A Quick Historical Bookkeeping Clean Up

bookkeeping clean up checklist

Automation both reduces your team’s workload and prevents future issues from occurring. If you’re looking for a bookkeeping checklist, you’ve probably identified a problem with your current strategy. By setting goals and acknowledging known issues with your bookkeeping practices, you’ll be able to determine an appropriate course of action going forward. Check for data entry errors to clean up and sort out your books.

bookkeeping clean up checklist

Most banks or other commercial lenders require a financial review before providing financing. A balance sheet is like the report card of your assets, liabilities, and equity. These are permanent accounts that roll on for the life of your business.

Be Ready for Tax Season

Use your business credit card only when you know you have the cash on hand to pay off the purchase. It’s never too early to make sure you’re caught up on unpaid invoices. Make sure you’re collecting money your company is due, including any interest owed for late payments. Retained earnings are an important piece of the balance sheet. They consist of all profits and losses from prior years, plus income or loss for the current year. Any transaction that involves a purchase, sale, or other financial change should be well-documented.

  • Get cozy with your finances by setting aside regular “money dates” – a time when you and your numbers can spend some quality time together.
  • Financial institutions allow access to bank feeds which allow you to import most transactions directly.
  • Try to aim for reconciling your accounts each month for tidy books.
  • With our bookkeeping clean up services we will bring your financial records up to date, move you to a modern cloud bookkeeping system, and help you stay organized.
  • An experienced and knowledgeable accountant can reconcile balance sheet accounts and examine your income statement for inconsistencies.
  • If you’d like help reviewing your books before year end, please add yourself to my calendar using the green button below.
  • Use your business credit card only when you know you have the cash on hand to pay off the purchase.

Be sure that someone reconciles the bank account or bank accounts each month. This process catches errors in your bank account bookkeeping (important in and of itself since you need to know what cash you hold). So I thought I’d create a similar checklist law firm bookkeeping for QuickBooks users. The checklist that follows can be used to find and fix most serious errors in your QuickBooks data. And that’s important, because finding and fixing those errors should mean you get better quality financial statements.

Best Practices For The Month-End Close Process

Regularly reconciling your clients’ accounts ensures this is true. No one enjoys tax season (not even accountants), but paying taxes is a required part of keeping your business tax compliant. If you don’t have accurate records, you may miss out on deductions or income on your tax returns.

bookkeeping clean up checklist

If you were surprised with a large tax bill last year, then you were not planning for your tax payment appropriately. If you have been in business for 2 years, you should have a quarterly estimated tax payment that your CPA has given you. Talk with your accountant about how to do this if you are unsure. Your last chance to pay taxes for 2021 catch up is January 15th, 2022. The day of reckoning is almost here, which is when you hand your books over to your tax accountant.