If that happens ...
You might want to try out this SECOND option ... check The Blog for a listing of the newest or revised articles ... or
Your THIRD option is to read The Small Business Accounting Site Guide below ... it's explains how this site is laid out and has links to ALL articles.

As you might have noticed, some of my pages on Bookkeeping Essentials are long ... so when you click in from a search engine executive summary ... it's hard to find the relevant line / topic that the search engines highlighted.

What I do once I have clicked to go to the page ... is to go to Edit>Find and type in a unique word or phrase that showed up on the search engine summary ... this saves me paging through trying to find the spot I need ... or near the top of some pages I have Quick Links that should take you to a general topic area.

No matter which option you choose, I sure hope you find what you are looking for ... if not, please drop me a note and I'll work at making it available on this site. I want you to know that Bookkeeping Essentials is committed to supporting work from home bookkeepers and tutoring business owners who do their own bookkeeping.

In May 2024, the site switched from a two column format to a one column format, and all the Canadian tax compliance articles were moved to my new site Bookkeeping-Essentials.ca. This meant I had to reorganize the navigation bar. This site map should help you find this reorganization.

Small Business Accounting Site Guide

This website is "built" in three layers.

The first layer is The Home Page. Think of the home page as "a business entity" known as Bookkeeping Essentials.
The second layer is each Navigation Button across the top if you are on a tablet or desktop computer or at the bottom is you are on a smartphone ... easy to reach from any page on this site. Think of these pages as "departmental sections" in the business entity Bookkeeping Essentials.

A brief explanation of what you can expect to find under each button follows directly after this section ... see How The Second Layer Works.

... and just so you know, there is a Table of Contents (look for "What you will find in this section") located on each page reached by a navigation button ... that relates only to that section.
The third layer can be reached from a link ... sometimes a contextual inline link in an article ... but the fastest way (usually) is through an overview summary found on one of the "second layer" pages or the site map. I say usually because sometimes I muck things up .. I know, I know ... I find it hard to believe too!

Soooo what I'm trying to say is, you access these "third layer" links through the second layer pages. Think of these pages as "procedures or issues" in each department of the business entity Bookkeeping Essentials.

While are 700 plus pages on the site, I've tried to never go more than three layers deep.

How The Second Layer Works
Executives Summaries

Here is a brief overview of the basic bookkeeping procedures and/or issues (third layer) for each departmental section (second layer) ...

... useful for finding your way around Bookkeeping Essentials.

Need a short break? Pull up a chair, relax, turn off your phone and peek ... at some the pages I've done so far.

EBooks For Sale and Other Tools

Month-End Procedure eManual, available for sale, explains what to do once you have entered all your data and before your print your internal financial statements.
Bookkeeping Checklists eBook, available for sale, lists what to do and when.
The Website Tools introduces you to the affordable service and friendly software package I use to build and maintain this site.

Accounting Systems

The Accounting System Setup focuses on bookkeeping system options, procedures, and software.
Your Chart of Accounts - Blueprint of Your Accounting System
Virtual Workflow focuses on to get started on creating an online accounting workflow process.
Filing Systems Index focuses on all your filing options and issues discussed on this site.
Record Retention Guidelines Canda vs. U.S.
Learning How To Use QuickBooks®
Learning How To Avoid Mistakes in QuickBooks

Bookkeeping Practices

Basic Accounting Concepts learning this stuff will make you a better bookkeeper
The Good Bookkeeping Practices focuses on discussions of the regular, routine bookkeeping chores.
The MonthEnd Preparation are tasks that should be done before the end of month.
The Bookkeeping Entries Link Index to all the journal entry examples on this site.
The Cheat Sheet unscrambles the confusion over debits and credits
My Top 5 Tips focuses on basic accounting and bookkeeping tips. They are split into five different categories.
The Bookkeeping of Aggregate Purchases explains how to determine when to expense and when to capitalize low cost capital assets.
The Online Courses provides information on where to find online training.

Financial Reporting

The Road Map focuses on financial planning, business plans and budgets.
The Financial Reports Training focuses on learning all about your financial statement reporting (which is different than income tax return reporting).
Introduction to Your Balance Sheet
Introduction to Your Income Statement
Cash Flow Statement Essentials
Basic Cash Management

Bookkeeping Compliance

U.S. Small Business Tax Compliance Index has links to all U.S. compliance articles ... particularly tax compliance due dates and interest rates and a link to self-employment taxes.
Canadian Bookkeeping Compliance Index has links to all the Canadian articles on Bookkeeping-Essentials.ca
The Rates Index has links to all the various Canadian and US rates on the site.
The T4A vs 1099MISC takes a look at the frequently audited area of hiring independent contractors.
The Self Employed Rates - US and Canada explains a best business practice and the best way to pay yourself; CPP rates and FICA rates for the self employed.
The Employee Payroll Rates - US and Canada provides current year SST and CPP/EI rates.
The Travel/Auto Rates Options - US and Canada explains the rules and your options.
The Casual Labor Rules explains how to pay and record casual labor.

The Useful Stuff

What's New Want to keep up-to-date on additions and changes to this site? Consider subscribing to the blog RSS feed ... or bookmark your favorite page using the "Share This Page" tools found at the bottom of each page including this Bookkeeping Essentials SiteSearch page.
The Current News is an index to the five news area tracked on this site to help keep you current. It's especially useful when doing backwork.
The IRS News focuses on the latest IRS news relevant to U.S. small business owners.
The CRA News focuses on CRA news for the Canadian small business owner.
Testimonials is where you have a chance to let me and others know how this site has helped you.
Visitor Poll provides me with valuable feedback about the content on this site.
Site Policies includes Terms of Use - Legal Disclaimer - Privacy Statement - Advertising Links - Compensation Disclosure for Bookkeeping-Essentials.com
Contact Me has a contact form and also includes information about me ... your tutor. ;0)

The Third Layer Links
Procedures and Bookkeeping Issues

Here are Bookkeeping Essentials SiteSearch links in alphabetical order to each third level page.

Executive summaries for these pages can be found by clicking the appropriate navigation button on the left hand side. Bookkeeping Forum pages are excluded from this listing. However you can find all the forum questions and answers by topic here.

Systems - Developing Your Accounting System