Plain-text accounting insights, tutorials, and updates from the Beancount.io team.
How express car washes should recognize unlimited membership revenue ratably under ASC 606, allocate variable cost per car across water, electricity, and chemicals (~$1.50/car target), and depreciate tunnel equipment under 15-year MACRS with cost segregation and bonus depreciation.
How to estimate variable consideration under ASC 606 — volume rebates, performance bonuses, royalties, and SLA penalties — choose between the expected-value and most-likely-amount methods, apply the reversal constraint correctly, distinguish a stand-ready obligation from a series of distinct services, and book journal entries that survive an audit.
How AIA Forms G702 and G703 work together, how to build a defensible schedule of values, handle retainage and change orders on the continuation sheet, and reconcile progress billings to ASC 606 revenue recognition for U.S. general contractors.
59% of small businesses with debt sign a personal guarantee, and it overrides your LLC's limited liability. This guide explains unlimited vs. limited guarantees, bad-boy carve-outs, burn-off provisions, SBA's 20% rule, and how to negotiate or get released.
A cash balance plan lets a 55-year-old business owner deduct roughly $230,000 a year in retirement contributions — far above the 401(k) ceiling — because a defined benefit pension caps the retirement benefit, not the annual deposit, so limits scale with age rather than income.
Two travel agencies can book the same $10,000 trip and report revenue ten times apart under ASC 606. A practical walkthrough of the principal-versus-agent control test, departure-date timing, ARC settlement flows, host agency commission splits, and 1099-NEC reporting thresholds.
A 2026 field guide to the Streamlined Sales Tax Project — the 24 member states, how the free SSTRS portal works, who qualifies as a CSP-compensated seller for free Avalara, TaxCloud, Sovos, or AccurateTax service, and when SST is the wrong choice for multistate online and SaaS sellers.
A solar installer's bookkeeping playbook — customer deposits under ASC 606, REC inventory, PPA classification under ASC 842, the 50% basis reduction on the Section 48 ITC, Section 6418 transferability mechanics, and the five-year recapture clock that survives a sale of the business.
How self-storage operators should structure a chart of accounts by unit type, reconcile SiteLink or storEDGE with the general ledger, treat move-in discounts as contra-revenue, handle auction proceeds, and report physical occupancy, economic occupancy, and NOI per square foot.
Section 469's self-rental rule recharacterizes rent from your own building as active income while losses stay passive — a one-way street that traps small business owners. A timely grouping election under Reg. 1.469-4 defuses it; missing the first-return filing window usually means living with the asymmetry for good.
How funeral homes, cemeteries, and memorial providers use the IRC Section 685 election on Form 1041-QFT to tax pre-need trust income at per-contract individual brackets — and how to reconcile state pre-need rules, deferred revenue, and restricted trust assets on the operator's books.
Section 467 forces accrual accounting and imputed interest on commercial leases over $250,000 with stepped, prepaid, or deferred rent — overriding cash-basis treatment, recharacterizing part of every rent payment as a deemed loan between landlord and tenant, and creating Schedule M-1 book-tax differences from ASC 842 straight-line rent.
