If you're striving for better clarity, confidence, and understanding of your financial reports, the journey doesn’t start with reviewing your P&L or balance sheet, it starts with a solid foundation.
At Accountfully, we’ve found that the most successful client relationships are built on a robust and thoughtful onboarding process. Here’s why that matters, and what it really involves.
Think of your financial systems like the foundation of a house. Without a strong, level base, everything built on top is at risk of cracks or collapse. The same applies to your accounting. A haphazard start or unclear processes can lead to confusion, missed data, and unreliable reports later on. That’s why our onboarding process at Accountfully is not just a step, it’s the launchpad.
A quality onboarding process ensures your books are accurate, your systems are aligned, and your team is empowered. Here are the key elements we focus on:
Understanding who you're working with sets the tone for a collaborative partnership. We introduce clients to their dedicated team so there’s clear communication from day one.
To do our job well, we need secure access to the tools and platforms that power your business. This includes bank accounts, credit cards, payroll, Shopify, Amazon, inventory systems, and more. The more access and transparency we have, the faster and more accurately we can begin our work.
We ensure that tools like QuickBooks, Gusto, BILL, inventory platforms, and others are properly set up to sync and integrate. A streamlined system leads to faster processing, fewer errors, and better insights.
This is often overlooked but crucial. Many small businesses come to us with books built on cash-basis accounting or inconsistent data entry. We frequently need to go back—sometimes as far back as January 1—to create clean, accrual-based financials. This enables accurate comparisons, better reporting, and clarity around key financial metrics.
Cleaning up financial records includes not just your P&L, but also your balance sheet, where many issues tend to hide.
We often find unreconciled accounts, negative assets, or positive liabilities that need correcting before you can truly trust your numbers.
We tailor your Chart of Accounts so your P&L tells a clear story. That means grouping revenue, COGS, marketing, fulfillment, and other line items in a way that’s meaningful and actionable for your specific business.
For inventory-based companies, we dig into your supply chain, landed costs, and valuation method. Whether you're using a dedicated system like Cin7 or tracking manually in spreadsheets, we help align your operations with your accounting.
We walk clients through the month-end financial close process—step by step. It’s not just about finalizing numbers; it’s about reviewing and understanding your financials. We clarify how specific transactions are treated, how accruals are handled, and how to interpret your monthly reports.
Finally, we identify who owns which tasks. Will our team handle commission calculations, or will you? Which pieces of the bookkeeping process will we take over, and which will stay with your team? We build workflows together to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
Yes, onboarding is front-loaded with effort. But that investment pays off exponentially. A thorough onboarding builds the infrastructure that supports everything else: strategic planning, margin visibility, cash flow forecasting, and ultimately, scalability.
When your accounting is grounded in clean, accurate, and timely data, you can make decisions with confidence—and that’s where the real power lies.
• • •
Ready to build a better financial foundation?If you're considering working with an outsourced accounting firm, make sure they prioritize onboarding as much as we do. It's not just the first step, it's the most important one. Feel free to reach out to talk this through!
