219: Avoid Year-End Surprises: Weekly Accounting for Financial Clarity
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Are year-end tax bills catching you off guard? In this episode of The Richer Geek Podcast, Anne Gannon, founder of The Largo Group, shares how a weekly accounting system can help you ditch tax season stress and make smarter financial decisions year-round.
Anne reveals why traditional accounting often fails small businesses, and how shifting to real-time insights empowers you to take control of your cash flow, break-even points, and tax strategy. You’ll also discover how real estate fits into long-term wealth planning and why proactive communication with your CPA is key.
Whether you're a real estate investor, entrepreneur, or small business owner, this episode offers actionable advice to help you plan ahead, reduce surprises, and build financial clarity.
In this episode, we’re discussing…
Traditional accounting is backward-looking and reactive, leaving business owners blindsided.
Weekly accounting offers real-time visibility into financial metrics for better, faster decisions.
Don’t rely solely on your accountant: know your numbers and ask the right questions.
A quarterly tax strategy helps you make timely adjustments and avoid last-minute panic.
Real estate can be a powerful tool for building long-term wealth, equity, and passive income.
Resources from Anne
LinkedIn |The Largo Group | Real Estate Accelerator
Resources from Mike and Nichole
Gateway Private Equity Group | Nic's guide | Franchise With Bob
+ Read the transcript
Mike Stohler: Hey everybody. Welcome back to another episode of The Richer Geek Podcast. Today we have Anne Gannon. She's an entrepreneur at heart. She founded Largo Group in 2016 because of her belief that the accounting needs to be done differently rather than an accounting firm with hands-off approach.
She structured The Largo Group to take an active role with businesses. Man, do we need that right? For all of you entrepreneurs out there, over the past 10 years, she's worked with over 500 companies over the United States, ranging revenues from $5 to $50 million. How are you doing, Anne?
Anne Gannon: Great, so happy to be here. Thank you so much for having me.
Mike Stohler: Absolutely. I like to start out, give us who is Anne, a little bit about your background.
Why in the world, did you get involved in accounting and how did you make the leap from maybe regular CPA to concentrating on businesses? That's a lot in there, but.
Anne Gannon: A lot, yes. I am an entrepreneur at heart. I grew up playing competitive golf.
That was my first dream. I played all through college. I played a year professionally. But I quickly realized I'm more risk averse and playing for money was not something that I enjoyed doing. I kinda knew right away that I'm like, " This
isn't my passion."
So, I went back for accounting. My undergrad had been in economics and one of my professors was just like, accounting really is all about the story the numbers are telling you. So if you get past how dry it is and how boring it is, if you really can find it to be very interesting if you are curious.
And that was probably some of the best advice that I was ever given. And finished, my master's went into public accounting and then realized that my background was really different from most CPAs. Most CPAs had internships and been around a bunch of accountants, and I'd always been around a lot of entrepreneurs because of golf. There's a lot of entrepreneurs that play golf and business owners. So, when I was in my first job in a big firm I understood the people behind the return more than my peers, and I think it bothered me that you had the stack of returns, get them done as quickly as possible. Doesn't matter if they owe or not, that's their problem. Just this mentality of " Oh, we're not here to help them, we're just here to do the return." This is horrible. This is not what I wanna do.
I came from a different background and these people were real to me.
I know they don't know a lot about accounting, but they know what they wanna do. They have dreams and we could actually help them. When I started, it was also 2007, and so all of a sudden people were facing these horrible situations. Nobody cared. I probably lasted a couple years and then quickly realized that, I just wanted to go out on my own.
And my husband was like, "What are you doing? Why are you gonna start your own business now?" I just know it can be done differently. I know that there's a better way that could actually be a win for both sides, that it's more enjoyable for the people doing the work on the accounting side, and it's much more enjoyable for the business owner. It took me a few years to get The Largo Group going and always this idea that we were serving the entrepreneur . Then Covid happened, and we stayed overnight, because we had by that point really found a niche in restaurants. My background in golf was also hospitality, so I understood restaurants and hospitality and so all of a sudden, probably 85% of our client base had
a failed business in March 2020. They were closed. There was no hope. Nobody knew it was gonna happen. I remember sitting there and I escaped to Florida to visit my mom because I live in Philadelphia. I can't just sit back and watch. My dad had a failed business.
It had changed the trajectory of our family; it was not a great financial picture for a long time. Because of that, I can't just sit on the sidelines. Right away I changed our entire model to weekly accounting because I can't wait a month to give these business owners how they're doing.
They need to know every week, what's their break-even point, what's their labor like? What do they need to do to stay cash flow neutral and not bleed, stop the bleeding. And changed the trajectory of our business because we still do free online courses, educating people on accounting fundamentals.
I think the biggest lesson of covid for every business owner was you can't rely on your accountant, right? And I'm saying that as an accountant, you can't be sitting there waiting for your accountant to give you your financials. You have to know your cash flow. You have to know enough to be able to make the realtime decision. Your accountant has a role and we can guide you, but you fundamentally have to know your cash flow. You have to know your cash flow next week, and you have to know where you are every day so you can make those real-time decisions that everybody had to start making during Covid.
As a result, we've really gotten involved in real estate because the other biggest lesson of Covid was the people that owned the building, the people that owned real estate, they were naturally diversified, where the people that were just renting the space, even if they had a great concept or great business, you're beholden to the landlord.
If you own that building, you just could call your own shots in a way that the other people just couldn't. And we've really gotten behind, educating owners on being diversified and making sure that you have equity and these assets that really can get you through those really tough times. That's us.
Mike Stohler: You're the first firm so far that I've heard of , with weekly. Most are quarterly, maybe monthly, they sit down and most of the CPAs don't even have that.
Anne Gannon: No.
Mike Stohler: Give me your box of stuff in December.
Anne Gannon: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: Maybe I'll get it done. If not, there's an extension. Then you find out whether you owe or you get a refund and there's no warning. That's when I decided to make,
" Man, I thought I had a great CPA firm." And then, all of a sudden they say, "Hey, Mike. You owe $45,000." Where was that? And at what point did you know that in the year.
Anne Gannon: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: And what could we have done? Your depreciations blah, blah, blah, went away. Yeah. You accelerated, depreciations went away.
Anne Gannon: Right.
Mike Stohler: Thanks for letting me know, you know, I could have spent some more money somewhere.
Anne Gannon: Right.
Mike Stohler: That I wanted, in order to not have the loss. That's my little rant. So ladies and gentlemen, a great CPA or a firm. What would you actually call yourself? It's The Largo Group. So, what do you do? Are you a CPA plus advisory firm, what are the different niches or segments that you do within the ac counting?
Anne Gannon: Sometimes it's just an expectation gap. If you're waiting until March to go sit down with your accountant, they don't have time to really give you advice, you're looking backwards.
Even if they took the time to give you the advice, they're still looking at last year instead of this year. What we try to do is offer different relationships to different people, but one of them is a quarterly tax strategy to see where we're really looking at the current year.
And so that way, by November, December, we're able to just confirm all right, there's something else that needs to be done. We've done everything we can before we get to March, where we're just going through last year's information to get the return done. A quarterly strategy is really beneficial.
But in that strategy, we're also always looking beyond this year to if you own real estate, what do we expect the appreciation to be on the property? What's your equity percentage? Are you looking to leverage that to buy another property next year? So, really looking at a three-to-five-year plan by property.
And so that way, really focusing on your overall net worth can be really beneficial because so many times, I think even in the real estate space, people forget about the appreciation and they get so focused on the cash flow, which is important, and obviously we want it to be break even, but if it's not break even, because you're paying down the principle that still has a value depending on how much equity you have in that property.
Really looking at a longer term, you could say, maybe, being a little below break even right now is okay because I'm growing this larger equity piece in five years. I think that education piece is so important that the owner has all of the information before you just look at a tax return.
Mike Stohler: Yeah. It's amazing to me, as I've gone on and talked to seminars and done things in the real estate space, how many business owners, people that own assets had never heard of cost segregations. They've never, and I'm like going, "Oh. Okay, who's your CPA or who's your advisor? " Talk about some of the different things. Okay, I am the landlord. I'm in the hotel business, so I own hotels. I buy a hotel and or another asset, what are some of the things that immediately when you sit down and say, "Okay, these are the things that we need to do to set." You properly before you actually maybe close on the loan or take over the asset? What are some of the things you can tell us about?
Anne Gannon: I think it is on the depreciation that a lot of the accounting side, my peers at CPA world, they're always hesitant to take a bonus depreciation because it lowers your cost basis, right? So ultimately, if you were to sell that property a year from now, you could pay more in tax because of recapture all those things.
You don't turn around and say, " Why do I owe $100,000 because I sold this property in 18 months?" So I think it's really important for real estate to say, "Okay, you're buying this property today, but what's your goal?" Is the goal that you're gonna flip it 12 months from now, or the goal that you're gonna hold it for 10 years? Because that starts you down such a different path from the tax perspective.
If you say "No, like I really don't see that I'm gonna sell this before 5 or 10 years." Then let's depreciate it, right? Because then the second big question is, are you gonna buy another one next year? Is this one I'm going to five or is this one and then I'm stopping?
Because that also could make a difference. The thing to understand about depreciation. This is where I get annoyed by the Instagram versions or like the one-size-fits-all is, in the IRS world, it's a pie, right? You're gonna either take it all now, as much as you can now, or you're gonna spread it out over the life of the asset.
It's not that you're losing anything if you took less depreciation, because you'll have more to take in future years. And it's not hurting you if you take more today, as long as you're aware that you have less to take in future years. So I've done this exercise with every one of our customers just to make sure that they understand. If we take bonus now, that's what next year looks like
the year after looks like where versus. I think it's good just to really be honest with your CPA to make sure they understand this is what I'm trying to do, ask questions on those depreciation because too many times, people, again, when you're rushing and you give them the stuff on March 10th and it's due March 15th.
They could just plug that number in the software and not ask you, right? They could straight line and go from there, and just not have time for that conversation. You as the owner, being aware of if you bought an asset this year, you wanna make sure we've had that conversation with the preparer and we just are all on the same page with what depreciation we take.
But I think, going back to your question of when you first buy the asset, that's the big one. The other one is, the cash out, like how much cash are you gonna be required to put in now? How are you financing that? What's your goal in that financing?
Are you trying to pay it down? And then REFI? Some of those are just good discussions to have at the beginning so everyone's aware of the cash flow and all of that. Because, you said if you go into that, it very quickly could start to generate money, so we wanna make sure that we know I expect it to make $20,000, or I expect it to make $200,000.
That's a big difference. So we wanna also make sure that we have some sort of projection for the operating income sooner rather than later.
Mike Stohler: You know, a lot of the entrepreneurs, they go in and they have this idea, buy in, and they don't realize, and it takes maybe a lot of their money for contracts and down payments, and they don't realize that they
didn't offset that because it's capital contributions. And all of a sudden, I've talked to people, " Yeah, I'm taking the salary." And I said, "How much money did you put into it?"
Anne Gannon: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: Do you not know that you can get that back? And they're like, "No, I had no idea." And I was like, "Why not pay yourself back?"
Anne Gannon: That's such a good point because that's such a misnomer in the business world that people don't realize that distributions are not taxed. Again, as business owners they think, "Oh, if I took $5,000 out, I'm gonna pay an additional tax on that $5,000."
Not to go back to Covid, this is also the biggest lesson of Covid for business owners, is if you show $70,000, $80,000, $90,000 on the bottom line at the end of the year, the IRS assumes that you've taken that money. And I think that's where the nuances of tax planning for you, the owner, are so important that it just doesn't stop with that business, because I had so many clients that during Covid were making $100,000 for 10+ years and they never took any money out . They left it in the business, and then all of a sudden the business doesn't have a million dollars. Right? It got spent, just got lost and, you're like, " You've paid taxes on that money."
The IRS assumes you've taken it. It's a really good exercise for the health of the business to say, if I show a $100,000 on the bottom line. Why am I not taking $100,000 out, right? Like for me to go invest or go put other places. If I'm not doing that, then I need to at least be aware that like in the future I could take that $100,000 out and not pay additional tax.
And like you said, one of the biggest things I see in returns, just from the tax side, is that the balance sheet just becomes a plug, right? People are just like trying to get something in there, and so you really wanna make sure whoever's preparing your return, that you look at what is my equity balance?
My retained earnings in this business. And does it make sense? Is it what it should be? And if it's not, we can always correct it. But I've seen so many errors on that side from just people not talking about it and just assuming it's right, or how did they not know? Let's just have that conversation. It's so important, before you sign off on that.
Mike Stohler: It is. So let's talk about your new book, the Real Estate Accelerator. What's it about? What's in it?
Anne Gannon: It's about educating people on the many benefits of real estate. As a CPA, I'm very lucky in that I get to see so many different people's lives because I'm doing their tax return, right?
I see the financial picture of people all over the map, right? Just starting out, retiring. And what I've seen from doing this almost 20 years, is that my happiest retired people have real estate that the market's great. And it's not to say that you shouldn't invest in the market, but the people who only have the market when they retire are very stressed. Right?
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Anne Gannon: Because they can't control that. And downturn 2007, COVID, whatever, like all of a sudden they're watching their nest egg go away, and there's nothing they can really do about that if it's in the wrong company. Whereas the real estate people, up and down, that rent always appreciates.
Like you all, you're gonna get more tomorrow than you get today in rent. Once that property is paid off, you've created your own pension fund, basically right? That's really what the goal of writing the book was, so many people, especially people who are W-2 earners or working for a bigger company.
They don't really see the benefits of real estate 'cause they just hear about markets and 401(k)s and all that. I really think that it's so important for people well before retirement to just see the benefits because it's life changing for the people who are retired.
Mike Stohler: Well, because we really actually don't have to retire.
Anne Gannon: Right.
Mike Stohler: I own the hotels. I own single family homes, and why do I have people running it? I'm not working, I'm not doing the 9-5. So another benefit, ladies and gentlemen, is the real estate people that are in this, that you're talking about in the book, they've built a life they don't need a vacation from.
Anne Gannon: Right.
Mike Stohler: They don't have the grind at the beginning, everyone does.
Anne Gannon: Yeah.
Mike Stohler: But it's nice having mailbox money.
Anne Gannon: It is, and they know that if something happened, if you know a life event that again goes back to that equity piece, you have this equity that it's just sitting there, and obviously you don't wanna touch it, but if you had to touch it, you know you could.
It also is so much easier than even the people who have stuff in the market it's now you're gonna create a tax event. Now I'm gonna have penalties, take it out and it loses its value and all of that.
Not that the market isn't great, but I think that the biggest thing is that real estate allows you to be in control of your own destiny.
Mike Stohler: That's right. At least diversify ladies and gentlemen.
Anne Gannon: Yes.
Mike Stohler: When we've talked about saving money in taxes and how good the real estate is, in your book it says the Real Estate Accelerator, is that where you're talking about just developing it, getting the money or getting the terms and then paying them off and holding them?
Anne Gannon: The difference between just being an investor and an accelerator is looking at that future year, that 3-5 years out that a lot of real estate investors get excited about the investment, they get excited about the daily cash flow.
I think it's really important to build that sort of 5-year portfolio view to say what will my net worth be in 5 years? What do I want it to be in 5 years? And even beyond that, what does it look like as I pay these down? Does it make sense to accelerate paying them down really focused on that equity.
And that, I think, is the biggest difference between just being an investor. What I call an accelerator is just someone who's really in the driver's seat and you're creating a net worth that's exponentially larger than what you start with in 5-10 years just by understanding the game of real estate.
Mike Stohler: Let's talk about your company, and ladies and gentleman, The Largo Group. People go to The Largo Group, they go to the website what happens? Are there questionnaires? Is there education? What goes on?
Anne Gannon: We offer a lot of different things for different people. We do bookkeeping, tax for businesses, hospitality and lots of other small businesses. On the tax side, we're really focused on strategy. Our biggest thing is that we are a value add in everything that we do. It's not just you're getting a return, but we give you a projection for 25.
We get you started. We offer the use of our tools, whether you work with us to do them or not, our rent roll, our five-year plan, we'll give you access to all of that to do yourself, because our ultimate goal is that we're with you for the long term and really providing that forward guidance.
You said you're never surprised. It's something that we get to collaboratively every year. That's really our driving goal is just educating our clients so that we can grow with them.
Mike Stohler: Is there a minimum revenue that you'd like to see for someone to be a client of yours? Is it a 5 to 50? Is it, or anyone just starting out?
Anne Gannon: No, what I've found is that even our startups, I think the goal is that education. We've had people who start with us when they're just getting started so they can learn and see the value of let me figure this out now so I don't make those mistakes.
Mike Stohler: Yeah.
Anne Gannon: I think as they get bigger, then we're also a researcher to just take some things off your plate. Take the bookkeeping off your plate. Some of the CFO works off your plate but from the very beginning, our goal is that education piece. A lot of people see the value, regardless of size, of just learning about your tax picture.
Educating yourself on taxes so that you can make better decisions.
Mike Stohler: Before we let you go, is there anything that you'd like to tell our audience that maybe I didn't hit upon? What did I miss? Anything?
Anne Gannon: No, I think the biggest thing is changing that mindset, obviously I would love you to come to our website, but whoever you use is changing the mindset of waiting for your accountant to tell you.
I think that you're in the driver's seat, you're paying them for that service. If you have questions, don't be afraid to ask, right? Really before you sign off on that return, if you don't understand the asset section or you wanna see how it's depreciated, don't be afraid to ask because you are paying for that service, and you want to make sure that you're comfortable, because I can't tell you how many people I've had where they're like, "I didn't even know that's what they put on the return."
It's okay to just have that 20-minute call to say, "Can you walk me through this return?" And then just by doing that, I think it helps you to understand your tax picture and not avoid.
Mike Stohler: Yeah, I see those 40 some pages times. I know 8 or 10, might as well be Chinese.
Anne Gannon: I know.
Mike Stohler: And hopefully Anne's a good CPA because I have no idea what I'm looking at. Besides your website, how can people get ahold of you?
Anne Gannon: Feel free to send me an email annegannon@thelargogroup.com.
You can also find us on social media, Instagram, Facebook. If you subscribe to our website, we do offer monthly webinars on different topics, and those are free to everybody.
Mike Stohler: Oh, perfect. Everybody, it's Anne Gannon at The Largo Group. Thank you so much for coming on The Richer Geek. Thanks.
Anne Gannon: Thank you, sir. Thank you so much.
Mike Stohler: Take care.
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ABOUT ANNE GANNON
ANNE GANNON is an entrepreneur at heart. She founded The Largo Group in 2016 based on her belief that accounting should be done differently. Rather than taking a hands-off approach, she structured the firm to work closely with businesses through a monthly accounting system.
The Largo Group first made its mark in the restaurant industry, one of the most complex and variable sectors when it comes to accounting.
Over the past ten years, Anne has worked with more than 500 companies across the United States, ranging in revenue from $5 million to $50 million. Few people understand small businesses better than Anne. With years of weekly calls with business owners, she has a deep understanding of their frustrations and pain points, and helps them navigate challenges while planning for growth and expansion.