Painful Mistakes w/Accounting Post Close

We've worked with a lot of searchers to handle their accounting, and I've closed multiple acquisitions myself. Here’s your guide to smooth accounting post close. This will help you get clean financials quickly and avoid painful mistakes:

❌ The DON’T list to avoid:

• Don’t try to do your own bookkeeping, even if your background is finance. You’ll mess it up and you’ll let it fall behind
• Don’t use the sellers tax pro. They might not have aligned interest and they’re likely not a modern firm
• Don’t use the sellers Quickbooks file, don’t stick with desktop if they used it
• Don’t wait months to see what you want to do, it’ll just get messier
• Don’t mix use of personal banking or credit cards
  
  ✅ The DO list:
• pick your accountant during LOI stage
• pick a simple LLC name close to what your biz does…less confusion when clients see payments
• have a tax pro do the balance sheet, most bookkeepers don’t know how to do this
• connect business checking with Quickbooks Online 5 days before close so you have one less thing to worry about
• pick payroll company a month before close, and prioritize your first payroll over everything else! Tons of paperwork and you don’t want to mess it up
• pick a CRM, and watch for duplicate invoices or revenue miscategorized if integrate with QBO
• if you have trucks and lots of gas cards, consider ramp
• if you bought real estate, write a simple lease between the two LLCs
• know you can use a modern bank for operating if your SBA lender is old school