CPA and Bookkeeping Rockwall AlternativeQuestions before two files become one

Two programs can both be kept. Combining them into one file is a choice, not a requirement. If you combine, one file becomes the history and the other becomes a closed archive. Pick the survivor before anyone exports. The survivor should be the one that already holds the bank, unless that file is the mess and the billing file is the clean one. In that case we rebuild, we do not smash them together and hope.

A chart of accounts with two names for the same idea will double every report after the merge. Sales and taxable sales. Owner draw and shareholder distribution. Fees and bank charges. We map those pairs on a page before a single balance moves. The map is dull. The alternative is a profit statement nobody believes.

Open invoices that are duplicates get resolved in the old file, not imported twice. Sales tax payable is agreed to the last return, not to whatever the screen has been carrying. Undeposited funds is either a real batch waiting for the bank or it is a graveyard, and a graveyard is cleared before it is copied into a new home.

Customers and vendors with two spellings become one record, with the payments added. That is also the moment a missing W-9 shows itself. Combining files is the cheapest time to notice a vendor who was paid from both programs.

We do not combine across a year that is already filed unless you want the comparative reports to change. A merger dated on the first day of an open year keeps the filed year stable. A merger dated in the middle of a filed year rewrites history. Sometimes that rewrite is the point. It should be a decision, not a side effect.

Will the old program stay readable after the export. Who keeps the archive. What happens to the bank rules that were memorized in the old file. How long the first new month will take, because it is never as fast as the sales page for the software implied. If we cannot answer those in plain words, the combine waits.

You can also decide not to combine. Many owners are better with one billing program and one book program, forever, as long as only one of them creates an invoice. That choice is a success, not a stalled project.

The first month in the survivor is slow on purpose. Bank rules from the old program do not come along for free, and letting a machine remake them on day one recreates the old mess with new confidence. We match by hand for a month. Rules get saved only when the same kind of row has been right three times.

Tell the people who enter bills which program is alive. A bill entered in the archive after the merge is a ghost that will never hit the bank in the survivor, and it will sit there looking like a debt. One sentence to the person who pays vendors prevents that. We will write the sentence with you if that helps it get said.

Keep the archive readable for the rest of the open statute window, even if you hope never to open it. A question about a filed year should be answerable without rebuilding the survivor. Disks and exports fail quietly. A login you test once a year is the version we trust.