Tacoma bookkeeping and outsourced accounting for growing businesses.
Lynn Solutions is headquartered in Tacoma. TJ grew up here, went to high school here, and spent most of his childhood around people who ran their own businesses. He still remembers jumping the fence at Stadium High School to get down to the Bowl to run. For us, this is home. This is where our community is, and where we feel led to invest.
We run the money side of your business. That means your books close and reconcile each month, your payroll ties out properly, and, when they're in scope, your Washington and City of Tacoma filings get prepared from numbers that actually make sense. Your books stay in a condition where you can use the reports to make real business decisions.
Being from here, we know how things work around these parts. It's not as simple as other cities. There are unique jurisdictional requirements Tacoma businesses face, and we have experience navigating them. When you work with us, we have your back on that.
TAX LAYERS
Tacoma has more tax layers than most owners anticipate
Pretty much every business owner in Washington knows about Washington B&O tax. Surprisingly few know that Tacoma has its own local B&O tax.
Here are the layers Tacoma business owners need to know:
The state
Washington B&O tax and sales tax get reported to the Department of Revenue on the Combined Excise Tax Return. Most owners at least know about this one. The Department of Revenue assigns your business a monthly, quarterly, or annual filing frequency.
The city
Tacoma has its own B&O tax that you report to the city, and it is separate from Washington B&O and the Combined Excise Tax Return. It's filed through FileLocal. You need a completely separate account to do this. Tacoma expects you to know this information, and there can be penalties and interest when required filings are missed.
We've seen businesses file with the state for years without knowing they also needed a FileLocal account in Tacoma. Many find out when the City sends a letter. Of course, Tacoma wants what's due, and if they learn you've been doing business without filing, they're going to reach out. Usually there are penalties attached by that point, and they can become pretty steep.
Not every business owes Tacoma B&O. It depends on your activity in the city, and talking to someone who understands the rules is the best way to figure out what applies to you.
Sales-tax location
This is separate from both B&O taxes. What matters here is where the sale or job is actually sourced for sales-tax purposes.
Work done inside Tacoma city limits is generally reported under Tacoma location code 2717 on the Combined Excise Tax Return. But here's one of those local details you may not know unless you actually know the area: a Tacoma mailing address does not always mean the property is inside the City of Tacoma for tax purposes. There are parts of the Browns Point and Northeast Tacoma area with Tacoma addresses that sit in unincorporated Pierce County.
That can mean a completely different location code and sales-tax rate even though the mailing address still says Tacoma. The Pierce Transit Benefit Area (PTBA) can also affect the local rate in unincorporated Pierce County.
Many of the contractors we support around Tacoma and Pierce County end up reporting several different sales-tax locations on the same return, not just 2717.
In short: where your jobs happen can change your sales-tax rate and location code, while what your business does determines your B&O classification. One job can be taxed one way, and another job only a few miles away can require a different location on the return.
DEPTH
Having a bookkeeper doesn't mean you have someone who understands Tacoma
If all you need is basic data entry, then a basic data-entry bookkeeper may be adequate for you.
But in Tacoma, basic data entry usually doesn't cut it. On top of the normal bookkeeping, you may have state B&O, Tacoma B&O, FileLocal, multiple sales-tax jurisdictions, PTBA boundaries, job-location sourcing, payroll, and L&I to keep straight.
We frequently talk to owners who hired a bookkeeper and found out a year later that the state was being filed but the city wasn't, or that every job was being coded to the same sales-tax location when they should have been split across multiple locations.
Things like this don't always reflect poorly on the bookkeeper. Sometimes Tacoma is simply more complex than they realized, they got in over their head, and nobody noticed until something showed up in the mail.
LOCAL WORK
What we've done for Tacoma and Pierce County businesses
We've worked with blinds companies, general contractors, dental offices, brick-and-mortar retail, consignment shops, nonprofits, churches, and commercial insulation companies across Tacoma and Pierce County.
The industries we've served are different. But the underlying complexity is often the same: the numbers don't match what is actually happening in the business, and nobody is owning that process.
A contractor we work with does work in Tacoma and all across Pierce County. She files monthly with the state through the Combined Excise Tax Return and quarterly with FileLocal for Tacoma B&O.
On top of that, the sales-tax location for each job can change depending on where the work is performed. Work inside Tacoma city limits is generally reported under location code 2717, while jobs in nearby unincorporated Pierce County may use completely different location codes and rates, even when the mailing address still says Tacoma. PTBA boundaries can affect those local rates too.
If jobs aren't tagged by location when they're entered, preparing the return becomes a slog. You have to dig through every invoice to figure out where each job occurred and recreate the information from scratch.
Even worse, if the state and city numbers aren't pulled from the same reconciled books, they can stop agreeing with each other and become disconnected from the P&L.
On top of all of this, owners still have to figure out which jobs are actually making money.
CONTRACTOR TIMING
Your cash goes out long before the job is fully paid
Here's an example of a normal job rhythm for a lot of contractors we work with:
- You buy materials. Money leaves your account.
- A few weeks later—sometimes a month or more—your crew installs the job.
- You send an invoice.
- Net 30 or Net 60 starts.
- You're paid in full months after you first spent the money.
If you're doing your books just based on what you see in your bank account, you're in trouble.
The months when you buy materials can look like huge losses, and then the months when receivables finally come in can look wildly profitable. Neither tells you, by itself, whether the job actually made money.
How do you know if that job is profitable? You can't know just by looking at how much cash is in your account.
Most owners think they can keep track of all of this in their head. They can't. A lot of people come to us after trying it that way, and when we show them that a job or service line is running at a negative margin, they freak out because oftentimes they had no idea.
For us, fixing this is something we're comfortable with. It can look like:
- Tracking every direct cost by job or project.
- Putting direct materials into COGS when they're used on the job, while keeping materials that haven't been installed yet tracked appropriately until they are.
- Tracking inventory or materials that have been bought but not yet installed.
- Building a P&L that shows profit by service line instead of one blended total.
- Tracking how long materials sit after being purchased but before being installed.
- Watching how long receivables take to come in.
- Forecasting cash flow so a slower collection month doesn't wreck the business.
Not every contractor needs all of the above. But we can do all of it, and we'll tell you what we think is actually necessary when we meet.
WHY PEOPLE CALL
The problems we usually get called about
Most people who call us already have a bookkeeper, or someone on staff doing their books. Usually we're getting called because even though someone is doing the basic work, the reports aren't adding up and things are starting to fall through the cracks.
Usually it's a few of these:
- You have a bookkeeper, but the books aren't reconciling.
- State sales tax and B&O got filed, but Tacoma B&O didn't.
- A letter from the City of Tacoma shows up in the mail.
- Sales tax is filed under one location code when it should be split across several.
- You're not sure which jobs made money until the year is over—if even then.
- Materials paid for weeks ago are sitting in inventory and nobody is quite sure which job they belong to.
- Undeposited Funds keeps growing, or Ask My Accountant is full of transactions nobody can explain.
- Receivables keep growing and nobody is sure which invoices have actually been paid.
- Decisions are regularly made off the cash in the bank because nobody trusts the P&L.
- You're doing the books Sunday night just to keep up.
If you have one of these, it can be fixed. If you have several happening at once, it's probably time to talk to someone who can really help.
WHERE TO START
Cleanup or monthly bookkeeping: which do you need?
First question: can you trust your books right now?
If the answer is no, start with cleanup.
Here are some examples so you know what I mean:
Cleanup
- Bank or credit card accounts haven't been reconciled in months.
- The bookkeeper or office person handling the books left and nobody is sure how to pick it back up.
- Transactions are coded to the wrong account or left uncategorized.
- Prior months or quarters just didn't get done.
- State and city returns were filed from numbers that didn't match the books—or weren't filed at all.
- You wouldn't use your current P&L to make a real business decision.
Cleanup is required to fix the history first. Without that, there is nothing clean to build the monthly work on top of.
We reconcile the accounts that matter, correct miscategorized transactions, clean up the balance sheet, and give you an accurate picture of the financial health of the business.
Monthly bookkeeping
Start with monthly bookkeeping if the books are already trustworthy. That means reconciled, up to date, and coded properly.
We'll own the monthly close, reconciliations, monitoring receivables, lining payroll up with the books, financial reporting, and letting you know about anything that needs your attention.
One small note: if FileLocal filings were missed in the past, catching those up is cleanup work, and we'll scope that as a project.
Most businesses we work with come to us first for cleanup, and then they like us enough to stick around. In six years, we've never been fired for poor service.
HOW THE WORK GETS DONE
How the work gets done
We're based in Tacoma, but our work is done remotely. Here's what it looks like for us:
- We get accountant access to QuickBooks, or whichever accounting system you use.
- We get access to payroll systems.
- We get reporting access to your bank so we can pull statements without your personal login or the ability to move money around.
- We get access to SecureAccess Washington, the Department of Revenue, and FileLocal when they're part of the scope.
- Documents are shared digitally and securely.
- Anything that needs a more in-depth conversation is handled over the phone, email, or video.
- We close on a schedule every month.
That's it. Pretty simple.
If you need someone in your building onsite regularly, we aren't the right fit. If you want to grab coffee sometime, we're always open to that.
FIT
Who we're a good fit for
Over six years, we've served dozens of clients ranging from about $100K a year in revenue all the way up to $50M a year.
We've seen a lot.
Fit depends on scope and complexity. How are your books currently? What do you want us to own each month? Are you willing to work with us and provide what we need to serve you well?
A small Tacoma business with a clear scope and agreed-upon deliverables can be a great fit. A much larger business that doesn't want to give us access or has constant pushback about the processes required to do the work probably isn't.
We're probably not the right fit if:
- You need someone onsite on a regular basis.
- You're not willing to provide the access or documents we need.
- You want the cheapest possible data entry.
- You're not willing to participate in the processes the work requires.
- 6 years in business
- Dozens of clients served
- Experience from about $100K to $50M in revenue
- Headquartered in Tacoma, work delivered remotely
“They are helping me make corrections that have been overlooked in the past and given me great information on best practices and processes going forward.”
QUESTIONS
Frequently asked questions
Do you work only with Tacoma businesses?
No. We're headquartered in Tacoma, and many of the clients we serve are in Tacoma and Pierce County too, but we work across Washington and the country. The work is the same wherever you are. The difference here is that we already know the Tacoma-specific filings and jurisdictional issues.
What is Tacoma FileLocal, and do I need it?
FileLocal is the online portal the City of Tacoma uses for city business taxes, including Tacoma's city B&O tax. It's separate from your Washington Department of Revenue account.
Whether your business needs to file depends on your activity in the city, so check it instead of assuming. The problem we see most often is a business that never set up FileLocal and only found out when the City reached out.
If that's you, catching up those filings is usually part of cleanup.
What's the difference between Washington B&O and Tacoma B&O?
They're two separate B&O taxes administered by two different governments.
Washington B&O is reported to the Department of Revenue on the Combined Excise Tax Return. Tacoma B&O is a city tax filed through FileLocal. They can be on different schedules too.
One of our contractor clients files with the state monthly and the city quarterly. Filing one doesn't take care of the other.
Why does job location matter for contractor sales tax?
Washington sales tax generally follows where the work is performed or otherwise sourced under Washington's sales-tax rules.
A job inside Tacoma city limits generally reports under Tacoma's location code. But a job with a Tacoma mailing address may actually sit in unincorporated Pierce County for tax purposes and use a different location code and rate. In unincorporated areas, PTBA boundaries can matter too.
B&O works differently: classification depends on what the business is doing. If jobs aren't tagged by the correct location in the books, the sales-tax side of the return can quickly turn into guesswork.
Should I start with cleanup or monthly bookkeeping?
If your accounts haven't been reconciled in a while, or you don't trust your P&L, start with cleanup.
If the books are current and you need someone to own the process from here, start with monthly bookkeeping.
Most businesses that come to us need at least some cleanup first.
Do you need to come onsite?
No. Almost everything we do is remote: accountant access to your software, reporting access to your bank, and documents shared digitally.
We're local, so meeting for coffee is sometimes an option. If your business needs someone in the building every week, we're not the right fit.
Do I need to be a certain size?
No. We've worked with businesses from about $100K to $50M in revenue.
Fit comes down to scope: what needs fixing, what needs owning every month, and whether we can get the access to do it right.
Other service areas
Tell us what's going on with your books
Book a Fit Call. We'll go over where things stand, what's broken, and whether cleanup, monthly bookkeeping, or something else makes the most sense.
If we're the right fit, you'll get a clear scope and price. If we're not, I'll point you in the right direction.