Bookkeeping for insurance agencies.

We care deeply about getting this right, and in an agency that means one thing above all others: knowing where the money actually came from.

An agency does not earn revenue the way most small businesses do. You do not send an invoice and get paid for it. Carriers pay you, on their schedule, and your bank shows a number that may or may not match anything in your records.

Two very different agencies, two very different jobs

Worth saying up front, because a lot of agency owners assume this is expensive and never call.

If you are a captive or single carrier agent, your books are genuinely simple. One commission deposit a month, one bank account, maybe a card. That is our entry tier, and it should not cost you much. Please still call.

If you run an independent agency with a dozen carriers, producers taking splits, and a loan you took to buy a book, that is a real monthly close and it is priced accordingly. Everything below is about that end of it.

Same as every business we work with: the price follows how many things have to be reconciled, not what industry you are in.

Why multi-carrier income is hard to reconcile

A single carrier deposit can contain new business, renewal commissions, a chargeback on a policy that cancelled, and an adjustment from two months ago, all netted into one figure. Another carrier pays on a different schedule with a different statement format. Producer splits come out of some of it.

When nobody reconciles the carrier statement back to the deposit, three things happen quietly. Revenue becomes an estimate. Chargebacks become invisible, so a cancelled policy never shows up as lost income. And you lose the ability to answer the question that actually runs an agency, which is where the money is really coming from.

We reconcile the statement to the deposit. Every carrier gets its own home in the books, chargebacks are recorded as chargebacks, and your Profit & Loss shows what you earned rather than what happened to hit the bank that week.

The loan almost nobody has recorded correctly

If you bought a book of business, or borrowed to acquire an agency or fund a producer, that loan is very often booked as one flat monthly payment.

It should be split. Part of every payment is principal, which reduces what you owe, and part is interest, which is an expense. Recorded as one lump, your balance sheet shows a loan balance that does not match the lender's statement and your P&L overstates your expenses.

This is one of the first things we check in an agency, and it is one of the more common places we find real money hiding. Fixing it usually changes what the owner thought the agency was earning.

What we handle for agencies

• Carrier commission statements reconciled to actual deposits, per carrier, with chargebacks visible.
• New business and renewals separated, so you can see the difference between growth and retention.
• Producer commissions recorded against the income that earned them, not as one blended payroll number.
• Producer and contractor 1099s. W-9s collected as you hire, payments tracked all year, 1099s filed before January 31.
• Book-of-business and acquisition loans recorded correctly, split between principal and interest, with balances that tie to the lender.
• Payroll bookkeeping, including Minnesota specific setup, so your books agree with your quarterly filings.
• Contingency and bonus income handled for what it is: lumpy, annual, and easy to misread as a great month.
• Owner pay recorded correctly, draws or S-Corp salary. Our free guide covers the difference.
• Year-end coordination with your CPA, included rather than billed separately.

Your agency system and your books are two different things

AMS360, Applied Epic, EZLynx, HawkSoft. Your management system knows your policies, your clients and what you are owed. QuickBooks knows what actually moved through the bank. Both are right about different things, and they need to agree.

We work from your carrier statements and your bank, and tie them together. You should not have to hold two sets of numbers in your head and hope they are close.

If it has gotten away from you

Agencies get behind for a specific reason. The commission reconciliation is the hardest recurring task in the business, so it is the first thing to slip, and once a few months are unreconciled it is genuinely hard to know where to restart.

That is a cleanup, and it is our favorite kind of project. No judgment, no lectures. Most finish in 4 to 8 weeks once we have your statements. Here is exactly how a cleanup works, and real numbers are on our pricing page.

True North Co. is in Hugo, Minnesota. We work with agencies across the Twin Cities and the whole state, almost always remotely.

Why is agency income so hard to reconcile?

Because a carrier statement and a bank deposit are two different documents that rarely agree line for line. One deposit can cover new business, renewals, chargebacks on cancelled policies and an adjustment from two months ago, all netted together. If nobody reconciles the statement to the deposit, your revenue is a guess and chargebacks are invisible.

Do you work with AMS360, Applied Epic, EZLynx or HawkSoft?

Your agency management system is where policies, clients and commissions live. QuickBooks is where the money lives. They are separate systems and they need to reconcile to each other rather than being treated as one. We work from your carrier statements and your bank, and we tie the two together so the numbers in your accounting agree with the numbers in your agency system.

We took a loan to buy a book of business. Is that recorded correctly?

Often it is not, and it is one of the first things we check. Acquisition and book-of-business loans get booked as a single monthly payment instead of split between principal and interest, which means the balance on your books does not match what you actually owe the lender and your expenses are overstated. It is very fixable, and finding it usually changes what your Profit and Loss has been telling you.

How do you handle producer commissions and 1099s?

Producer payouts get recorded against the commission income that earned them, so you can see what each book actually contributes rather than one blended number. For producers paid as contractors we collect W-9s as you go, track payments all year, and prepare and file the 1099s before the January 31 deadline.

How much does bookkeeping for an insurance agency cost?

It depends entirely on which kind of agency you are. A captive or single carrier agent with one commission deposit a month, one bank account and no payroll fits our entry tier at $350 a month. An independent agency with multiple carriers, producers to pay, payroll and an acquisition loan generally lands between $500 and $800. Price is driven by how many accounts and statements have to be reconciled each month, not by your commission volume.

Do you do agency taxes or E&O compliance?

No. Taxes are not our lane and compliance is not either. We keep the books clean and current so your CPA has exactly what they need, and so that when a carrier, a lender or an auditor asks a question, the answer is already in your reports.