Contra Accounts Explained: The Offsets That Keep Your Financial Statements Honest
A contra account offsets its parent without erasing it: accumulated depreciation, allowance for doubtful accounts, and sales returns show gross and net.
#accounting-basics
Accounting Basics
Foundational accounting concepts, terminology, and principles for small business owners
When Your Books Won't Balance: What a Trial Balance Catches, What It Misses, and How to Hunt the Difference
Debits equal credits, yet your books can still be wrong — omissions, duplicates, and wrong-account postings all sail through a balanced trial balance.
The High-Low Method: Split Any Mixed Cost Into Fixed and Variable in Five Minutes
The high-low method splits a mixed cost using two periods — cost difference ÷ activity difference is the variable rate, and the remainder is fixed.
Closing Entries at Year-End: How to Zero Out Revenue and Expense Accounts and Roll Profit Into Retained Earnings
Master year-end closing entries: learn the four steps to zero revenue, expense, and dividend accounts, transfer net income via Income Summary to retained earnings (or capital), verify with a post-closing trial balance, and see how Beancount handles closing without manual entries.
When Excel Becomes a Liability: 7 Warning Signs It's Time to Switch to Accounting Software
Nearly 9 in 10 spreadsheets contain errors — learn the 7 warning signs your Excel bookkeeping is costing you time and accuracy, what accounting software fixes, and a migration checklist that keeps your history intact.
Pre-Need Funeral Trust Accounting: How to Track Future Obligations and Recognize Revenue Correctly
Pre-need funeral payments are not revenue until service — they're trust liabilities. Accrual, revenue recognition, and compliance for 2026.
Reading Your First P&L and Balance Sheet: A New Business Owner's Guide to the Two Reports That Answer "Am I Making Money?"
New business owners confuse cash in the bank with profit earned. Learn how to read your P&L and balance sheet together — revenue, COGS, gross margin, assets, liabilities, and equity — plus the seven bookkeeping mistakes that make beginners misread their own numbers.
Landscaping and Lawn Care Business Bookkeeping: Surviving the Winter Cash Crunch With a Seasonal Chart of Accounts and Reserve Strategy
Landscapers lose one-third of their businesses in five years to winter cash crunch—not from low margins, but from treating year-round expenses like a five-month revenue business. A seasonal chart of accounts, rolling cash forecast, and winter reserve strategy turns survival into planning.
The MSP Chart of Accounts: Separating Recurring, Resale, and Project Revenue
A managed service provider chart of accounts should split recurring MRR, hardware resale, and project/T&M into separate revenue and COGS lines, since blended margins of ~42% can hide 58% recurring services next to 8% hardware resale.
Reading Your First P&L and Balance Sheet: A New Business Owner's Guide
Learn to read P&L and balance sheets to understand your business's profitability and financial position. A practical guide for business owners on why both reports matter and how to use them for smarter decisions.
Makerspace and Hackerspace Bookkeeping: Membership Dues, Workshop Revenue, and Shared Equipment Costs
Makerspaces should recognize annual membership dues ratably over the term as a deferred-revenue liability rather than all at once, track workshop revenue separately from dues, capitalize equipment above a set threshold, and choose an LLC or 501(c)(3) structure based on whether their funding model relies on grants or dues.
Newsletter Sponsorship Revenue Recognition: Why a Verified CPC Payout Isn't Booked the Day the Ad Runs
Newsletter CPC ad networks like beehiiv verify clicks roughly 96 hours after send and pay out on the 20th of the following month — three different dates that create a real accrual-accounting gap most solo publishers book incorrectly.