The posting
Senior Bookkeeper – Job Description
Overview
The Senior Bookkeeper is responsible for full-cycle accounting across multiple clients, ensuring accuracy, timeliness, and compliance with U.S. accounting standards. This role handles specialized functions such as management fee calculations, owner distributions, and property-management-specific workflows, while operating with minimal supervision.
The Senior Bookkeeper also performs quality review of financial statements before processing any fees or distributions, leads clean-up and data migration efforts, and provides guidance to junior staff. Strong analytical and technical skills are essential to identify discrepancies, improve processes, and provide actionable insights.
Key Responsibilities
1. Full-Cycle Bookkeeping
- Manage end-to-end bookkeeping using QuickBooks Online and other accounting platforms.
- Record and reconcile bank, credit card, loan, and merchant accounts.
- Maintain accurate general ledgers and chart of accounts.
- Handle AP/AR processes, vendor bills, client invoicing, and collections monitoring.
2. Quality Review
- Perform a comprehensive quality review of financial statements before any management fee calculations or owner distributions.
- Validate month-end balances, supporting schedules, and reconciliations for accuracy and compliance.
- Identify discrepancies, errors, or unusual transactions using analytical skills before final approval.
- Ensure all journal entries, reports, and statements are correct, supported, and audit-ready.
3. Clean-Up & Data Migration
- Lead or assist in accounting system clean-up projects, including correcting errors, standardizing charts of accounts, and reconciling historical transactions.
- Support data migration between accounting systems (e.g., spreadsheets, QBO, property management systems), ensuring accuracy and completeness.
- Validate imported data and reconcile discrepancies during migration or clean-up processes.
4. Management Fees & Owner Distribution
- Calculate monthly management fees accurately based on contracts or property activity, after quality review is complete.
- Record management fee journal entries and ensure alignment with property management agreements.
- Process owner distributions, considering bank balances, reserve requirements, and outstanding payables.
- Reconcile trust/operating accounts before generating owner statements.
- Prepare and review owner statements showing income, expenses, fees, and ending balances.
- Use analytical skills to verify calculations, spot anomalies, and ensure proper allocations.
5. Month-End Close & Financial Reporting
- Execute full month-end close, including journal entries, accruals, amortizations, and cleanup.
- Perform variance analysis and resolve discrepancies across accounts using analytical insights.
- Generate accurate financial statements (P&L, Balance Sheet, Cash Flow) on schedule.
6. Payroll & Compliance
- Knowledge in US Payroll
- Reconcile payroll reports and post journal entries.
- Manage W-9 collection, 1099 preparation, and vendor compliance.
- Maintain audit-ready documentation for all payroll and compliance processes.
7. Client Communication & Relationship Management
- Act as primary accounting contact for assigned clients.
- Communicate clearly regarding financials, processes, and requests.
- Coordinate onboarding for new clients, ensuring accurate setup and migration.
- Provide actionable insights and recommendations based on an analytical review of financials.
8. Process Improvement & Mentorship
- Review and guide the work of junior bookkeepers.
- Recommend improvements to workflows, SOPs, and automation opportunities.
- Assist with training and upskilling accounting team members.
9. Industry-Specific Proficiency
- Experience in property management, e-commerce, and professional services.
- Execute industry-specific reconciliations and reporting, such as tenant ledgers, COGS, inventory, and management fee tracking.
- Apply analytical thinking to resolve complex account issues and optimize reporting processes.
Qualifications
- 3–5+ years of U.S. bookkeeping or accounting experience (multi-client preferred).
- Strong proficiency in QuickBooks Online, MS Excel, Google Sheets, and other accounting software.
- Experience with property management systems (e.g., AppFolio, Buildium).
- Experience with clean-up projects and data migration across accounting systems is a plus.
- Strong understanding of GAAP and full-cycle bookkeeping.
- Ability to work independently with minimal supervision and meet deadlines.
- Excellent analytical skills to identify errors, discrepancies, and opportunities for improvement.
- Strong problem-solving and communication skills.
- High attention to detail and organizational skills.
Preferred Skills
- Familiarity with SOP creation, month-end checklists, and workflow optimization.
- Experience preparing for CPA audits or internal reviews.
- Knowledge of inventory, job costing, cash flow forecasting, or consolidations.
- Ability to mentor and support junior accounting staff.
