A Boutique Bookkeeping Practice for Insurance Agencies

Books that reconcile back to the carriers.

Branch and Ledger works with P&C agencies and brokerages where commission reconciliation, trust and premium fund segregation, and AMS-to-QuickBooks alignment are the difference between books that hold up and books that do not. Deep bench in AMS360, with reconciliation-first experience across the other major platforms.

Focus
P&C agencies and brokers
Platforms
QuickBooks Online + AMS360
Response
Within one business day
No. 01 Fit Who calls us

The file is not really an accounting file. It is a commission file.

Insurance agencies do not have generic bookkeeping problems. They have insurance bookkeeping problems. Commission statements from the carriers do not tie to deposits. Trust and premium funds are commingled with operating cash. Producers cannot get a straight P&L on their own book. The AMS says one thing, QuickBooks says another, and the monthly reconciliation between them is a negotiation that never quite finishes.

Symptom 01

Commission reconciliation is a monthly puzzle

Carrier statements arrive on different schedules and in different formats — PDFs, spreadsheets, portal downloads. Matching them to deposits is forensic work no one has time for, so it stops happening. Variances stack up, and no one can tell whether the carriers are underpaying.

Symptom 02

Trust and premium funds run through the operating account

Premium collections and agency operating cash sit in the same account. Segregation is a spreadsheet, if it exists at all. Compliance risk grows every month, and refunds and NSFs get untangled from operating spend after the fact.

Symptom 03

The AMS and QuickBooks do not agree

Policies and endorsements move through the AMS. Money moves through QuickBooks. The two systems have never been formally reconciled, and the gap has been growing quietly for a year or more. Anyone trying to close the month has to pick which system to believe.

Symptom 04

Contingent commissions land as a surprise

Contingent and profit-sharing commissions arrive quarterly or annually with no accrual in the interim. The books swing on a receipt basis, and the P&L overstates or understates margin for months at a time.

Symptom 05

Producer P&L and 1099s are a January scramble

Producer splits are calculated in the AMS, tracked in a shared spreadsheet, and manually reconciled at year-end. 1099s take a week that should have taken an afternoon. Half of it is chasing missing W-9s. The other half is reconciling split calculations back to what actually paid out.

Symptom 06

Multi-state payroll adds another layer

Producers work across states. Payroll taxes, workers comp, and licensing fees vary by jurisdiction. The books need to reflect state-level allocation, and most generalist bookkeepers do not set up the file to do it.

No. 02 Focus What we bring to the vertical

We speak AMS.

Insurance work is not tool mastery — it is outcome mastery. The reconciliation matters more than the software. That said, we have hands-on experience with AMS360 as our primary AMS platform, and we work with the mechanics of the other major platforms enough to reconcile against them without a learning curve on your dime.

No. Area What we do
01
Commission reconciliation
Carrier statements matched to deposits, variances flagged and researched, month-over-month roll-forwards that actually reconcile. Not a spreadsheet. A closed, reconciled process.
02
Trust and premium fund segregation
Premium trust properly separated from operating cash. Reconciled monthly. Compliance-ready in states with premium trust requirements.
03
Contingent commission accruals
Estimated accruals monthly so the P&L reflects earned commission, not just received commission. True-up at settlement. No swings, no surprises.
04
Producer P&L and 1099s
Producer books maintained in QuickBooks with clear splits. 1099s prepped through the year, not at year-end. Coordination with the AMS on final split calculations.
05
AMS-to-QuickBooks alignment
The two systems reconciled. Policies and endorsements in the AMS tied to money in QuickBooks. The monthly close ties out.
06
Multi-state payroll considerations
Payroll set up to reflect where producers are working, with tax and workers comp allocation that survives an audit.
No. 03 Path How it works

Cleanup first. Then discipline.

A cleanup is a full restoration of the reconciliation structure. Ongoing bookkeeping is the discipline that keeps it that way. Same four steps as any engagement, tuned to how insurance actually operates.

Step 01

You arrive with a reconciliation problem

Carrier statements not tying to deposits. AMS and QuickBooks disagreeing. Trust and operating funds commingled. A CPA asking for numbers no one can produce cleanly.

Step 02

We rebuild the reconciliation structure

Scoped, fixed-fee cleanup. Commission history reconstructed, trust funds segregated, AMS-to-QuickBooks alignment done properly, contingent accruals set up, producer P&L stood up. Written summary of every material change.

Step 03

The books tell the truth about the agency

Commission variances are visible, not hidden. Trust compliance is clean. Producer P&L is available on demand. Year-end 1099s and CPA packets are routine, not a scramble.

Step 04

We maintain the reconciliation

Monthly bookkeeping takes over. Carrier statements reconciled every month. Contingent accruals adjusted. Producer books current. AMS and QuickBooks stay in sync.

No. 04 Adjacent What insurance principals also ask about

Two things come up on almost every call.

The bookkeeping work has a specific shape in insurance, but two adjacent conversations happen so often on discovery calls that they belong on this page.

  • A.
    Tax planning coordination We are not tax preparers or planners. But agencies with clean books and disciplined monthly closes give their CPAs something to actually plan around — estimated payments, distribution timing, entity structure conversations. Clean books do not do tax planning. They make it possible.
  • B.
    Multi-state payroll complexity Multi-state operations are common in insurance, and payroll setup is often where the compliance risk actually lives. We coordinate with your payroll provider so the general ledger reflects reality across jurisdictions.

Every engagement starts with a paid diagnostic.

Cleanup pricing depends on how deep the reconciliation gap actually goes. Before we quote a cleanup, we run a paid diagnostic — a scoped, fixed-fee review of the current state of the books, the AMS, and the reconciliation gap between them. The diagnostic produces a written finding: what is broken, what a rebuild would cost, and whether we are the right shop for the work.

See our cleanup approach
Ready when you are

Thirty minutes. Free. No pitch.

Bring your questions. We will tell you honestly what your books look like, what a diagnostic would take, and whether we are the right fit. If we are not, we will point you toward someone who is.

Book a discovery call