Feeling incompetent when skipping formal accounting rules for small clients
Accountants moving to independent bookkeeping often worry that dropping strict GAAP accrual methods and formalities makes them look unprofessional. This anxiety about missing technical standards like long-term liability tracking stops them from feeling confident in their day-to-day work.
What people tried
Every workaround mentioned in the threads below. We haven’t tested any of them — and nobody here is claiming they worked.
Found another way around this?
Share your steps and trade-offs so fellow engineers don't have to reinvent the wheel. No account required.
- 1Preparing books on a tax or cash basis instead of strict GAAPDid this help you?
- 2Referring clients who demand strict compliance to other firms or recommending they hire an in-house controllerDid this help you?
In their words
Unedited, grouped by where they were said, most upvoted first within each place, each linked to the thread it came from.
“When there is an accrual based client, I feel …super incompetent sometimes. Also, I don’t really follow all formalities.”source ↗
“Does it make me look really bad if I don’t do these things?”source ↗
“I’m in a similar situation as you and was thinking about the current/ long term liability thing too. I’ll be interested to see what people say to see what actually gets done.”source ↗
Where this came up
People with this problem also raised
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- 12How to escape high-stress corporate accounting and public tax roles