Accounting Firm Services in Cedar Rapids, Iowa

Every question on this page has a dollar figure and a date attached. Should I hire. Can I carry that payment. Is this contract worth taking. What did that job actually cost. Should I buy that business.

Those are not bookkeeping questions. Bookkeeping tells you what happened, and it is covered in the accountant services section. This section is about what to do next, which is a different job sitting on top of the same records.

Brightside Bookies is a Cedar Rapids accounting firm built for trades and service businesses. Not a CPA firm, so we do not file returns or issue audit opinions. What we do is the analysis and the conversation, and for most owners that is the part nobody has ever provided.

What a Cedar Rapids Accounting Firm Does Beyond the Books

Four kinds of work, and most owners need the first two long before the others.

Understanding what is happening now

Which jobs pay, which service lines carry the business, where margin is going. Reporting built for running the business rather than filing it.

Deciding what to do next

Modelling a hire, a truck, a contract or a price change before you commit, so the decision is made on arithmetic rather than nerve.

Planning the year

Knowing what the winter needs before the summer money is spent, which around here is the difference between a good year and a hard February.

One-off situations

A partner leaving, a lender asking, a business you are thinking of buying. Project work with a beginning and an end.

Understanding the Numbers

What is actually happening in the business, broken out so you can act on it.

• Cost accounting What a job really cost, including labor burden at 18 to 32 percent above the wage.
• Management accounting Profit by job, crew or route, and the seasonal shape of your year.
• Financial analysis Break-even, real gross margin, and how long your money takes to come back.
• Business financial analysis Two or three years side by side, to catch drift you cannot see monthly.

Deciding and Planning

The forward-looking work, where the numbers earn their keep.

• Budgeting and forecasting The twelve-month view and what has to survive until spring.
• Financial forecasting A specific decision modelled three ways before you sign.
• Accounting advisory services The monthly conversation about what the numbers mean.

Projects and One-Off Work

Situations that arrive once, usually with somebody waiting on an answer.

• Financial due diligence Buying a business? Check whether the numbers are real before you sign.
• Financial consulting Partner buyouts, lender packages and inherited files.
• Outsourced accounting The whole back office on one flat monthly fee.
• Startup accounting Setting it up right before the first invoice.

What We Are Not

Stated plainly, because the phrase accounting firm implies things we do not do.

We work alongside your CPA rather than replacing them. Clean records and real analysis usually make their job cheaper, and most of them would rather receive a finished package than build one at tax rates.

Sales tax filings are also not something we take on, on any page of this site. Investment, insurance and retirement advice all need licences we do not hold, which is covered on the personal financial planning page.

Built for Cedar Rapids Trades

The local shape of the work changes what useful analysis looks like.

Landscaping and lawn care earn most of the year between April and October. Snow contractors run the reverse. Construction slows hard in January. A general model applied to any of them produces reporting that says February was bad, which the owner already knew and cannot act on.

Linn County commercial and municipal work pays reliably and slowly, so a business winning bigger contracts often hits its worst cash position two months later. Residential collects in days. Knowing which way your customer mix is moving matters more than the revenue number.

We work across the whole service area, from Marion, Hiawatha and Robins out to Lisbon, Mt Vernon, Ely, Swisher, Springville, Bertram and Covington.

How the Three Sections Fit Together

Three silos, three questions, one set of records underneath.

This section answers what should I do. The accountant services section answers is it recorded correctly. The bookkeeping services section answers how does this get delivered, covering cycles, cleanup, migration and setup.

Most clients arrive through one and end up using parts of all three. If you are not sure which you need, the health check sorts it in fifteen minutes.

What This Costs

Analysis is part of the monthly fee. Projects are quoted flat.

Monthly bookkeeping starts at $350, set by transaction volume, how many accounts need reconciling and whether you run payroll. Job costing, reporting and the monthly review are included at every level rather than tiered. Due diligence, lender packages and one-off models are quoted flat before any work begins. Everything is on the pricing page.

Getting Started

It starts with a free Books Health Check. Fifteen minutes, screen shared, your file open. We tell you what the records can currently answer, what they cannot, and which of the above is worth doing.

Call (319) 382-9017 or use the contact page. You get a real reply within one business day.

What Else We Handle

The other two sections, and the services people arrive looking for most.

Questions Cedar Rapids Owners Ask