Blog
Plain-text accounting insights, tutorials, and updates from the Beancount.io team. Browse by tag.
Purchasing Card Controls for Small Teams: Keep Spending Fast and Accountable
A practical control framework for small-team purchasing cards—role-based limits, same-day receipt capture, weekly reconciliation, and independent review—so fast spending stays documented and auditable.
Selling Notion Templates Through a Merchant of Record: A Bookkeeping Guide to Gross Sales, Fees, and Taxes
How to keep books for Notion-template sales when a merchant-of-record platform collects sales tax and nets fees from your payout—separating customer charges, platform fees, refunds, and taxes through a clearing account so a $1,530 deposit is fully explained, and treating Form 1099-K as a cross-check rather than your ledger.
Niger's 2026 Payment Taxes: A Recordkeeping Guide for Cash and Mobile-Money Businesses
Niger's 2026 framework adds a 1% tax on qualifying cash payments above CFA 100,000 and a 0.5%/5% tax on deposits and inter-operator transfers. This guide shows small businesses how to map exposure, record the tax separately from the underlying transaction, and reconcile cash and mobile money daily.
Mobile Veterinary Practice Bookkeeping: A Per-Visit Profit and Van-Cost Guide
A bookkeeping framework for mobile veterinary practices — track per-visit revenue in layers, capitalize the van and conversion, split loan payments into principal and interest, and use contribution margin plus a rolling 13-week forecast to price each route.
Minnesota Veterinary Technician Licensing: A Clinic Budget and Records Checklist
Minnesota's licensed veterinary technician transition took effect July 1, 2026, with USD 282 in initial Board fees per applicant. A practical checklist for clinics to budget the costs, set reimbursement rules, control a staff roster, and clean up client-facing job titles.
The Midyear Withholding Checkup That Can Prevent a Tax-Time Surprise
A midyear withholding checkup turns "Will I owe?" into numbers you can act on—check your 2026 estimated-tax safe harbors (90% of this year's tax, or 100%/110% of last year's), project your withholding, and close any gap with a new Form W-4 or estimated payments.
Mailbox Store Bookkeeping: Box Rent, Postage Advances, and Customer Funds
In a mailbox store or CMRA, record prepaid mailbox rent as deferred revenue and customer postage as a liability until it is spent, reconcile the customer-balance subledger to the general ledger monthly, and set retention rules from USPS and IRS requirements.
Guatemala's Q500,285 Small-Taxpayer Ceiling: A 2026 Bookkeeping Guide for Freelancers and Small Shops
Guatemala's 2026 Régimen de Pequeño Contribuyente ceiling is Q500,285 in gross invoiced sales. This guide shows freelancers and small shops how to track year-to-date invoices, reconcile every payment channel, and forecast a regime change before crossing the line.
Government Contractor Bookkeeping: A Practical Cost-Reimbursement Readiness Guide
A step-by-step readiness guide for cost-reimbursement contractors—how to build a traceable chart of accounts, run labor charging as a daily control, calculate indirect rates, and produce an invoice package reproducible from your books, with a 60-day plan.
Gift Card Breakage and Unclaimed Property: A Retailer's Practical Guide
An unredeemed gift card stays a customer liability until the facts support otherwise. This guide shows retailers how to book gift cards as deferred revenue, reconcile balances monthly, recognize breakage as a defensible estimate, and preserve the card-level data that state unclaimed-property (escheatment) filings require.
Feed Store Inventory Accounting: How to Cost Bulk Feed, Bagged SKUs, and Freight Without Losing the Margin
A feed store guide to costing bulk feed and bagged SKUs at delivered cost—allocating inbound freight, choosing FIFO or weighted average, counting bulk bins to expose shrink, and reconciling the inventory subledger monthly.
EU Platform Work Directive Deadline: What US Businesses Hiring European Freelancers Must Do Before December 2, 2026
The EU Platform Work Directive (2024/2831) must become national law in all member states by December 2, 2026, creating a rebuttable presumption that platform workers are employees. US businesses hiring EU-based freelancers through digital platforms face reclassification risk, algorithmic transparency duties, and new data-processing bans — this guide covers the six pillars, a 10-month compliance playbook, and the bookkeeping changes to make now.