Plain-text accounting insights, tutorials, and updates from the Beancount.io team.
Starting September 1, 2026, France requires structured e-invoices (Factur-X, UBL, or CII) for domestic B2B transactions, and US sellers with no French establishment must supply clean, itemized invoice data so their French customers can meet the parallel e-reporting obligation.
The IRS assessed about $4.8 billion in estimated-tax penalties on 15 million-plus returns in FY2024. Four fixable bookkeeping habits — commingled accounts, spreadsheet ledgers, personal credit for business spending, and lax records — cause most of the damage, and each has a same-day fix.
A craft brewery accounting guide covering the 2026 federal beer excise tax rates ($3.50/$16/$18 per barrel under CBMA), how to book keg deposits as a liability instead of revenue, and a channel-level chart of accounts that separates taproom, self-distribution, and wholesale margins.
Starting July 1, 2026, Connecticut's SB 3 requires the first price a business advertises to include every mandatory fee except taxes and government charges. Here is how small businesses rewire pricing displays, checkout flows, and bookkeeping to comply.
A comic shop is three businesses sharing a register—non-returnable new issues, long-tail back issues, and consignment—so split them in your chart of accounts, book prepaid pull lists as deferred revenue, and capitalize grading fees into inventory instead of expensing them.
Childcare centers that book private tuition, CCDF/CCW subsidy reimbursements, and CACFP meal reimbursements to one income line can't reconcile deposits to attendance or meal counts, which is the most common finding in subsidy and CACFP audits.
Since January 1, 2023 California treats payroll records as protected personal information under CCPA/CPRA, while Colorado's 2025 biometric amendment and Virginia's 2026 changes narrow the "employee exemption." Here is a 30-day compliance plan covering the workforce privacy notice, retention schedule, security, rights requests, and vendor contracts for small employers.
A chart-of-accounts and KPI framework for auto repair shops that separates parts and labor profit, tracks effective labor rate against posted door rate, and books comebacks and warranty work as visible costs instead of hidden losses.
How to accrue unused PTO as a liability month by month under ASC 710, calculate it with payroll taxes, book the journal entries, and apply the three state-law buckets that decide whether you must cash out vacation at separation.
A roofing WIP schedule ties revenue to work actually completed rather than to when you invoiced — percent complete equals costs to date divided by total estimated costs, and earned revenue equals percent complete times revised contract price. This guide walks a $192,000 TPO re-roof through the math, explains over- versus under-billing, retainage receivable and warranty accruals, and covers when Section 460 forces percentage-of-completion for tax (roughly $31 million in average gross receipts for 2026, or contracts running past two years).
A booth renter is a separate business, not a salon employee — rent is a Schedule C expense, client payments arrive with nothing withheld, and 15.3% self-employment tax plus quarterly 1040-ES estimates are the renter's alone. This guide covers the IRS control tests, which 1099s and W-9s each side owes, and the account structure that keeps a chair rental defensible in an audit.
How personal chefs and private caterers separate client grocery COGS from household spending, claim the home-kitchen deduction under the exclusive-use test, and job-cost every booking — with target food-cost ranges of 28–38% for weekly meal prep and 25–35% for private dinners.
