Selected work · Professional services

Cash books. Accrual close. One overlay.

A professional-services firm needed GAAP revenue on a contract book that QuickBooks was keeping on cash. We did not replace the GL. We built the overlay that turns the contract master into journal entries a close can trust.

The constraint

The operational books were cash. The contracts were not. License terms, training content, translations, analytics, T&M consulting, and on-delivery work all sat in the same company — and they do not earn the same way.

A full ERP conversion would have been the loud answer. The useful answer was an Excel contract master that already knew every deal, a journal-data table that already knew every posting, and a monthly procedure that uploads into QuickBooks.

The posting pattern

Every contract, regardless of method, uses the same three economic events. That is what makes the file hold.

1 · Inception Dr Accrued revenue — full contract
Cr Deferred revenue — full contract

2 · Billing Dr Accounts receivable — billed amount
Cr Accrued revenue — billed amount

3 · Recognition Dr Deferred revenue — earned this period
Cr Revenue — earned this period

Four methods, one table

The contract tells the file how it earns.

Over time

The full schedule is calculated once. First and last months are day-weighted. Residual cents land in the last period so the contract always ties.

Input / hours

Open projects earn as a percent of estimated hours. Time from QuickBooks is appended each month and checked against the open-contract list.

On delivery

Nothing earns until a delivery date is entered. The close updates deliveries; the file books that month and only that month.

T&M as invoiced

This month’s invoices are this month’s revenue. No future schedule. No residual to babysit.

What shipped

A contract master split into archive, new deals, open input-method work, and open on-delivery work — so the monthly file is only the live set
A journal-data table that creates the inception, billing, and recognition lines, mapped to the revenue accounts the books already use
QuickBooks-ready journal uploads for the close
A prepaid-expense companion: cash spend rolled to expense over the benefit period, same cash-to-accrual idea on the other side of the sheet
Month-end recon of accrued revenue and deferred revenue to the balance sheet
A written SOP: add new contracts, append hours, mark deliveries, run the procedures, recon

Why this is the engagement we point to

It is not a clever formula. It is a close that kept cash operations in place, told the truth about four different ways a contract earns, and was documented so the next month does not depend on the person who built the file. The bias here is the same: diagnose the constraint, then leave an artifact someone else can run.

If the books are cash and the contracts are not, start with the overlay.

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