Chartered Accountant

Role & responsibilities

• Own a portfolio of client QuickBooks Online files end to end: bank and credit card feeds, coding, monthly reconciliations of every bank, card and loan account, and month-end close on a fixed schedule.
• Rebuild and clean up neglected books: reconstruct opening balances from statements, identify duplicate and missing transactions, clear suspense and "ask client" accounts, and bring Opening Balance Equity to zero with a documented explanation.
• Tie every set of books to the prior-year tax return before year-end work begins: prepare a side-by-side of the QuickBooks balance sheet against the filed Schedule L, explain every difference, and post corrections through a dated prior-period adjustment rather than by changing closed years.
• Reconcile payroll to the filed returns: wages, withholding and employer taxes agree to the W-2/W-3, Forms 941 and 940, and state filings, with shareholder health insurance and retirement deferrals handled correctly for S corporation owners.
• Prepare tax-ready year-end packages: P&L, balance sheet, general ledger, reconciliation reports, fixed asset and loan roll-forwards, prepaid and accrual schedules, shareholder distribution and loan detail, and a written list of open items with your recommendation on each.
• Handle the recurring compliance that sits next to the books: 1099-NEC and 1099-MISC preparation and vendor W-9 tracking, sales tax reporting where applicable, and payroll tax deposit and filing checks.
• Reconcile third-party settlement data to the ledger: Amazon, Shopify, Square, Stripe, merchant processors and broker statements, including gross-up reporting where a 1099-K has to tie.
• Build clear Excel workpapers that another accountant can follow without you in the room: source, calculation, conclusion, and a note on what remains open.
• Communicate with clients and their outside bookkeepers in writing, in plain English, in a tone that is friendly and never accusatory, and route tax questions to the CPA rather than answering them yourself.
• Work inside the firm's security policy: client systems are accessed only through the firm's audited credentials in the password manager, never through a personal or company email login; documents move through the client portal, not email attachments; every change to a closed period is logged and reported.
• Report status without being asked: what was completed, what is blocked and by whom, and what you need to finish, with dates.

Preferred candidate profile

• Seven or more years of full-charge bookkeeping, at least three of them in a CPA or tax firm environment where the books fed business tax returns.
• QuickBooks Online Advanced ProAdvisor or equivalent depth: bank rules, reconciliation repair, audit log, journal entries, class and location tracking, and multi-entity work. Xero or QuickBooks Desktop experience is a plus.
• Working knowledge of how the books flow to Forms 1120-S, 1065 and 1120: Schedule L, M-1 and M-2, shareholder basis, distributions versus loans, officer compensation, and the difference between cash and accrual presentation.
• Strong Excel: lookups, pivot tables, roll-forward schedules, and tie-out workpapers you build from scratch.
• Payroll fluency across Gusto, ADP, Paychex or QuickBooks Payroll, including reading the filed quarterly returns and reconciling them to the ledger.
• Experience with e-commerce and marketplace reconciliations (Amazon, Shopify, Stripe, Square) and with professional practice clients (law, medical, consulting) is strongly preferred.
• A cleanup temperament: comfortable inheriting a file nobody reconciled for two years, methodical about fixing it in the right order, and disciplined about not touching closed periods without approval.
• Writes clearly and concisely; comfortable being the day-to-day contact for clients and their bookkeepers while the CPA handles tax positions.
• Reliable under deadlines, particularly the March 15, April 15, September 15 and October 15 filing cycles, with the judgment to flag a problem early rather than late.
• Bonus: an accounting degree, EA or CPA candidate status, or experience with client portals, Bitwarden or similar password managers, and Florida, California and multi-state compliance.