YOUR own record keeping will be a nightmare-—YOU WILL HAVE NO WRITTEN RECORDS.
Banks only keep records available for about 90 days now. Anything beyond that is COSTLY—$50 an hour or more to research.
I have done accounting/bookkeeping since 1966.
I have been hired behind other persons who EMBEZZLED-—Worked with 18 month old data to reconstruct business accounting records. THIS type of available information won’t work there.
Another client I had had a “Full time” bookkeeper-—only she wasn’t doing much of the normal required work. When he hired me, I found that she had NOT done any bank reconciliations for over 6 years. NONE AT ALL. HE said “HE CALLED THE BANK EVERY DAY TO FIND OUT HOW MUCH $$$ HE HAD AVAILABLE BEFORE WRITING CHECKS” TOTAL MADNESS!!!!!
PAYABLES records were a total mess-—Payroll reports were delinquent...and on & on. Company did over $3 million a year.
He & I sat down & decided that I would go back ONLY 4 years & try to rebuild everything from there...I at least had actual cancelled checks & bank statements & could match to vendor payments/statements. I couldn’t find anything even resembling a check register & deposit info. HAD NEVER ENCOUNTERED SUCH BEFORE IN MY ENTIRE LIFE.
I had other clients at this same time, but I worked LONG hours & got his books caught up.
I wouldn’t have been able to straighten this all out if everything was digital & NO written records.
It took me over 15 months to get him up to current & squared away-—and I billed him for 2100 hours in that time-—also doing ALL other clients work. Average of 140 + hours a week. I worked into the wee hours of the morning many times.