About

Ledger Clinic is a reference for bookkeeping practice: how a set of books is kept, closed and evidenced. It is written for bookkeepers, CPAs, controllers and the owner-operators who do their own books.

The subjects are chosen from what the work actually consists of rather than what is pleasant to write about. Cleanup comes first because taking on books that are behind or wrong is the most common way a new engagement starts, and because the balance sheet - old A/R and A/P, Undeposited Funds, payroll liabilities, Opening Balance Equity - is where the real problems sit while attention goes to the P&L.

What it covers

Process rather than product. The month-end close, reconciliations, chart of accounts design, accruals and cut-off, working papers, and turning a correct ledger into reporting somebody can act on. Where a specific accounting package matters to the mechanics it is named, because pretending otherwise would make the writing useless -- but the method is the subject, not the software.

How this is written and reviewed

Articles are drafted from a curated body of real bookkeeping questions and practitioner sources, then put through a quality gate before anything is published. Accounting treatment is reviewed by Martha Sullivan, CPA; an article carries a "Reviewed by" line only where that review has actually happened, and the absence of the line means it has not. We would rather the credit stayed meaningful than have it on every page.

What it is not

It is not accounting, tax or legal advice, and it is not a substitute for professional judgement applied to your own figures. It is independent: not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by any software vendor named here, and product names belong to their respective owners.