📍 Lakeside & Somers, MT · Flathead Lake

Bookkeeping Services in Lakeside & Somers, Montana

Clear, dependable books for the west shore — lake rentals, marinas and boat businesses, contractors, and the shops and restaurants along Highway 93. We're based just up the road in Kalispell, and we keep your numbers straight whether the lake is packed or frozen over.

Bookkeeping for Flathead Lake's west shore

Lakeside and Somers are working lake towns, not just postcard views. Between the rentals, the boats, the building projects, and the summer crowds moving down Highway 93, there's a lot of money in motion here — and most of it moves in a few short months. AJM Consulting keeps the books so you always know where you stand.

Somers (ZIP 59932) sits at the north end of Flathead Lake, about nine miles south of Kalispell on US 93 — a town with real history as an old lumber and steamboat hub that's now home to marinas, small businesses, and a fast-growing residential community. A few minutes further down the highway, Lakeside (ZIP 59922) stretches along the lake's west shore with its marina, restaurants, and shops — and Blacktail Mountain Ski Area in the hills above town, which keeps traffic coming through even in the dead of winter.

That mix creates a specific set of bookkeeping problems. Vacation-rental owners juggle payouts from multiple platforms across multiple properties. Marina and boat-service operators deal with storage contracts, service work, and fuel and parts inventory. Contractors building and remodeling lake homes need to know what each job actually cost — and our founder ran construction and roofing businesses himself, so job-costing here isn't an afterthought. And everyone on this shore shares the same underlying reality: a revenue curve that spikes hard in July and thins out by November.

We handle all of it with one straightforward arrangement — a flat monthly fee, books closed and reconciled every month, and reports you can actually read.

What's included

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Vacation Rental & Lake Home Books

Per-property tracking, platform payout reconciliation, and organized lodging-tax records for your west-shore rentals.

Marina & Boat Businesses

Books for marinas, boat service, and rental operations — storage income, service work, and parts kept straight.

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Contractor Job-Costing

Costs tied to each build or remodel so you know which lake projects made money — from a founder who ran crews himself.

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Seasonal Cash-Flow Reporting

Reporting shaped around the summer spike and the slow months, so the off-season never catches you short.

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QuickBooks Setup & Cleanup

QuickBooks Online configured for how your business really runs — or rescued when the file has gone sideways.

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Monthly Close & Reconciliation

Every bank and card account reconciled, books closed monthly, and results explained in plain English.

If the books slipped while you were busy, that's normal — and fixable.

On this stretch of the lake, summer doesn't leave much room for paperwork. If your file is months behind, your rental payouts are one big uncategorized lump, or you honestly aren't sure whether last season was profitable, we'll start with a cleanup: reconcile the accounts, sort the backlog, and hand you an accurate picture of where the business stands. From there, a monthly routine keeps it from ever piling up again.

Why local matters

Minutes away, not a call center away

From our base in Kalispell, Somers is roughly a 15-minute drive and Lakeside just a few minutes beyond it — close enough that meeting at your shop, your marina, or a job site is genuinely easy. That matters, because a remote bookkeeping app has no idea what the Fourth of July does to a west-shore rental calendar, why a boat-service business invoices the way it does, or how a Blacktail powder weekend shows up in a Lakeside till.

We do. You work with one local consultant who has run real businesses, knows how the lake economy breathes through the year, and answers the phone when something doesn't look right. Handle everything in person, everything through the cloud, or any mix of the two — whatever fits how you work.

Questions

Lakeside & Somers bookkeeping FAQs

Do you do bookkeeping for short-term rentals in Lakeside and Somers?
Yes. Lake rentals are a core part of what we do. We keep a separate set of income and expense records for each property, reconcile the payouts from Airbnb, VRBO, and direct bookings against your bank deposits, break out cleaning, management, and platform fees, and keep your lodging-tax records in order. If you own one cabin or a portfolio of lakefront homes, you'll know exactly what each one earns.
My business earns most of its money between May and September. How do you handle that?
We build your books around that curve instead of pretending it doesn't exist. Monthly reporting shows you how the peak is tracking against prior months, and we help you translate a strong summer into a plan for the slow stretch — how much to hold back, what your true monthly overhead is, and when the account balance will get tight. For Lakeside businesses, Blacktail Mountain's winter season can add a second, smaller bump, and we account for that too.
You're based in Kalispell — do you actually work in Lakeside and Somers?
We do. Somers is about nine miles down Highway 93 from Kalispell and Lakeside is only a few minutes past it — a 15 to 20 minute drive for us. We're happy to meet at your business or somewhere on the west shore for the initial conversation, and after that most clients choose a mix of occasional in-person check-ins and secure cloud tools like QuickBooks Online for the month-to-month work.
What does bookkeeping cost for a Lakeside or Somers business?
We charge a flat monthly fee — never hourly — so the cost is predictable even when your transaction volume isn't. The fee depends on how many accounts we reconcile, how many properties or jobs we track, and how much cleanup is needed to start. We scope it during a free 30-minute consultation, and you'll know the exact number before you commit to anything.
Can you set up QuickBooks for my business, or fix a file that's a mess?
Both. We set up QuickBooks Online from scratch with a chart of accounts that fits your actual business — properties, boats, jobs, or storefront — and we regularly take over files where transactions have piled up uncategorized or the bank balance hasn't matched in months. We'll get the file caught up and reconciled, then keep it that way with a simple monthly routine.
Service area

Bookkeeping across the Flathead Valley

Based in Kalispell, serving Lakeside, Somers, and small businesses around Flathead Lake and throughout the valley — in person locally and remotely statewide.

Ready to get your numbers clarified?

Free 30-minute consultation. No pressure, no commitment — just a straight conversation about your Lakeside or Somers business and what solid books would change for you.