Bookkeeping — capture everything, let the CPA choose the ledger¶

Status: plan, 2026-09-14. Angel: "build something to hand off to the CPA — I don't know all the details they need, capture them all."

Not tax advice. This is a capture checklist to take to a CPA, written by someone who is not an accountant. Some of it will be wrong for an NC LLC of this shape; that is what the hour with the CPA is for (embeddedera-business).

The principle¶

Records now, ledger later. embeddedera-business already decided the CPA's answer picks the ledger, and that decision stands. But capturing a transaction is not the same as choosing software: a receipt photographed today with its vendor, date, amount and category is useful in GnuCash, Frappe Books, Wave or a spreadsheet the CPA keeps themselves. So build the capture and the export, stay out of the ledger.

The test of every feature here: does this still make sense whichever ledger they pick?

What a US LLC actually has to hand over¶

The list Angel asked for. Ordered by how badly it hurts to be missing it in April.

Income¶

Every invoice issued: number, date, customer, amount, tax charged, terms, paid date. Already in InvenTree (mrp) — needs exporting, not re-recording.
Every payment received: date, amount, method (check, wire, card, eBay payout), which invoice it settles, and fees deducted. eBay payouts are gross-minus-fees — the gross is income and the fee is an expense; netting them understates both.
Sales tax collected, by jurisdiction, and separated into what a marketplace remitted for us (eBay) versus what we collected ourselves. The distinction is the whole reason the storefront decision matters (company-end-state).

Expenses¶

Date, vendor, amount, category, payment method, and the receipt image itself. Intake already captures the document and drafts the fields.
Categories that matter for a shop like this: materials and components (COGS), contract manufacturing, shipping in and out, tools and equipment, software and subscriptions, professional fees, insurance, rent and utilities, advertising, bank and payment fees, travel, meals (deductibility differs — the CPA's call), education.
Capital items: anything with a useful life over a year and above the CPA's chosen threshold — the reflow oven, the pick and place, a laptop. Needs purchase date, cost, and date placed in service, because depreciation and Section 179 turn on it.

Inventory — the one a parts shop gets wrong¶

Opening and closing valuation for the year, and purchases during it. A shop holding reels and boards has inventory whether or not anyone is tracking it as such.
Which costing method (FIFO, average) — the CPA chooses, and then it must not change.
InvenTree holds the quantities. What it does not hold is a year-end valuation snapshot, and that is a specific thing to build.

Money in and out of the business¶

Bank and credit card statements, every month, as PDFs, plus reconciliation showing the books agree with the bank.
Owner contributions and draws — an LLC's member equity. Personal money in, business money out, dated. Mixing these with expenses is the classic small-shop mess.
Loans: principal versus interest, separately.

People¶

1099-NEC: any contractor paid $600 or more in the year, with a W-9 collected before you pay them, not chased in January.
Payroll: none today. The day there is any, this section gets much bigger.

Filings and identity¶

EIN, NC Secretary of State registration, the NC LLC annual report (~$200/yr), NC sales-and-use registration and the E-595E resale certificate.
Estimated tax payments already made (federal 1040-ES, state NC-40), with dates and confirmation numbers.
Prior year return, if there is one.

What to build¶

Three pieces, none of which is a ledger.

1. `books.embeddedera.com` — the capture surface¶

Behind the gate like everything else. Not a general ledger: a register of transactions and the documents behind them.

Expenses arrive from task-board intake: a filed receipt already carries vendor, date, total, tax and payment method as a draft. A person confirms it, picks the category, and it becomes a transaction row with the image attached.
Income is pulled from InvenTree invoices and eBay payouts — read, never re-typed.
Capital items get their own small form, because "date placed in service" is a field nobody remembers to record later.
Statements are uploaded monthly; a missing month is a visible gap, not a surprise.

2. The CPA handoff pack¶

One button, one folder, whatever the ledger turns out to be:

2026/
  summary.pdf              income, expenses by category, tax collected, the questions list
  income.csv               invoices and payments, gross, fees separate
  expenses.csv             date, vendor, amount, category, method, receipt filename
  capital-items.csv        cost, date placed in service
  sales-tax.csv            by jurisdiction, marketplace-collected flagged
  inventory-valuation.csv  opening, closing, method
  receipts/                every image, named to match the CSV rows
  statements/              bank and card PDFs by month
  questions.md             what we could not classify and need told

questions.md is the part that makes the hour cheap: arriving with a specific list of twenty uncertain items beats arriving with a year of files.

3. The checks¶

Bookkeeping fails quietly, so it needs the same treatment as everything else here: - an expense with no receipt image - a receipt that was never categorised - a month with no bank statement uploaded - a contractor approaching $600 with no W-9 on file - an eBay payout with no matching income rows - inventory valuation missing at year end

These become audit checks and land on the board, exactly like the SOP ones.

Order¶

The CPA hour first. Everything below gets better by being asked about. Take this document to it.
Expense capture and categories (confirm-the-draft from intake) — useful immediately.
Income import from InvenTree and eBay.
The handoff pack.
The checks.
Ledger, once chosen — and by then it imports CSVs rather than being fed by hand.

Open questions for the CPA¶

Cash or accrual? (Changes when income counts and whether inventory must be capitalised.)
Inventory: required to track, and on what method?
Capitalisation threshold — what counts as equipment rather than an expense?
Section 179 or bonus depreciation on the shop equipment already bought?
Is the NC sales-and-use registration needed before or only after the first direct sale?
Home office and vehicle: worth claiming, or more trouble than it saves?
Which ledger do they want the data in, so the export matches their workflow?
Quarterly estimates: what and when, for both federal and NC?

Log¶

2026-09-14: written, after the intake page started reading receipts and the obvious question became "where does this go?".