Jonathan Reich 
Stripe and Luqra both promise to move money from your shopper’s cart to your bank account with no fuss. But what about when the going gets tough? When your volume spikes, when a chargeback cluster hits, or when a bank’s risk team gets nervous? How they perform when the stakes rise can be the difference … Read more
Managing payments in 2025 feels like picking a pit crew for your checkout. You need speed, clean handoffs, and a support team that won’t panic when a fraud or chargeback spike hits when you least expect it. Who has the best rates might seem more important, but what really saves margin is the boring stuff: … Read more
If you run an online store in 2025, there’s a good chance that Stripe is running your checkout. But as a CPA, I see many of my clients asking the same question: “Is Stripe still worth the headaches… or is it time to move on?” As it turns out, many merchants are quietly moving off … Read more
Payments sometimes feel like plumbing: invisible and seamless when it works, but a flood of problems when it doesn’t. Luqra wants to change that by bundling up all the messy bits into one interface that puts you in the driver’s seat — a single pane of glass that contains the payment gateway, merchant services, chargebacks, … Read more
I don’t know why, but tons of business owners, bank officers, investors, and other people who should know better simply don’t understand revenue recognition. It’s something that drives me up the wall as a CPA, because it can easily cause financials to be materially misstated. So today, let’s clear the air and see what tools … Read more
If you’ve ever run payroll at 1:00 a.m. from a Wi-Fi hotspot after working 10 hours, you know there are only two types of softwares: tools that get out of your way, and everything else. Payroll automation lives or dies on what happens between “clock in” and “tax filed,” not how pretty the landing page … Read more
Let’s be honest: “Melio vs. Zelle” sounds like a heavyweight boxing match between two guys with last names that come from a country that may not exist anymore. But the reality is so much worse, and instead of watching two dudes duke it out for the title belt, today we’ll instead be comparing two different … Read more
Alright y’all, today’s line up isn’t a beauty pageant; it’s a question of what makes pay day boring. And like it or not, boring is great, I absolutely LOVE boring! Not everything has to be a blockbuster, exciting, and crazy new experience. Any time you can avoid chaos, always pick boring. And that’s what we’re … Read more
ZipBooks is a clean, lightweight ledger. It’s free to start with, has friendly invoicing, easily connects to banks, and creates basic reports. For a lean service shop or solopreneur, it’s hard to argue with the value. But as your volume or headcount start to increase (or if you need to easily defend yourself against an … Read more
Toast Payroll does a lot right for restaurant-native workflows but it’s not the only way to get clean hours, clean tips, and compliant filings without tying yourself to a single POS stack. As a CPA, I’ve spent a lot of time surfing around SMB payroll software, and I’ve come to learn what works, and what … Read more
It’s more important than ever before for accountants to have a clean bill pay workflow that moves money, reconciles perfectly every time, and doesn’t light their cash flow on fire. Wise and Melio are two excellent, popular choices, so it’ll be a tough comparison that will likely come down to what best fits your specific … Read more
Have you ever woken up at 4:30 AM on the 1st business day of the month absolutely dreading the next 14 hours because you know you have to reconcile 64 bank accounts? Well, I have, and let me tell you it’s something I wouldn’t wish upon anyone. If you’re like me, you already know the … Read more
Alright y’all, it’s time to roll up the sleeves and get practical. If you’re shopping alternatives to Zoho Books, then you’ve come to the right place. You’re probably feeling one of three pains: you’ve outgrown the SMB tier, you want more automation and less month-end grind, or your stack needs to plug into a specific … Read more
I’m sure the book keepers and SMB owners that are present in my nook of the internet today share a similar view as me on this. Payroll shouldn’t feel like defusing a bomb with oven mitts, but here we are on Thursday afternoon, three coffees deep, entering timesheets, tips, and surprises while Quickbooks freezes up. … Read more
Let’s be honest: most start-ups don’t die from competition, they bleed out from spreadsheet paper cuts for things like mistimed revenue, mystery COGS, and data tables that live in a Dropbox labeled “final_final(3).xlsx.” These issues don’t stem from being bad at math, they’re from not keeping a leash on your accounting. And when the dollars … Read more
Let’s be honest: most startup’s finance stack probably looks like a junk drawer: Plaid dongles next to Ramp cards next to a mystery Excel file named “final_FINAL_cash”. Puzzle is where we cut the crap and get down to running a business’s books the way that it’s actually supposed to be: Plaid for clean bank connections, … Read more