Cohousing-L Mailing List: RE: Accounting?

[Rob Sandelin (robsan]

John Major asked about accounting


>Did you do your accounting yourself? What software did you use? (any paper
and pencil left out there?)

Yes, we have a member who does our accounting as her contribution to 
the community.  She likes it, and is good at it, and we are all very 
grateful for that.  She uses MS Excel to keep the books.  She makes a 
monthly printout which is the paper copy.

> Did you hire an accountant at any point? Why? If so, how did they help you?

Yes, we discovered that we had been in error on our taxes and so hired 
an accountant to help straighten us out with the IRS.  We are now 
correctly filed, caught up, fines (small thankfully) paid up, and in 
good graces.  Our accountant said that because our books were so 
complete and easy to understand, it saved us a bunch of his time which 
equals money.  So it pays to keep good detailed records.

>When should we get ours on board? Were they worth the money?

We did not hire an accountant until after we had been incorporated for 
6 years or so, because  we discovered that we were supposed to be 
paying taxes, which we had never filed.  In doing it over I would 
advise that as soon as you are legally incorporated you are supposed to 
file a tax statement.  If you have the time to dig into the tax laws 
(federal and state) then you can do it yourself.  What we did was hire 
a professional once, then looked over what he had filed and done and 
just copied that in subsequent years.


Rob Sandelin
Sharingwood