Bookkeeping for Palmdale Mental Health Practices
Bookkeeping for therapists, counselors, and group practices in Palmdale. Work directly with Aretha Dirde, a Lancaster bookkeeper with 15 years in mental health care.
Bookkeeping for Palmdale Practices
Lancaster is home for me, which puts me about fifteen minutes from most of Palmdale. Before I started keeping books, I spent more than fifteen years as a licensed nurse working in mental health, so when a Palmdale therapist or nurse practitioner calls me, I already know the world you work in. You won’t have to explain what an intake is, why a Friday afternoon cancellation stings, or how long it takes for a payer to send money.
Private practice bookkeeping is the only thing I do, and I do it myself. There’s no account manager in between and no rotating team. If you send me a question between sessions, I’m the one who answers it. My clients are spread across the country and we work by video and secure file sharing, so a Palmdale practice gets the same attention whether we ever sit down together or not.
Monthly Bookkeeping
Monthly Bookkeeping
Every month I categorize your transactions, reconcile your bank and credit card accounts, and send reports you can actually read between clients. Full-service bookkeeping starts at $165 a month and keeps you current all year, with clear numbers on what the practice earns and what it costs to run.
Books That Fell Behind
Books That Fell Behind
Some practices have months or years of transactions that were never recorded. Others have books that exist and numbers nobody trusts. I handle both. I record what’s missing, correct what’s wrong, reconcile the accounts, and give you back records you can believe.
Payroll for Practices with Staff
Payroll for Practices with Staff
If your payroll system is already up and running, I take the pay runs off your plate and process them on time every period. I’ll be straight with you about the boundary. I run existing payroll systems and I don’t do payroll system setup.
Tax-Ready Records
Tax-Ready Records
I don’t prepare tax returns. What I do is keep your books in a state where your tax preparer opens them, finds everything reconciled and documented, and gets to work. January stops being a scramble through a shoebox of receipts.
Palmdale Practices I Work With
Palmdale has grown into a city of families, long commutes down the 14, and neighborhoods that keep spreading east and west. The need for mental health care here is real, and the clinicians I talk to rarely have trouble filling a calendar. What suffers is the paperwork. When your day runs from an early intake to an evening session, the bank feed and the receipts wait until the weekend, and then the weekend fills up too.
I work with practices from solo offices near Rancho Vista Boulevard to small groups with a handful of clinicians and an admin, plus telehealth practices run from a home office in a Palmdale neighborhood. Roughly one to ten employees is my sweet spot. If any of this sounds like your practice, book a consultation with me and we’ll talk through where your books stand.
Therapists and Counselors
Therapists and Counselors
LMFTs, LPCCs, and counselors seeing clients in a leased suite or from home. Private pay and insurance deposits arrive on different rhythms, and sliding scale changes what a full week actually brings in. I reconcile all of it so you can see what your clinical hours really earn.
Clinical Social Workers Going Independent
Clinical Social Workers Going Independent
A lot of Antelope Valley LCSWs come out of county, hospital, or school-based work and open a practice for the first time. That means separating business banking from personal, setting up QuickBooks the right way from the start, and learning to read a monthly report without dread.
Group Practices
Group Practices
The practice that added two associates and an admin needs more from its books than a solo office does. I record splits and salaries correctly, keep W-2 staff and 1099 contractors sorted, prepare year-end 1099s, and show you margin by clinician so you know whether the next hire helps.
ABA and Behavioral Health
ABA and Behavioral Health
Families across the valley rely on behavioral health services, and those practices carry the biggest teams and the highest session volume. ABA bookkeeping means dependable payroll, contractor payments tracked, and revenue reconciled from your systems to the bank while billing stays with your biller.
Questions About This Area
You're in Lancaster. Can we meet in person?
Of course. Palmdale is a short drive for me and I'm glad to sit down over coffee if that helps you feel comfortable. Most of the work happens by video and secure file sharing, and plenty of my clients have never met me face to face, so either way works.
What does bookkeeping cost for a Palmdale practice?
Full-service monthly bookkeeping starts at $165 a month. Payroll processing starts at $150 a month for practices that already have a payroll system running. Catch-up and clean-up projects are quoted per engagement once I've looked at what you have.
My books haven't been touched in over a year. Is that a problem?
It's one of the most common reasons people reach out to me. I gather your statements and access, work through the months that were never recorded, reconcile the accounts, and get you current. No lecture about how it got that way. After that we move into monthly service so it doesn't pile up again.
Do you handle insurance billing or claims?
No. Billing, claims, credentialing, and coding stay with your biller or your practice management system. My part is taking the deposits and payments that land in your accounts and recording them accurately so your revenue is right in the books.
Do you file my taxes?
I don't prepare tax returns. I keep your books tax-ready all year and hand your tax preparer clean, reconciled numbers with the documentation behind them. Clients tell me that alone takes most of the stress out of tax season.
Helping the People Who Help Others
Let's Start With
a Short Conversation
Tell me where your books stand right now, even if the honest answer is that nobody has looked at them in a year. I'll ask a few questions and give you a clear idea of how I can help.
