Q: “Denise, I feel like I need to make some changes on the financial side of my business. I get these monthly reports from my bookkeeper, but frankly, they just track the same business categories as the IRS forms. I need to track my business using different expense categories, but my bookkeeper doesn’t want to cooperate. What should I do?”

Before you throw the bookkeeper away, have you really sat down with him or her to discuss exactly what you want to see category-wise and why? Can you say, “I want to track the amount I pay to my broker as a cost of being in business separately than a typical office expense. I want to track my lead generation efforts separately from advertising AND I want my listing expenses such as house flyer printing, just listed cards, and staging separate from advertising. I need to track this separately because my business is different than how the IRS tracks general businesses.” If your bookkeeper/accountant doesn’t understand this and agree to work with you to create expense categories that make sense, then it may be time for a new bookkeeper/accountant. But finding someone new can be time-consuming, difficult, and expensive, so try to work with them first.