Year-End Accounting and Bookkeeping Checklist

You may professional bookkeeping service your employees at the end of the month or twice a month. Make sure to include a due date, which is beneficial when forecasting revenue. Learn the eight steps in the accounting cycle process to complete…

If you get behind, it derails your whole financial system, not to mention your business. Your vendors only trust you as much as you are forthcoming with your payments. Hence, check all your vendor invoices and check if you’ve missed any payments. If you’re past the deadline on any invoices, make it a priority to settle it before the new month kicks off. Without a well-documented bookkeeping process, your firm may not be meeting its full potential in terms of profitability and growth.

Customer Invoices

Even if you don’t make quarterly tax payments, you’ll still need to know your estimated tax returns for tax withheld. At the end of each month, it’s useful to review your accounts receivable and track how much your customers owe you. Keeping on top of payroll helps ensure all your staff are paid on time. The frequency of this task depends on how often you pay your employees.

The good thing about an onboarding process is that it can change and grow over time, especially if you notice recurring questions or concerns that new clients should already be aware of. This new bookkeeping client checklist has been designed so that you can edit it to make it your own, keeping as much or as little as you need for your practice. During this stage, it’s a great idea to go over thedos and don’ts of bookkeeping with your client if they need to become more familiar with the process or could use a refresher.

Why an onboarding process helps both you and your clients

This should take place before completing bank reconciliations and reviewing bank credit card accounts. Doing so prevents you from mistakenly contacting the client for a presumable past due or losing track of your recorded payments received. To sum up, a bookkeeping cleanup checklist is vital for ensuring that your financial records are correct and current. You can evaluate your accounts receivable and payable, payroll, inventory, and tax filings, clean up your chart of accounts, and back up your data by following these procedures.

See why over 7,000 accountants and bookkeepers use Jetpack Workflow. This is also a good time to inspect your upcoming invoices to confirm that you’ve received the value you’re paying for before making payment. Don’t forget to file the payments once you make them. Doing some accounting tasks daily will make your recordkeeping easier, make inventory management more efficient and expose costly mistakes sooner. Entering inventory into your system the same day you receive it keeps your system current, giving you a more accurate look at your stock. If you don’t do this, your staff may lose sales by telling customers you’re out of stock when an item just hasn’t been entered into the system.

The Definitive End-of-Year Checklist for Accounting Professionals

Reconciling accounts is critical to ensure that no transactions are missed, and everything is recorded correctly. Particularly bank account reconciliation, such as for chequing and savings accounts to ensure all transactions are recorded. Staying up to date with sending invoices helps both your business and your customers. While sending invoices in a quick fashion reminds clients of your services, this also promotes quicker payment. While maintaining a scheduled flow of preparing and sending them, keep the status of any outstanding invoices.

However, these techniques can turn a write-off into substantial revenue. Naturally, the end of the year is an excellent time to begin creating goals for the new year. Aside from carrying over any plans that have already been put in place, try making a list of goals the entire company can work towards. We recommend following the S.M.A.R.T. system (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Sensitive). Ideally, all of these items would already be in a digital format.

Prepare/Review Revised Annual P&L Estimate

Creating a routine for your accounting will improve accuracy and effectiveness in your bookkeeping. What an absolute pleasure to work with this CPA firm. My business is already seeing such a positive impact and growth. Saim has been easily available for my all my questions and concerns. Every single transaction your business makes must be classified and documented. Make sure you add all transactions to the appropriate category.

• Review your income statement for the current month and year to date and compare it to your monthly budget to see how the numbers compare.
• Quarterly estimated tax payments, your bookkeeper must keep on top of this.
• Ensure that everything that needs to be recorded, uploaded, and categorized is properly squared away, and you haven’t missed anything over the past month.
• Review credit card receipts and pay them on time to avoid processing or late payment fees.
• As soon as you receive payments from customers, record them immediately in your bookkeeping software.

We at FinAccountants help businesses to grow with our accounting services provided by a team of professionals. With decades of experience, we can support your business’s needs in the best possible and economical manner. Finally, after the end of the financial or accounting year, prepare your accounting books for the year-end close. Close your temporary accounts by entering the closing entries and carrying the balances to the following year. Review credit card receipts and pay them on time to avoid processing or late payment fees.

The IRS and some states require quarterly payments and payroll reports. Record and categorize all incoming and outgoing payments. These transactions include all money received for services and all money paid out for the day. Solid bookkeeping practice is fundamental, but can also be overwhelming, even for those who specialize in it. Keeping financial records accurate and up-to-date involves a multitude of tasks.

If you use a messaging tool such as Slack or Teams and your client has yet to join, it is a good time to set them up and show them the basics. Set up any necessary software as much as possible ahead of the meeting. This will help you see what you still need access to and reduce work for the client later. ➡️ See the bonus section ofour onboarding guide for a comprehensive look at what a welcome email sequence should entail.

Deposit all cash at the end of the day and record the deposit. You may find that you’ve received retainer deposits that you’ve not applied to a client invoice, or you may only have used a part of the deposit. An open client deposit report will point this out so you can calculate your revenue with more accuracy and better manage the client’s funds. Suppose your small business is located in any of the 45 states that collect statewide sales tax or in the District of Columbia.

• This allows you to compare the budget or prior period financial statements to watch for any errors or unusual balances.
• Before the client meeting, meet with the internal team to discuss expectations, timelines, and the split of duties.
• Keep all receipts and other relevant documents for tax purposes and for reference in case there are errors when balancing the books.
• Analyzing inventory data also helps you identify excess stock, determine products to promote or reduce in price and those that need to be written off.

Obviously, this is challenging, as you won’t always have control over whether your clients pay your bills on time . If you have invoices yet to be paid, your best bet will be to categorize them based on how likely you think a payment will be before the end of the fiscal year. Generally speaking, the younger the unpaid invoice is, the more likely you’ll be able to coerce a payment out of the client in question.

During this time of review, remove and replace any incorrect transactions or additional figures to accurately reflect your company’s net income and current liabilities. Calculating and filing sales tax in a timely manner is of utmost importance. Your business is responsible for the calculation, collection, and payment of sales tax if you reside in one of the 45 participating states. Though you need to make quarterly sales tax payments, calculating and filing the sales tax on a monthly basis helps make the quarterly payment process less inundating. Keep in mind that in addition to state sales tax, your county, city, or even district may hold its own sales tax requirements. Ideally, accounting professionals should receive payment for every service they bill, on time, every time.

At some point, as your business grows, you may want to pass some responsibility off to another team member. A checklist makes it easy to onboard and gives them an organized list of their monthly duties. As your business grows, there are a lot of tasks for a lot of clients that continue to grow, and it can be overwhelming, but having a monthly closing process can help. Make sure you gather all that information at the end of the year and have it ready to pass off to your accountant.