The biggest thing a bookkeeper needs is access to your financial accounts. Once your bank accounts and credit cards are connected to QuickBooks Online through bank feeds, your bookkeeper can pull transactions automatically. That eliminates the old routine of scanning or mailing statements every month. Most of the heavy lifting happens without you doing anything.

Beyond the bank feeds, your bookkeeper needs you to flag anything that doesn’t show up in a bank or credit card feed. Cash transactions are the biggest one. If you collected a cash payment from a customer or paid a supplier in cash, your bookkeeper has no way of knowing unless you tell them. Same with personal funds used for business purchases. If you grabbed materials at Home Depot on your personal card because it was faster, that needs to be communicated or it won’t end up in your books.

Receipts matter, especially for expenses over $75 and for meals or travel. The IRS wants documentation beyond just a bank statement line item. A good system for this is snapping a photo of receipts with your phone and dropping them into a shared folder or app. It takes seconds in the moment and saves hours of scrambling later.

If you run payroll, your bookkeeper needs access to payroll reports or the payroll platform itself. They need to record wages, employer taxes, and any benefits so the books match what actually went out. If you use a service like Gusto or QuickBooks Payroll, this is usually straightforward.

Your bookkeeper also needs you to answer questions when they come up. There will be transactions they can’t identify just by looking at the description. A $3,200 charge at a supply house could be materials for a specific job or general shop supplies. A deposit could be a customer payment, a loan draw, or an insurance reimbursement. Quick responses to these questions keep the books accurate and on schedule. This is an important part of full-service bookkeeping working well.

Lastly, let your bookkeeper know about anything significant that happened during the month. New equipment purchases, vehicle loans, insurance policy changes, a new line of credit, or a large refund. These aren’t always obvious from transaction data alone, and catching them in the right month keeps your financials reliable.

The whole process usually takes 15 to 30 minutes of your time each month once a routine is in place. Most contractors and trade business owners I work with as a CPA for construction and trade businesses are surprised by how little is needed from their end. The key is consistency. A few minutes each week beats an hour-long scramble at month end trying to remember what happened three weeks ago.