Tech Startups
You're watching the product and the users. Someone needs to be watching the books so the numbers are there when you need them.
You Didn't Start This to Do Bookkeeping
You started a company to build something. A product, a platform, a piece of software that solves a real problem. Your days are filled with development sprints, user feedback, hiring conversations, and pitch decks. Bookkeeping is somewhere on the to-do list between “update the investor email” and “fix that bug from last week.” It keeps getting pushed because it never feels urgent until suddenly it is.
Tech startups have a specific set of financial needs that look different from most small businesses. You might be pre-revenue, burning through savings or investor capital. You might have monthly recurring revenue that’s growing but still not profitable. Either way, the financial picture needs to be clear. Not just for your own decision-making, but for anyone else who might look at your books. Investors, lenders, potential acquirers, your CPA, the IRS. They all expect accurate numbers, and “we’ll clean it up later” has a way of becoming a very expensive promise.
Who This Covers
Who This Covers
SaaS companies, mobile app developers, AI startups, fintech businesses, and other technology companies in early or growth stages. Whether you’re bootstrapping from a Long Beach apartment or have raised a round of funding, the bookkeeping fundamentals are the same.
What Makes It Different
What Makes It Different
High subscription and software costs spread across dozens of tools. Contractor-heavy teams before full-time hires happen. Revenue recognition questions for customers who pay annually. Burn rate and runway calculations that drive every major decision the business makes.
What We Handle
Monthly bookkeeping that gives you a clear and accurate picture of where your money is going. That means every transaction categorized properly, bank and credit card accounts reconciled, and your P&L and balance sheet ready to review. For startups running dozens of SaaS tools, paying cloud hosting bills, and sending checks to contractors across the country, getting all of this sorted and categorized each month is a real lift. We take it off your plate entirely.
We also track accounts payable and receivable so you know what’s owed and what’s outstanding. Contractor payments are recorded with proper documentation so 1099 filing at year-end is handled without scrambling. If you’re already using QuickBooks Online, we’ll make sure it’s set up correctly for how your business actually runs. If you’re not using it yet, we can get you started with a clean configuration and walk you through it so you understand what you’re looking at.
Burn Rate Visibility
Burn Rate Visibility
Your monthly expenses are categorized and tracked so you can see your actual burn rate at any time. No more rough guesses or spreadsheet estimates. You’ll know how much runway you have based on real numbers pulled from reconciled books, not assumptions you made three months ago.
Investor-Ready Books
Investor-Ready Books
When an investor or advisor asks for your financials, you have them. Clean profit and loss statement, accurate balance sheet, and organized records that don’t require a two-week scramble to pull together. The numbers are already there because they’ve been maintained every month.
Where It Falls Apart
The most common problem is neglect. Not intentional, just deprioritized. You’re heads-down building the product, talking to customers, and managing a small team. The books go untouched for three, six, sometimes twelve months. Then something forces the issue. An investor wants to see financials before writing a check. Tax season arrives and your CPA has nothing to work with. You’re trying to figure out whether you can afford to make a hire, but you don’t trust the numbers in your accounting file because nobody’s touched it since the summer.
The other problem is misclassification. Software development tools get lumped in with general office expenses. Annual subscription payments from customers get recorded as revenue the month the payment hits, even though the service is delivered over twelve months. Contractor payments go out without W-9s on file, and when January rolls around you can’t file 1099s for people you paid thousands of dollars. None of these are catastrophic on their own, but they compound into a financial picture that doesn’t reflect what’s actually happening in the business.
Catch-Up Costs More Than Keeping Up
Catch-Up Costs More Than Keeping Up
A year of ignored books takes significantly more time and money to reconstruct than twelve months of consistent bookkeeping. Bank statements have to be pulled, transactions researched, and context pieced together from memory and old emails. The longer it sits, the harder and more expensive it gets.
Bad Data Leads to Bad Decisions
Bad Data Leads to Bad Decisions
If your books are messy or incomplete, every number you pull from them is unreliable. Burn rate, runway, margins, cost per customer. None of it means anything if the underlying data is wrong. You end up making decisions based on feelings instead of facts, which is exactly what good financial data is supposed to prevent.
What Changes
You get financial clarity without having to build it yourself. Every month, your books are current. You can open QuickBooks Online and see exactly where you stand. Your burn rate is based on properly categorized expenses, not a rough number from a spreadsheet you made six months ago. When you need to evaluate a hiring decision or determine whether a tool is worth the monthly cost, the data is already there waiting for you.
Tax preparation becomes straightforward. Your CPA receives organized records, properly categorized expenses, and the documentation they need to do their job well. Investor conversations are backed by real financials instead of promises to “get the books cleaned up.” And you stop carrying the mental weight of knowing your financial records are a mess. That alone frees up more energy for the work that actually moves your company forward.
Decisions Based on Real Numbers
Decisions Based on Real Numbers
You know your actual cost structure. You can model hiring scenarios, evaluate tool spend, and plan for the next quarter with confidence because the baseline data is accurate. Growth planning shifts from gut feeling to informed strategy grounded in numbers you can trust.
One Less Thing to Carry
One Less Thing to Carry
Running a startup is already demanding enough. Handing off the books means one fewer thing competing for your attention every month. The financial side stays organized and current while you focus on building the product, growing the team, and doing the work you actually started this company to do.
Long Beach's Trusted Bookkeeping Partner
The Next Step:
A Quick Discovery Call
Tell us where things stand with your books. We'll listen, ask a few questions, and give you a clear quote to get it handled.
