Sharpe CPA / For CPAs
I started this work in 1981 and have been writing software for longer than that. These are the programs I wanted and could not buy, opened up to the people doing the same work I do.
Tax practice
Short, practical pages on the tax side of the practice — where the IRS writes down how it works, the rules we practice under, and the things worth knowing before the notice arrives. Free, and no account needed.
What the Internal Revenue Manual is, how to find your way around it and where a practitioner uses it — penalty relief, examinations, collection — with a link to the IRM. Then Circular 230, the regulations governing practice before the IRS: who it covers, its sections from §10.2 to §10.91, the proposed amendments, and the rules that come up most in practice.
The grounds for relief the Internal Revenue Manual gives in IRM 20.1.1: reasonable cause and each situation the manual names — death or illness, disaster, missing records, mistake, erroneous advice, ignorance of the law, forgetfulness — with what to document for each; First Time Abate and the new Automatic Exemption from Penalty; statutory exceptions and IRS error; and how to ask.
Where the client is between assessment and collection: a flowchart from the CP2000, the 30-day letter and the notice of deficiency to the CP14, CP504, final notice of intent to levy and the lien, with the deadline each one starts; the notices by stage; and the IRS numbering system — CP and letter numbers, MFT codes, document locator numbers and the transaction codes on an account transcript.
Government auditing
Audits of governments and of the nonprofits that spend federal money sit under more rules than any other audit — the auditing standards, the Yellow Book and the federal regulations at once. Plain summaries of what they require. Free, and no account needed.
Who needs one — $1,000,000 of federal awards expended — and what counts toward it; how GAAS, the Yellow Book and 2 CFR 200 Subpart F fit together; what the auditee must prepare, the SEFA included; the four steps that pick the major programs, with the Type A table and the low-risk auditee test; the twelve compliance requirements and the Compliance Supplement; what must be reported as a finding; the reporting package and the Federal Audit Clearinghouse deadline; and what is changing now.
Applications
One sign-in will cover all of it. Applications run inside your portal account, so your work stays with you between sessions rather than living in a browser tab. These are what I am building, in roughly this order.
The firm-level quality management system the standards now expect, with the risk assessments, responses and annual evaluation kept as a live document rather than a binder nobody opens.
Load the trial balance (and last year’s, if you have it), map the accounts, and download one Excel workbook: the auditor’s, review or compilation report or the preparation legend, the balance sheet, income statement, changes in equity, cash flows and notes; for a review or an audit an analytics sheet with materiality, expectations and ratios; and for an audit a summary of misstatements. GAAP, tax, cash or modified cash basis; every figure is a formula back to the trial balance. Sign in to use it; the figures still never leave your computer.
Give it the client’s trial balance and it builds the Excel workbook — a workpaper for every account with preparer and reviewer sign-offs, a sheet for proposed adjustments, and a summary of where the work stands. Free, no account needed, and the figures never leave your computer.
Give it a year of bank statements and it builds the Excel workbook — every transaction, each month proved to the bank’s own ending balance, the checks in number order with the gaps, totals by category and a reconciliation. Free, no account needed, and the statements never leave your computer.
The ASC and auditing-standard requirements for cash and receivable confirmations and UCC lien searches, then the documents themselves — a confirmation for every bank, one for each customer in a repeatable sample, and the UCC information request — downloaded as Word, with an Excel log to track each one out and back. Free, and nothing leaves your computer.
Tracks every confirmation out and back so nothing sits unanswered until the week before the deadline.
The risks a jobber actually carries — inventory that evaporates and moves in price, fuel tax exposure, tanks in the ground, credit extended to haulers.
Contract accounting is where contractors go wrong: estimates to complete, over- and under-billings, retention, and the job that was profitable until the last change order.
Who actually reads a jobber’s statements — suppliers, lenders, sureties — and why the footnotes carry the particular schedules they expect to find.
The surety reads a contractor’s statements differently from the bank. What each is looking for, and why the supporting schedules take the shape they do.
Nothing here is finished yet, and each one says so. When one opens I will say what it costs before you are asked for a card.
Footnotes
The notes are where an audit report takes the longest to finish and where the peer reviewer finds the most to say. This is a set of tools for writing them: from the facts of the engagement to a numbered, cross-referenced set of notes, with the disclosures the framework asks for checked off as you go.
Pick the framework and the entity, answer the questions each note turns on, and it drafts the notes in order — numbered, cross-referenced, and with the figures tied to the statements instead of retyped. Change a figure or drop a note and the rest renumber themselves.
It drafts. The judgement about what is material, what applies and how it reads stays with the CPA who signs the report.
The nature of operations and the summary of significant accounting policies that opens every set of GAAP statements, worded for a private-company audit under AICPA standards or an issuer audit under PCAOB standards. Answer the questions, then copy it or download it as a Word document.
Note 1 for a petroleum jobber: cardlock (CFN, Pacific Pride, Voyager, WEX), branded and unbranded dealer supply, agriculture, industry and railroads, lubricants and convenience stores — gallons and revenue by line, the margin each line earns, the supplier concentration, and the jobber policies.
Note 1 for a construction contractor: revenue over time, contract assets and liabilities, retainage, and the major contract information — significant contracts in progress, backlog and major customers — with the percent-complete arithmetic done for you.
The note a surety or a bank reads first: costs and estimated earnings, underbillings and overbillings, retainage, loss provisions, revisions in estimates and the backlog rollforward — with the schedules of contracts in progress and completed contracts in Word and Excel, and the fade, underbilling and backlog ratios the reader will compute.
Walk each contract through the ASC 842 flowchart — is it a lease, and is it a finance, operating, sales-type or direct financing lease — then write the lessee note the way ASC 842-20-50 asks for it, as amended through ASU 2023-01: the nature of the leases, the judgments and elections, lease cost, the cash flow information, weighted averages, and a maturity analysis reconciled to the lease liabilities — with a checklist that ticks itself off as you fill it in.
The income tax note as ASC 740-10-50 requires it since ASU 2023-09: current and deferred expense by jurisdiction, the rate reconciliation (tabular for a public business entity, narrative for others), deferred tax assets and liabilities and the valuation allowance, carryforwards, uncertain tax positions and income taxes paid — or the shorter note for an S corporation, partnership or LLC. Checks the reconciliation and the deferred taxes as you go.
A GAAP disclosure checklist that fits the engagement: an AICPA audit (AU-C) or review (SSARS, AR-C 90), a PCAOB audit, or a PCAOB interim review (AS 4105). It opens with what that standard requires of you, keeps only the disclosures the entity needs — public or private, SEC or not, and the topics it actually has — each with its ASC citation, and downloads as an Excel workpaper with sign-offs.
Every recent and upcoming Accounting Standards Update, SAS, SSARS and PCAOB standard, with the effective date for a public business entity and for everyone else, and the proposals still out for comment. Enter a year end and each one says whether it applies.
Commercial entities under FASB ASC, governments under GASB, and the special-purpose frameworks — cash, modified cash and tax basis — each start from their own set of notes.
The disclosure checklist is filled in from the notes themselves, so what is still missing shows up while you are writing rather than at review.
The finished notes go out as a Word document laid out to sit behind the statements, so the last step is not reformatting.
This category is a plan, not a product yet. More footnote tools will be listed here as they are built.
Downloads
Not everything needs a subscription. Programs that stand on their own get posted here as downloads, free, for anyone with an account.
The firm’s system of quality management under SQMS Nos. 1 and 2 — objectives, risks, responses, monitoring, remediation and the annual evaluation — kept as a working file instead of a binder nobody opens. It also tracks CPE for every member of staff against their own state’s rules and their own licence cycle, and says who may be assigned to which client.
Windows, macOS and Linux. Needs a MariaDB or MySQL server it can reach; it builds its own database on first run and loads a demo firm so you can see it working before you enter anything real.
It records the work and tells you what is missing. It does not reach the conclusion for you — designing a system appropriate to your firm, and concluding on it each year, stays with the person who holds ultimate responsibility for it.
Free utilities, posted as they are finished. Sign in to the portal and they are on the Software page.
Have something you keep rebuilding in Excel every season? Tell me — that is usually what the next one turns out to be.
How it works
Name, email address and a password. That account is also your secure document portal, so it earns its keep from the first day.
Applications are on subscription; downloads are free. You add and drop them yourself, and the card details never touch my server.
There is a person behind this. If an application gets an answer you disagree with, say so — you will be arguing with the man who wrote it.