Having the right records ready before your first meeting saves weeks of back and forth and lets your bookkeeper start producing useful work right away. Most onboarding delays come from missing documents, not complicated accounting.

Start with bank statements for every business account, ideally the last 12 months. Credit card statements for any cards used for business expenses are equally important, even if the card is in your personal name. Your bookkeeper needs to see every business transaction, and statements are the source of truth for reconciliation.

Payroll records matter if you have employees or pay yourself through a payroll system. Pull recent pay run reports, quarterly 941 filings, state withholding filings, and your most recent W-2s and W-3. If you use Gusto, ADP, or QuickBooks Payroll, granting access is usually faster than exporting reports.

Sales tax filings for the past year help your bookkeeper understand your filing frequency, jurisdictions, and whether past returns line up with what your books show. If you sell across state lines or use a tool like TaxJar, mention that during onboarding.

Merchant and POS reports are critical for restaurants, retail, and ecommerce businesses. Stripe, Square, Toast, Clover, Shopify, and Amazon all generate deposit reports that show gross sales, fees, refunds, and net deposits. Without these, your bookkeeper cannot properly break apart the lump deposits that hit your bank account.

Gather open invoices customers owe you and bills you owe vendors. This sets up accounts receivable and accounts payable correctly from day one instead of trying to reconstruct it later. Include any 1099 contractor information and W-9s you have on file.

Loan statements for vehicles, equipment, lines of credit, or SBA loans are needed so debt balances and interest expense get recorded correctly. Without these, payments show up as expenses when part of each payment is actually paying down principal.

Pull your last two or three years of tax returns, both business and personal if you file a Schedule C. Returns tell your bookkeeper how your business has been reported historically and flag anything that needs to match between the books and what the IRS already has.

Finally, organize access to your accounting software. QuickBooks Online makes this easy with accountant invites. If you use desktop QuickBooks, Wave, Xero, or spreadsheets, your bookkeeper needs a way in or a file export. Don’t forget your EIN letter and business formation documents if you are setting up books for the first time.

If your records are scattered or incomplete, that is normal and not a problem. Catch-up bookkeeping exists for exactly this situation. The goal of gathering documents up front is to give your bookkeeper a complete picture so the work starts on accurate footing.

At GMJ Accounting, we provide small business accounting, bookkeeping and tax services in Jacksonville, NC and walk new clients through onboarding step by step. If you are unsure whether you have what you need, bring what you have and we will tell you what is missing.