Fuel Costs Are Quietly Eating Your Margin: What Record Gas Prices Mean for Your Books
Small-business gas spend jumped nearly 31% in 2026. Track fuel per mile, split the 72.5¢/76¢ IRS mileage rate, and book fuel surcharges as revenue.
#chart-of-accounts
Chart of Accounts
Design and organize your account hierarchy for effective financial tracking
Juice Bar and Smoothie Shop Bookkeeping: Track Produce Spoilage per Ingredient to Protect Your Margins
A 70% smoothie margin can be 45% after spoilage. Log waste per ingredient, cost recipes on yielded produce, and book abnormal loss outside COGS.
Podcast Studio Rental Bookkeeping: Price Your Hourly Rate From Real Costs
Price podcast studio rentals from fixed costs, Section 179 depreciation and 25–40% first-year utilization, not competitor rates — then book each revenue stream.
Driveway Gate Automation Installer Bookkeeping: UL 325 Safety Costs, Job Margins, and Service Contracts
Cost UL 325 safety devices as their own COGS line, target 50% gross and 15–20% net, and book gate maintenance contracts as deferred revenue.
Worm Farming Bookkeeping: Living Inventory, Castings Sales Tax, and Farm Tax Rules
Price worms and castings from a blended cost per pound, register castings as fertilizer, collect state sales tax, and pass the IRS hobby-loss test.
Your Webhook Bill Is COGS, Not Overhead: Bookkeeping for Event-Driven SaaS on Svix and Hookdeck
Svix and Hookdeck bills are cost of revenue, not overhead: split platform fee from metered usage, accrue before invoicing, and track cost per 1,000 events.
The "Ask My Accountant" Account Is Not a Filing Cabinet: How to Clear It for Good
The QuickBooks "Ask My Accountant" account is a question queue, not a category — a balance there distorts your P&L, your deductions, and your loan applications. Here is the four-step process for clearing it (snapshot, recategorize, batch-reclassify, fix the habits) and the 30-minute monthly close that keeps it and its three sibling suspense accounts at zero.
New York's Gig Delivery Worker Law: What the $22.13 Pay Floor, Tip Rules, and Weekly Payouts Mean for Your Restaurant's Books
New York City's app-based delivery rules — a $22.13 hourly courier pay floor for pay periods beginning on or after April 1, 2026, tipping offered at checkout with a 10% suggested minimum, and weekly itemized payouts — change what a restaurant has to record. Book gross marketplace sales, itemize every platform fee, run tips through a liability account that ends at zero, and the January 1099-K reconciles itself.
Agrivoltaics Bookkeeping: Splitting Solar Lease, Crop, and Grazing Income Into Three Ledger Lines
Agrivoltaics can pay a farmer $900–$1,500 per acre in solar lease rent on top of crop and grazing income, each taxed differently. Here is how to book all three streams as separate ledger lines to protect your Schedule F, agricultural assessment, and self-employment-tax boundaries.
Meta's Location Fees Add 2%–5% to Your Ad Bill: How to Rebuild Your Marketing Budget Line Items
Since July 1, 2026, Meta adds 2%–5% location fees on ads delivered to users in the UK, France, Italy, Spain, Austria and Türkiye, billed on top of campaign budgets and never shown in Ads Manager. Learn how to compute your blended fee rate, book the fees as their own ledger line, and reconcile from the invoice rather than the dashboard.
Freelance Translator and Interpreter Bookkeeping: Reconcile Every Word, Hour, Currency, and Agency Cut
A bookkeeping system for freelance translators and interpreters that tracks per-word, hourly, and project income separately, reconciles agency statements from gross invoice to net deposit, records foreign-currency receipts at documented exchange rates per IRS rules, and measures effective hourly rates — with a chart of accounts and monthly close checklist.
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.