CPA for LLC The company already has a bank.
People still look up the room when they want the night, and the room and the work inside it are different facts. The company and the return are different facts the same way.
After the account opens
The bank account is the line between the owner's pocket and the company. Before it exists, every payment is a reconstruction. After it exists, the feed can be tied to a month. We would rather start there than unravel a year of personal cards.
The first close is small. It proves the feed, the opening contribution, and the expenses that were actually the company's. It does not try to look like a five-year model. Owners relax when that first month ties, because the fear was that nobody could say what the company had.
Statements you can hand to a lender later are built from these months. They carry no assurance signature from us. If a lender wants that signature, the disclosures page says where it has to go.
Payroll only if the letter requires a wage
An S company that should be paying its owner a wage needs a payroll file before the year is over, not a journal entry labeled payroll in December. We set that file up with a provider. Reasonable pay is a judgment we write down with you, from the work the owner actually does, not from a table we invent.
If the company has no employees and no S letter, we do not build a payroll file to look busy. Draws and contributions, kept apart, are the honest record. Adding a provider you do not need is a cost, and we will say so.
Contractors are a different pile. A form 1099 is a January job when the payments were real. A webpage is the wrong place to relabel a crew. If the question is whether people should have been employees, that is a conversation with the facts, and it can end with a referral.
The fear of a letter from the state
The letter owners dread is usually a federal notice or a sales-tax notice, not a mystery. The entity return follows the calendar for that tax life. Sales tax, if you collect it, follows its own calendar. We put both dates on the same year you can see, next to the federal return, so a notice is less of a surprise.
If a notice is already on the table, bring it to the call. We read it with you. If the next step is a hearing, we stop at the records and name who can speak.
What the first twelve weeks usually hold
The early weeks are not a strategy retreat. They are a list. Open the account if it is not open. Put the formation fee and the laptop, if they were truly the company's, into contributions with the receipt still attached. Choose which calendar day the close will repeat. Read the letter, or write down that there is no letter. Stop there until that list is done.
Three rooms can share one street, and a person can love the street without pretending the room is the work. A new bank account is the room. The work is the month that ties. Owners relax when the first close is small and true, because the fear was that the company had no number anyone would sign. A small true number is allowed to be the whole win.
If a notice arrives in those weeks, bring the paper to the call. We read the date and the agency. A federal notice and a sales-tax notice ask for different things, and mixing them makes both look harder than they are. If the next step is a hearing, we gather the records and name who can speak. We do not take the chair.
Payroll stays off that early list unless the letter says a wage belongs. Building a provider file for a company that should only be taking draws adds a cost and a form you then have to keep. We would rather say no to that file in week two than unwind it in December. If a notice is already in the stack, put that paper on the table for the call.