Palmer law firms, engineering shops, consultancies, and agencies run on billable hours, retainers, and project P&L — often for clients spread across a state the size of a continent. We build a clean bookkeeping system around how you actually bill, so partners see real margin, not just invoiced revenue.
No setup fees · Cancel anytime · Dedicated bookkeeper
Whether you're a solo consultant or managing a growing agency, we build the bookkeeping system around how your billing actually works.
Client trust accounts, IOLTA compliance, retainer management, and hourly billing reconciliation — legal bookkeeping has zero margin for error.
Project-based and retainer revenue with variable expenses and a mix of client types. Clean books let you see which engagements are most profitable and where to focus.
Agency financials involve retainer clients, project work, media spend, and a team that grows and contracts. We keep the numbers clean no matter how fast things move.
Professional services firms face financial challenges that general bookkeepers routinely miss. Here's what we hear from nearly every new client.
Retainers get drawn down differently each month. Without a system, it's easy to over-bill, under-bill, or lose track of what's been used vs. what's still in trust.
You're billing clients, but after labor, overhead, and contractor costs — which projects are actually making money? Most firms have no idea without a proper cost structure.
IOLTA rules are strict. Commingling funds, even accidentally, can have serious professional consequences. We maintain clean separation and reconciliation every month.
Chasing down expense receipts, sorting contractor payments for 1099s, and trying to reconstruct the year for your CPA. We eliminate all of it with clean monthly records.
Every Tides plan includes all seven core services. Professional services clients get specific treatment for retainer billing, trust accounts, and project-level profitability.
Every account reconciled, every transaction categorized, every month — without exception. You receive a clean P&L and balance sheet broken down by client or project so you always know where you stand.
Monthly reports showing revenue by client, project margins, and overhead costs — so you can make smarter business decisions every month.
Every business account and credit card matched and verified each month. No mystery charges. No unresolved transactions. No surprises.
We track contractor payments, client invoices, and outstanding balances so nothing gets missed or paid twice.
Months or years behind? We clean it all up before we start your regular monthly service — no matter how far back the backlog goes.
If you have employees or pay contractors, we coordinate payroll processing and keep your tax filings clean and on schedule.
"As a consultant, I never had clean books. Tides changed that in the first month — now I actually know which clients are my most profitable."
Questions we hear from Palmer law firms, engineering shops, consultants, and agencies before they sign on with Tides.
Palmer's professional services bench is small, tight, and busy — and the books behind these firms look nothing like a retail P&L. Here is how Tides fits the partners and principals building practices across the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
Palmer firms handle borough government work, agricultural business matters, and the land-use questions that come with a farm belt turning into subdivisions. Firms here serve an economy built on agriculture, borough government, tourism, and construction, with major clients including the Matanuska-Susitna Borough government, the Alaska State Fair, Mat-Su Regional Medical Center, and the Matanuska Valley farms. Engineering, environmental, legal, architecture, consulting, and marketing shops all share the same accounting reality: revenue ties to billable hours, retainers, or project milestones — not invoice dates.
The Alaska version of that problem has extra teeth. Work is seasonal, travel is expensive and constant, and reimbursable expenses — flights, lodging, per diem, charter aircraft — can be a meaningful share of a project's cash flow. If reimbursables are not tracked against the engagement that generated them, project margin is a story you tell yourself. We integrate with Clio, Harvest, Toggl, and similar time systems, build a chart of accounts that throws off real project and client P&L, and handle IOLTA trust reconciliation for law firms — separate from operating, every month, with client-level ledgers.
On tax: Alaska has no state sales tax and no state personal income tax — but more than 100 boroughs and cities levy their own sales tax, and that is where Alaska bookkeeping actually gets interesting. Palmer levies its own city sales tax (roughly 3% as of 2026 — confirm the current rate with the City of Palmer), while the Matanuska-Susitna Borough has no general sales tax and Alaska has no state sales or income tax. Professional services are treated differently from jurisdiction to jurisdiction — some Alaska communities tax services, some do not — so it is worth confirming with your local jurisdiction rather than assuming. Alaska also has a corporate income tax on C-corps (there is no personal income tax), and seafood businesses deal with the fisheries business tax on top of everything else.
We clean up partner distributions, equity draws, billable utilization, and the pass-through mess of reimbursable expenses so the principals know exactly what each engagement earned. Tides is a 100% remote bookkeeping firm — we work with Palmer businesses over secure bank feeds, QuickBooks Online, and an encrypted client portal, so there is nothing to drop off and no meeting to drive to. See the full local picture on our Palmer bookkeeping services page, or the wider the Matanuska-Susitna Borough overview.
Remote-first bookkeeping headquartered in Greenville, South Carolina, serving small businesses across Alaska and the rest of the United States.
Tides Bookkeeping specializes in bookkeeping across 12 distinct industries. Industry-specific expertise means fewer errors, better categorization, and a bookkeeper who already understands how your business makes money.
Schedule a free 15-minute call. We'll review your current setup, answer your questions, and give you a flat monthly quote — no pressure.
No credit card required · No long-term contracts · Cancel anytime