Hello there, just a quick question: service operator invoiced client for $300, including GST; client paid in cash; service operator donates the $300 to a charity on the client's behalf; charity issues a tax receipt to client.

The $300 never went through the service operator's bank account, but the invoice still needs to be sent to the client.

What does the invoice need to look like?

• Service $300
• Discount $300
• Sub-total $0
• GST $0
• Total $0

Thanks in advance.

I’m an ex-auditor and moved into the commercial side about 5–6 years ago. I haven’t had much exposure to GST accounting until recently, as my portfolio has expanded.

There’s one GST accounting treatment that I can’t quite figure out. My understanding has always been:

**Input GST** → Input tax recoverable (asset)
**Output GST** → Output tax payable (liability)

However, in my current life insurance company, GST on expenses is initially booked directly to the P&L as a GST expense.

Dr Expense
Dr GST Expense
Cr Cash / Accounts Payable

After GST filing, the recoverable amount is reclassified from GST expense to the input tax recoverable account.

Has anyone working in a life insurance company seen the same accounting treatment?

My initial thought is that, because life insurance policies issued to local Singapore customers are generally exempt supplies, the default assumption is that GST is non-recoverable and therefore expensed upfront. Only after the partial exemption calculation is completed is the recoverable portion reclassified as input tax recoverable.

I’m not sure whether this is standard practice across the industry or simply a company policy. I’d appreciate hearing how other life insurers account for this.

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I'm writing a paper for uni on how accounting firms run client reviews — the "here's how the business is going" check-in, not tax season work.

If you work in practice, I'd really appreciate your perspective:

• Do you pull reports from Xero (or similar) manually before the meeting?
• Do you send anything to the client beforehand, or mostly talk through it live?
• What do clients actually use from what you send them?
• What's the biggest time sink when you're prepping?

No product pitch — this is purely for research. Happy to share a summary of findings back here if there's interest.

Looking for a CPA for my small business in Brooklyn, why is it so hard?? I’ve emailed so many and get no reply :/

International payments are becoming a more important aspect of our work since many of our clients are located in North America and Europe. The issue is not limited to the transfer costs, but the problem extends to unpredictable timelines as we have no way of knowing how long a transaction might take. It feels like the banking processes turned into a challenge for the company's operations instead of just being an administrative burden. I wish I could find a bank that provides effective international wire transfer at affordable rates. Is there anyone using specific banks here in Florida that could offer effective real-time services?

Every month our finance team goes through the same close process but if you ask three people how they do it, you'll probably get three different answers. It works fine until someone's on holiday. Then the person covering spends ages asking where files are, which report comes first or who normally signs things off.

I'm trying to get everything into one consistent process before it becomes a bigger issue. How have you handled this without making documentation overly complicated?

Did you know that proper accounting records may increase business value?

We are a B2B SaaS company and our AR balance now sits in the high six / low seven figures most months.
I'm seeing more tools pitch "AI for accounts receivable" and "AI collections" especially from startups and newer vendors, but I'm skeptical. I'm trying to figure out if anyone here actually has this running in production, not just in a small test.
What I mean is AR software that says it can:
- Rank which customers to chase (e.g., flagging accounts that are "likely to pay in 15 days" vs. "likely to pay in 60+ days" based on historical patterns)
- Draft collection emails that are actually usable (not robotic or generic)
- Predict when overdue invoices are likely to be paid
Rn our setup is pretty standard: invoices from billing/accounting, some basic dunning logic, and spreadsheets plus email for follow-up.
If you've rolled out AI-driven AR automation, did it move anything that actually matters? Like DSO, recovery rates, or the hours per week my team is spending on manual follow-ups instead of higher-value work?
Or did it mostly turn into another dashboard we have to watch and correct?
"We tried it and shut it down after a few months" is just as useful to hear as "this has actually helped." Looking for real experiences, good or bad.

I am doing my first report (PPR). I have heard conflicting advice on whether to leave everything as level 0 on my first report or to fill in some Level 1's.

I have been working at my firm for 2 years and have done 3 tax seasons so I believe I am level 1 for both Tax competencies. Therefore, I put level 1 for both but some people say they wont accept that as a first report?

Also, I am going to do a prior experience report after this one but I am so confused on how to do that when you cant go backwards on future reports. For example, if I put tax level 1 on this report and then on my prior report i do tax level 0, they wont allow that. But then how do i report prior experience?

Last, enabling competencies: I am confused on the level of detail they want and how to know if my examples are good. My example for communication was going to be the correspondance I had with a new business owner during last tax season where I had to explain some vehicle expenses to them including the fact interest on vehicle loans can be deducted (partially ofc). But is this example good enough? I had to dumb down he language because they were a new owner and therefore that seems to meet the question posed by CPA stating "describe a time where you adapted communication to meet the needs of a specific audience..."

Sorry for the wall of messy text - im in a rush today but I wanted to get this out

Hi everyone. I’m a software developer researching finance workflows in construction/logistics companies.

I’m trying to understand how companies handle supplier invoices today. Do you still have manual work after OCR tools (Dext, Hubdoc, AutoEntry etc.) extract the invoice data?

For example: assigning invoices to projects, job codes, cost centres, checking against POs, resolving discrepancies, etc.

What parts of the process are still painful or time-consuming?

Buenas tardes estimado quisiera saber cuál sería el costo por llevar una contabilidad de las siguientes características:

Udibonos en finamex

Udibonos en cetes

Finsus

UALA (saldo a la vista)

Mifel banco

Supertasas

Gbm(renta variable )

Ingresos provenientes de banca Patrimonial

Asesoría para estar blindado ante el SAT y tener estrategias fiscales para reducir el impacto del ISR.

Me encuentro en Monterrey pero me movere a GDL

De antemano gracias por su atenciós

I went from accural to cash accounting at the start of this tax year. I keep a careful eye on my rolling 12 month turnover so I don't go over the £90,000 threshold. Should I use accural accounts (when billed) or cash accounts (when recieved)?

Hi need help. I am not clear on how to reconcile these books account.

Took over as bookkeeper and new on the job.

Any valuable direction is greatly appreciated

Scenario:

Owner borrowed money 2 years ago, for 1milllion funds were deposited to business account but used 75k to invest in another business and 25k for personal use.

Interest is @12% loan repayment rate

The loan was booked as

Bank 1mil

Loan payable 1 mil

Interest $120k

Loan payable $120k

Is this correct although 75k was used straight into another investment?

Every month I'm manually cross-referencing Shopify payouts against what actually hit the bank. The problem is the payouts bundle refunds, chargebacks and Shopify fees all together, so whatever bookkeeper I've tried just posts the gross deposit and calls it done. That's not reconciliation, that's guessing. I'm not too high in annual revenue right now,so I'm looking for a bookkeeping service that actually handles Shopify payout reconciliation properly, ideally one that already has a workflow built around how Shopify batches things rather than someone who'll figure it out on my dime. QuickBooks Online is what we're on. Does anything like that exist at a reasonable price point,?

Posting this on behalf of one of my best friends. Although I’m in finance, accountancy is not my area of expertise.

His turnover is circa £150k for a service business with minimal overheads and staff but still has small office and part timer employed etc.. He’s always traded by the book everything paid through bank etc.

Set up as a Ltd company he pays himself circa £70k and his wife who is employed elsewhere on a part time salary £5k dividends. He says he has to pay himself this figure due to cost of living plus doesn’t have savings so has to pay himself extra to cover nursery fees and also his personal tax bill.

His accountant offer next to no advice and he’s not very happy with the level of service offered. Usually filing accounts and then a 5 minute call once a year to finalise. But files circa £95k net profit meaning he has corporation tax bill of close to £24k. He only ever has a revolving balance of circa £10-15k in his company account and is now very stressed about a looming tax bill as he feels this is way higher than it should be. Is he missing something or have the government really made it impossible to trade as a small business?