Outsourced ControllerThe records a lender or a buyer will ask for
You're looking for the records a lender or a buyer will ask for, ideally before anyone asks. Tax CFO Steven Palmieri leads this work, and Steven and his team keep a records file for owners so that the answer to a request is a folder, not a scramble. Everything described here is organized and prepared, never signed off by an outside examiner.
See what's missing
What goes in the file
We keep the returns as filed, the payroll filings, the sales tax filings, the vendor forms, the bank and loan statements, the major contracts and the records of big asset purchases in that file. It's a short list, and each item answers a question someone might ask. Did you file? Were the payroll taxes paid? Who are your vendors? What do you owe, and to whom? What did you buy that lasts?
Schedules that tie the books to the records
Records alone aren't enough. A buyer or a lender will want to see that your books agree with them. So we keep a few simple schedules. One lists your loans with their balances. One lists your fixed assets. One lists what customers owe and what you owe vendors. Each ties to the closed month and to a record in the file.
When the two agree, the story is easy to follow.
How long each record should stay
The IRS gives a general rule and several exceptions. Keep records for three years from the date you filed the return in the usual case. Keep them for six years if you left out income that was more than a quarter of the gross income shown on the return. Keep them for seven years if you claimed a loss from worthless securities or a bad debt deduction. Hold payroll tax records for four years at the least.
Some records are worth keeping longer than any rule requires. Loan documents, lease agreements and the paperwork behind a large purchase often matter long after the tax rules say you can discard them. We mark those separately.
What a request list looks like
A bank asking for a loan might want the last two or three years of returns, current statements and a list of debts. A buyer going through a company will want much more, including contracts, payroll records, tax filings in every state where you sell and proof the vendors are on file. In both cases, the request tends to arrive as a long list with a short deadline.
Having the file already built turns that list into an afternoon of attaching documents.
Prepared and organized, not examined
We organize your records and we prepare statements from them. If a lender or buyer wants an outside examination of the statements, a licensed firm does that, and a file that is already in order makes the firm's work go faster. The line page explains more.
A note on keeping things in one place
The file works best when it lives in one spot that more than one person can reach. If the only copy sits in a drawer at home or on one person's laptop, a request that arrives while that person is away turns into a delay. We keep ours organized by year and by type, and we tell you where each piece sits, so the answer to "where is that?" is never a guess.
Where receivables fit
A buyer will look hard at what customers owe you. The steady habits on the invoices and collections page make that part of the file honest.
On the calendar. The one recurring check this page adds is a quarterly pass through the records file, where new items are filed and anything older than its keeping period is marked for review before it's set aside.
The quarterly pass is also when a missing statement gets a name, before a buyer ever asks for the file.