Advice

Summary of Key Points The right time to hire an accountant is defined by specific growth thresholds, not by general feelings of being busy or overwhelmed. Revenue growth, adding employees, taking on debt or investment, and expanding into new states, entities, or revenue streams are the clearest indicators. Payroll withholding obligations start with the first…

Summary of Key Points Provisional billing rates set what a contractor bills the government on active contracts, while forward pricing rates set what it proposes on future bids. FAR 42.701 defines a billing rate as an indirect cost rate established temporarily for interim reimbursement until final indirect cost rates are set. Provisional rates are applied…

Summary of Key Points Business entity selection shapes how profit is taxed, how much personal liability protection owners have, what management formalities apply, and how much flexibility remains for future funding. By default, LLC profit passes through to the owners, and active owners typically owe 15.3 percent self-employment tax on the business’s entire net profit.…

Summary of Key Points Contractors rarely leave QuickBooks on their own timeline. The decision is usually forced by a DCAA finding that names the accounting system, a lost bid, or a weekly reconciliation that one day stops adding up. Contract volume is the first warning sign. Segregation logic that works cleanly for three or four…

Summary of Key Points The tax bill you pay in April is mostly decided in the fourth quarter, because nearly every meaningful lever, such as timing income, purchasing equipment, or funding a retirement plan, carries a December 31 deadline. Estimated tax payments are the place to start. Comparing year-to-date income against your January projection lets…

Summary of Key Points Standard ERP evaluation questions about scalability, integrations, dashboards, and workflow automation do not reveal whether a system can produce accurate, traceable, and defensible financial data under DCAA audit conditions. Five GovCon-specific questions predict audit outcomes better than any commercial feature list: whether indirect rates calculate directly from the general ledger, whether…

Summary of Key Points Monthly bookkeeping keeps the books current. Monthly accounting services are supposed to explain what the numbers mean, and many providers market the second while delivering only the first. Real recurring accounting includes a close completed within a predictable window, reconciled bank, credit card, and loan accounts, financial statements someone actually reviewed,…

Summary of Key Points The phrase we will just configure it usually means a gap surfaced between what the ERP does natively and what DCAA expects, and the team decided to build around it instead of treating it as a disqualifying finding. Routine customization is normal. The risk is recreating compliance-critical functions such as indirect…

Summary of Key Points The accounting structure that supported a smaller business stops keeping pace as entities, locations, departments, and reporting requirements accumulate, and there is no fixed revenue threshold where that happens. The clearest signs are a monthly close that takes longer every quarter, reports living in one-off spreadsheets only their author can maintain,…

Summary of Key Points DCAA does not certify accounting software or maintain an approved ERP list. Auditors evaluate the complete accounting system—software, configuration, processes, controls, and reporting—against the adequacy criteria in SF 1408. Auditors review whether the ERP properly separates direct and indirect costs, accumulates costs by contract, identifies unallowable expenses, supports interim billing, follows…