A handful of deposits and no employees is not automatically a monthly engagement.
Name the year
If the company formed, took in a modest amount, paid a few vendors, and paid no people, the federal need is usually one return of the right type and a set of books that ties to the bank. That can be a project with a start and an end. It does not require a standing monthly fee to be honest.
Saying it at the start saves a surprise after the third close. A retainer that buys meetings about activity that is not there is a bad trade for you and a dull one for us.
The month earns a retainer when something repeats. Payroll. Sales tax in a state that has it. More than one owner who wants a slip they can trust. Inventory. A loan that asks for statements on a date. Money moving every week in amounts you can no longer reconstruct from memory.
Any one of those can arrive in month three. The engagement can start then, aimed at the months that exist, without a fiction that January was complicated.
The account title. The default classification. A folder with the certificate and, if you elected, the acceptance or a note that it is missing. Those are not monthly tasks. They are once, and skipping them is how year two begins in a mess.
Estimated payments can matter even when the books are simple, if the profit is landing on an individual return that used to have withholding from a job. A quiet company on top of a household that used to be withheld upon is a common way to owe in April.
A defined stack, a defined return, a defined fee. If the stack grows, the fee is quoted again before the work grows. You can stop. We can stop. The records come back.
No price appears in this article. Counting what you hold happens in the conversation, not on this page. If the count is small, you will hear that.
Roughly how active, and whether anyone was paid.
You will be talking to the Steven Palmieri practice.