What your CPA actually needs from you

Your CPA files taxes. Your bookkeeper keeps the ledger honest all year. When freelancers skip the second job, April turns into reconstruction: CSV dumps, missing 1099s, and bank statements that do not explain themselves. Here is what tax pros actually need from your books, what they should not have to dig for, and how a one-time cleanup sits between your records and their filing software.

What a CPA expects to receive

A reconciled profit and loss for the tax year—not a raw bank export with every Amazon charge still labeled "shopping." Categories should separate cost of services, software, contractors, travel, and owner draws so the return starts from meaning instead of archaeology.

A balance sheet that shows cash, receivables, and owner equity without unexplained clearing accounts. If "Ask My Accountant" or a suspense account is holding months of mystery, your CPA inherits the mystery. Clean those before the engagement, not during it.

Clear contractor payments and platform income totals that match 1099s and payment-processor summaries. Stripe, PayPal, Upwork, and client invoices should tell roughly the same story as revenue in the books. When they do not, someone has to reconcile the gap—and that someone should not be your CPA the week before filing.

Notes on large one-off items: equipment, refunds, loans, and transfers between personal and business accounts. A short list of "this was a loan," "this was an owner draw," and "this was a client refund" saves hours of email ping-pong and wrong assumptions on Form 1040 schedules.

What they should not have to do

Guess whether a Venmo deposit was a client payment, a roommate rent split, or a birthday gift. That guess is bookkeeping work. Paying CPA rates for it is an expensive way to sort groceries from invoices.

Rebuild twelve months of categories from screenshots and email receipts the week before filing. Deadline pressure makes people accept rough answers. Rough answers become returns you do not want to defend later.

Untangle personal charges that inflated expenses and made quarterly estimates wrong all year. Mixed cards are normal. Leaving them mixed until tax season is optional, and expensive.

Chase you for missing statements and exports while the filing deadline is already on the calendar. Document gathering is your job before the engagement starts. A clean packet is how you buy focus instead of chaos.

Ledgier sits between your records and your tax pro. We do bookkeeping only—not tax advice and not CPA services. We work from the statements, exports, and files you send, so no bank connection is required. We may ask for QuickBooks or Xero login access. We do not ask for bank logins. Quarterly Cleanup is $299 one time and gets your last three months categorized and reconciled. Annual Tax-Prep is $599 one time and closes out a full year with a CPA-ready deliverable. Either way your CPA opens a clean file, not a crime scene. That is how you spend CPA hours on strategy and filing, not forensic sorting.

If your books are more than a year behind, Catch-Up rebuilds the missing history first. It has no listed price. We quote it after a free scope call, with the scope and the deliverable in writing before you pay. We document assumptions, match platform payouts, and leave an export your CPA can work from without another round of "what was this charge?"

Why the handoff fails

Most freelancers do not fail tax season because they are careless. They fail the handoff because they confuse software with bookkeeping. Imports, rules, and pretty dashboards can look finished while categories are wrong, reconciliations are stale, and owner activity is still mixed into expenses. Your CPA receives a file that looks modern and still cannot trust it.

The other failure mode is timing. Waiting until February to "get organized" compresses a year of decisions into a few panicked weeks. That is when people dump folders of PDFs and hope professionalism will appear. A one-time cleanup earlier—Quarterly Cleanup at $299 for the last three months, or Annual Tax-Prep at $599 for the full year—moves the hard work off the filing calendar.

What a useful CPA packet looks like

Think in deliverables, not vibes. A useful packet usually includes a year-to-date (or full-year) P&L, a balance sheet as of year-end, a list of contractor payments, platform income summaries, and a short note on anything odd: equipment purchases, loans, large refunds, or transfers that look like income but are not. If Ledgier prepares Annual Tax-Prep, the CPA-ready deliverable is built for that handoff—not for decorating your desktop.

You should still send tax documents your CPA asks for—W-2s from side gigs, 1099s, health premiums, estimated payments—but those are not substitutes for clean books. Forms describe pieces. The ledger explains the year. When both arrive organized, the engagement stays about filing and planning instead of decoding.

Pricing without a retainer

Ledgier sells one-time engagements only. There is no monthly plan and no ongoing retainer. Quarterly Cleanup is $299 one time for the last three months. Annual Tax-Prep is $599 one time for a full year plus a CPA-ready deliverable. If your books are more than a year behind, Catch-Up is quoted after a free scope call. You see the written quote before you pay. Pick the engagement that matches the gap; do not buy continuity you did not ask for.

Make next tax season boring

Boring tax season means your CPA opens the file, recognizes the year, asks a short list of clarifying questions, and files. It does not mean zero work on your side. It means the work happened earlier, on purpose, at a known price—$299, $599, or a Catch-Up quote—instead of as overtime billed against a deadline.

Boring is the goal. Call (888) 791-4383 or email support@ledgier.com. Our headquarters is at 203 W 10th St, Austin, TX 78701. Tell us who prepares your taxes and how far the books lag. We will set the books up so that person gets what they need on time—without a subscription, retainer, or monthly plan attached.