Overview

note: includes instructions for profile setup via gusto.com

Your Onboarding Accountant is super excited to help you with:

Book Building and First Financial Reports

First Payroll Run

Afterwards we will review:

Onboarding is Complete! Ongoing Services

Book Building and First Financial Reports

The steps are designed to be followed in order. Most of the headings are clickable and lead to complete instructions for that step. If you can do steps 1 - 5 before your first call with an onboarding accountant, it will reduce your onboarding time. If not, no worries, we will walk you through each step live on the call, and schedule any needed follow up calls with you before the current call is over.

There is A LOT of ground to cover. At minimum, our goal is to end the first zoom having loaded into Xero all the business accounts and business transactions that possibly exist for you. And having collected from you all PDF Bank Statements for Business Accounts connected to Xero. This lets us categorize the business transactions for you, on our own, before the next call. Leave it to us, we know all the right questions to ask you to uncover accounts and transactions you may have forgotten about.

Review S Corp Start Date
1. Your S Corp start date tells us how far back to build your S Corp books.
2. Business transactions that occur after the first of the month of the start date will be entered in your books.
3. If the transaction was in a personal account, no worries, we will get it into your S Corp books.
4. These forms contain your S Corp start date: Box E on Form 2553, Form CP261, and Box A on a previously filed 1120s S Corp Business Tax Return.
5. If you have not printed, signed, and uploaded your 2553 to us, we will guide you through that on the call. It might feel like an odd use of the call time, but getting the 2553 filed is that important.
6. If you don't have a printer, we will continue the call, but do this ASAP or you'll risk never being an S Corp. We cold be forced to file your business as Sole Proprietor Schedule C on the 1040 and lose out on tax savings.
Connect Business Accounts to Xero Accounting Software
1. Connect business checking, credit, and savings accounts to Xero.
2. Business accounts are defined by containing only business transactions.
3. Select the fist of the month of your S Corp start date on the last screen of the
  "Add Bank" flow in Xero. This pulls in all needed transactions.
4. DO NOT connect personal accounts to Xero.
5. If you have business transactions in personal accounts, DO NOT connect the account to XERO. We have a specific step for that below.
If the Xero Connection for your Business Bank Account Doesn't Go Back Far Enough
1. In Step 2 above, sometimes the Business Account in Xero doesn't pull in enough transactions.
2. This happens because the start date you wanted wasn't greyed out.
3. The solution is to download the missing transactions from you bank's website in the form of a .CSV file and upload it to Xero.
4. This step won't work for American Express Checking and TD Bank. Please download PDF Business Bank Statements from your bank and upload to your Collective dashboard. We will convert these PDFs to a CSV and import the transactions into Xero.
PDF Bank Statements for Business Accounts
1. Please download PDF Bank Statements from your bank's website and upload to your Collective dashboard.
2. We need a PDF for each month, for each connected business account, back to your S Corp Start Date.
Business Transactions from Personal Accounts
1. If you have a personal account that contains business transactions, do not connect it to Xero.
2. Instead, please upload a spreadsheet to your Collective dashboard, that only contains the business transactions from these personal accounts.
3. Make sure to delete the personal transactions, we do not want to see them.
4. If you are unsure if something is a business transaction or personal transaction, please leave it in.
5. Please stop using your personal accounts for business transactions, Update your vendors and customers with your business account information. Your success with Collective depends on you keeping business and personal transactions separate and in their own bank accounts.
6. Please complete this as soon as possible so your books and financial reports are up to date.
7. This will not hold up the completion of your Onboarding.
Reimbursements for Mixed Transactions in Personal Accounts
1. Business transactions must be run through your business accounts that are connected to Xero
2. Mixed transactions benefit both your business and personal lives, Common examples are rent for your home that contains your business office and business miles driven on your personal vehicle.
3. Mixed transactions must be run through personal accounts.
4. The business portion of mixed transactions is recognized monthly with the Reimbursements process.
5. This monthly recognition adds the business expenses to your books and reduces your taxable net income.
6. It will appear on your Profit and Loss report under "Employee Reimbursement Expenses"
7. You can complete the Reimbursements process for each month back to your S Corp start date.
8. Please complete this as soon as possible so your books and financial reports are up to date.
9. This will not hold up the completion of your Onboarding.
We categorize all business transactions loaded into Xero during the steps above.
1. We do some of the categorization while sharing our screens with you on the call.
2. We might categorize some transactions in between calls without your input.
3. We might leverage spreadsheets for you to complete with more information between calls. We will walk you through exactly what to do.
4. Categorizing transactions while you watch on zoom and answer questions in real time is unique to onboarding. Going forward, the Accounting Team categorizes all transactions for you each month on their own. They'll email you with any questions. No more zoom calls needed. This is why its so important to stop using personal accounts for business transactions. Everything needs to run through the accounts connected to Xero.
Review Financial Reports With You
1. We review your first financial reports with you.
2. It is very common that adjustment are made during this review, that is part of the process.
3. We show you how to analyze these reports and give tips for engaging with us each month as the Accounting Team publishes them to your Collective dashboard.
4. We show the link between payroll runs and financial reports.
5. We share some possible tax saving ideas.
Schedule C for Transition Year - if applicable
1. If your S Corp began after February 1, we explain how any business activity before that date will be included on the Schedule C of your 1040 Individual Tax Return
2. We review with you the tax teams process for collecting that Schedule C business activity from you
Switching Payroll Providers During the Year - if applicable
1. Only for members who ran non-Gusto payroll in the year they joined Collective
2. We set up an additional call for this process and help you download reports from your payroll provider and upload them the Collective.
3. In-between calls we meticulously enter data from those reports into Xero and confirm the numbers match.
Opening Balances for Pre-Existing S Corps - if applicable
1. Only for members joining Collective with S Corp books prior to the year we build.
2. We help you gather and upload: 1120s business tax return, balance sheet, and other report
3. We use these reports in-between calls to to create a 12.31 balance sheet

First Payroll

The steps are designed to be followed in order. Some of the headings are clickable and lead to complete instructions for that step. We will walk you through these steps live on zoom with an Onboarding Accountant.

Review payroll profile settings at Gusto.com
1. We share our screen and finalize the settings of your account in Gusto
2. Items of focus are:
  1. checking account for company profile
  2. personal checking account for owner/employee profil
  3. once a month payroll schedule
  4. primary admin
  5. annual salary
Medical premiums at Gusto.com
1. If you pay out of pocket for your own health insurance plan, we'll report the monthly premium in Gusto.
2. Please pay the monthly premium of health insurance plans, that are in the S Corp Owner's name, with Business Checking or Credit accounts
3. If needed we set up historical adjustments in Gusto and Xero
Connect Gusto to Collective at Collective.com
1. Live on the zoom we will guide you through a module on your Collective dashboard that connects Collective's backend systems with Gusto and Xero's backend systems
Accept the Terms of Service for Collective Payroll at Collective.com
1. We guide you through this step and explain the difference and relationship between Gusto.com and Collective Payroll
Manually Submit First Payroll at Collective.com
1. We help you run your first payroll. This is a crash course in payroll that distills years of experience into a concise walk through.
2. We taylor it to your interest level by only reviewing, at first, the most important concepts needed to run your business. If you have more questions, we have more concise explanations.
3. Common areas we review:
  1. business checking debit date
  2. personal checking deposit date
  3. employee taxes
  4. employer taxes
  5. state employer registration
  6. payroll runs vs shareholder distributions
  7. payroll taxes vs quarterly tax estimate payments
Turn on Autopilot at Gusto.com
1. We will walk you through this task live on the zoom call.
2. Autopilot submits payroll for you each month, so you don't have to remember to log in and manually click the submit button.
Switching Payroll Providers During the Year - if applicable
1. Only for members who ran non-Gusto payroll in the year they joined Collective
2. We will set up an additional call for this process and help you download reports from your payroll provider and upload them the Collective.
3. In-between calls we meticulously enter data from those reports into Gusto and confirm the numbers match.
4. The last step is running your first payroll in Gusto. We will help you do that on zoom.

Onboarding is Complete! Ongoing Services

The following services are not provided by your Onboarding Accountant. We share them here so you can get a head start on accessing our ongoing services. Feel free to ask your Onboarding Accountant about them during the zoom call or email [email protected] otherwise.

Anytime Support with [email protected]
1. Anytime, email any question, big or small to [email protected]
2. The email is routed to your Member Relationship Manager.
3. They will answer your question if its in their area of expertise or assign it to another expert on the team. That expert will reply from [email protected], but you'll see their name in the signature of the body of the email.
4. This might feel a little impersonal at first, but we designed it so you don't have to remember a bunch of email addresses.
5. One email address gets you connected to a team of accounting, payroll, and tax experts .
6. Go ahead try it out. Ask any question, anytime, even if you aren't sure we can help, even if you aren't sure if its an S Corp business question.
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