Bookkeeping Frequently Asked Questions

Data & Dashboards Bookkeeping Services provides virtual bookkeeping for small businesses and nonprofit organizations. Our home base is in Sun City, Arizona. We serve the West Valley and work virtually with clients across the United States.

Virtual bookkeeping means we work with you remotely instead of in your office. It's a software-assisted service. We manage, record, and reconcile (match to your bank statements) your day-to-day financial transactions in QuickBooks Online, a cloud-based accounting program.

• Transaction Recording: We import and categorize your bank feeds, credit card charges, sales, and vendor expenses.
• Reconciliation: We match your bank and credit card statements to the records in QuickBooks Online to catch errors, missing receipts, or duplicate entries.
• Invoicing and Bills: We create and send customer invoices, track accounts receivable (money customers owe you), and manage vendor payments.
• Financial Reporting: We prepare balance sheets, cash flow statements, and Profit & Loss (P&L) reports so you can see where you stand.
• Payroll & Compliance: We help process employee payroll, track 1099 contractors, and organize your payroll records.

• Custom dashboards: We build colorful dashboards around your business or nonprofit, so you can see at a glance where you are today, where you said you want to go, and whether you're moving in that direction.
• Bookkeeping cleanup: We make sure past transactions are accurately reflected in your books.
• Advisory: We analyze your financial data to help you decide what to do next and where your business is going.
• CFO-level advice (fractional CFO): We advise on cash flow management, budgeting and planning, grant tracking, fund accounting, strategy, restricted donations, and processes and compliance.

We work mainly with small businesses and nonprofit organizations. Our services fit best if you want accurate, organized books, clearer financial information, and a better understanding of where your organization stands financially.

Our founder, Penny Visser, brings more than 45 years in finance, including 21 years as a CFO, plus an MBA from Indiana Wesleyan University and QuickBooks Online certification. At Data & Dashboards Bookkeeping Services, that experience helps us look past entering transactions and understand what your numbers are telling you about your business.

No. We don't prepare business income tax returns or give tax advice. That's a job for your CPA. Our job is to keep your books accurate, organized, and up to date so your CPA has clean records to work from. We're happy to work directly with your CPA when needed.

Yes. We can catch up missing transactions, fix inaccurate entries, and reconcile your bank and credit card accounts. (Reconciling means matching your books to your bank statements.) We also separate personal and business spending and organize everything so your financial reports become useful again.

We can review the system you use now and help you decide whether to keep it or move to QuickBooks Online. If a move makes sense, we'll help organize your information and plan the switch.

QuickBooks Online lets you see your financial information from almost anywhere, and lets you and us work from the same set of records. It offers flexible reports, bank connections, and payroll integration. When the books are set up properly, we can also show results by customer, job, class, location, or fund.

Yes. Payroll can include reported tips when the payroll system and employee setup are configured properly. Tipped payroll has extra reporting and tax rules, so we review the setup carefully before we process it.

Yes. We work with nonprofit organizations, and we know nonprofit books can mean tracking grants, restricted funds, programs, donors, and reporting rules that differ from a regular small business.

A business mainly tracks revenue, expenses, profit, and owner equity. A nonprofit may also need to track restricted and unrestricted funds (money given for a specific purpose, or not), grants, programs, and donor activity. The books need to make those differences clear.

Reports can include the Profit & Loss Statement, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow reports, Accounts Receivable and Accounts Payable aging (who owes you, who you owe, and how late), and budget-versus-actual results. When it helps, we can break reports out by customer, job, class, program, location, or fund. We also build colorful dashboards around your business or nonprofit, so you can see at a glance where you are today, where you said you want to go, and whether you're moving in that direction.

It depends on your business and the services you need. Most ongoing bookkeeping is updated monthly, though some businesses do better with more frequent attention. We'll agree on a schedule so you know what to expect and when your financial information will be ready.

That's where CFO-level advice, also called fractional CFO services, comes in. Our founder, Penny Visser, was a CFO for 21 years. We can help with budgeting, forecasting, cash flow planning, profitability, financial reviews, and business decisions, without the cost of a full-time CFO.

We use modern technology where it saves time, but we don't trust it blindly. Transactions, reconciliations, and financial information still get a human review. Technology helps us work faster. Accuracy and judgment still come from people.

We take the security and confidentiality of your financial information seriously. We use secure, cloud-based systems such as QuickBooks Online, limit access to what we need to do the work, and follow careful procedures with your records and account information. We also use a "trust, but verify" approach. We review entries ourselves rather than relying entirely on automation.

Data & Dashboards Bookkeeping Services has its home base in Sun City, Arizona. We work with businesses and nonprofit organizations across the West Valley, including Sun City, Sun City West, Surprise, Peoria, Glendale, El Mirage, and Youngtown. Because everything we do is web-based, we also work with clients nationwide. We work only with businesses headquartered in the U.S.

Yes. We use QuickBooks Online and secure cloud-based tools, so we can work with clients across Arizona and the rest of the United States. We work only with businesses headquartered in the U.S.

Our fees depend on the amount of work, how complex your books are, how many accounts you have, whether you need payroll, what reporting you want, and whether cleanup is needed. We review your situation first, then give you a clear scope of work so you know what's included before we begin.

You can call or text us, email us, or use the consultation form on our website. Tell us a little about your business or nonprofit and what you need help with. We'll get back to you and talk about how Data & Dashboards Bookkeeping Services can help.

Ask us. Every business is different, and we'd rather answer your question clearly than have you guess. Contact Data & Dashboards Bookkeeping Services and tell us what you're trying to solve.