It's good practice (but not mandatory with Inkle).
In our experience, many founders tend to just "leave it to the deadline" - and then rush or miss the deadline. And they have little visibility into their books at any given time.
If you come to us days before the deadline, it's really tough for us to catch up your books if you have lots of transactions and missing invoices. And almost impossible to use Accrual method. So we'll be forced to used Cash method accounting, which isn't ideal for you.
Many US tax filing services compel you to pay a high monthly bookkeeping charge of more than $500/month and subscribe to Quickbooks, even if you have low activity at the start. We have fair pricing and nudge you for monthly bookkeeping because it's better for you, and it will cost you about half of the total monthly cost over 12 months in terms of annual cleanup anyway. Why not have monthly visibility instead.