Plan two
Intermediate Bookkeeping
Everything in Basic Bookkeeping, plus the two recurring jobs that eat the most owner time and cause the most damage when they slip: paying the people you owe, and paying the people who work for you.
Everything in Basic still applies
The foundation does not change. Your bank and card activity is reviewed and categorized weekly, every account is reconciled at month end, and you get a profit and loss statement and balance sheet each month prepared from reconciled books.
- Weekly bank feed monitoring
- Monthly bank reconciliations
- Monthly financial statements
What Intermediate adds
Two jobs come off your desk. Both are the kind of work that seems small until you add up the hours, and expensive the first time one gets missed.
Weekly accounts payable runs
Your vendor bills are gathered, reviewed against what was actually ordered or delivered, entered into your books, and queued on a weekly cycle rather than handled whenever someone notices an invoice sitting in an inbox.
A weekly rhythm does two useful things. It stops bills going past due, which protects your supplier relationships and keeps you eligible for early-payment terms where vendors offer them. And it makes your cash position legible, because money going out on a predictable schedule is something you can plan around, while money going out in unpredictable bursts is something you react to.
There is a control benefit too. A second set of eyes on incoming invoices is how duplicate billing, quietly increased rates, and invoices for things that never arrived get caught. When the owner is the only person who ever looks at a bill, nobody catches those.
What this saves you: the weekly hour of opening invoices, plus the late fee on the one you forgot.
Payroll processing
Payroll is run when you need it, and the entries flow straight into your books as part of the same system rather than being reconstructed from pay stubs later.
That integration matters more than it sounds. Payroll handled separately from bookkeeping is one of the most common sources of messy books, because wages, taxes withheld, and employer costs end up recorded inconsistently or lumped together. When payroll and the books are handled by the same person, your labor cost is accurate on every profit and loss statement, which means the margins you are looking at reflect what your people actually cost you.
What this saves you: running payroll in one system, then figuring out how to make it agree with your books in another.
Intermediate is probably right if
- You have regular vendor bills and paying them is a weekly chore
- You have employees on payroll and would rather not run it yourself
- Payroll currently lives in a system that does not talk to your books
- You have missed a bill, or a due date has crept up on you
- You want one person handling books, payables, and payroll together
- Basic is working but the admin around it still is not handled
A different plan may fit better if
- You have no payroll and few vendor bills. Basic likely covers you for less.
- You are comfortable paying your own vendors and just want accurate books. Also Basic.
- You need budgets, forecasts, or someone to think through a hire or a loan with you. That is Advanced.
- Your questions have shifted from what happened last month to what happens next year. Advanced.
- Prior months or years need sorting out first. Cleanup comes before any monthly plan. Ask about cleanup.
Questions about Intermediate Bookkeeping
What does accounts payable management actually involve?
Accounts payable is everything owed to your vendors and suppliers. Managing it means collecting the invoices as they arrive, checking them against what was ordered or delivered, recording them in your books so the liability shows up where it should, and working through them on a schedule so nothing goes past due. Done weekly, it also gives you a clear picture of what is going out and when.
Why does it matter that payroll and bookkeeping are handled together?
Because payroll handled in isolation is one of the most common reasons books go wrong. Wages, taxes withheld, and employer costs get recorded inconsistently or lumped into a single entry, and your labor cost stops being accurate. When the same person runs payroll and maintains the books, the entries land correctly the first time and the margins on your profit and loss reflect what your team genuinely costs.
Can I start on Basic and move up later?
Yes, and plenty of businesses do. The plans are built to stack, so moving from Basic to Intermediate adds the payables and payroll work on top of a foundation that is already running. Nothing has to be rebuilt or migrated.
What is the difference between Intermediate and Advanced?
Intermediate is about handling the work: books, payables, payroll, all done accurately and on schedule. Advanced adds forward-looking guidance on top of that, including outsourced CFO support, budgeting, forecasting, and modeling for where the business is heading. If your questions are mostly about whether this month was recorded correctly, Intermediate fits. If they are about whether you can afford a hire next quarter, that is Advanced.
Is this worth it if I only have one or two employees?
Often yes, because the cost of payroll going wrong does not scale down with headcount. A small payroll still has to be recorded correctly and still creates obligations with real deadlines. That said, if you have very few vendor bills and payroll is genuinely simple and already working, Basic may be all you need. We would rather tell you that than sell you the bigger plan.
Books, bills, and payroll in one place
Tell us what the business does, how many people are on payroll, and roughly how many vendor bills come through in a month. We will confirm whether Intermediate is the right fit, quote your monthly rate, and point you at a different plan if that serves you better.