Content
That’s why you must be aware of upcoming deadlines and plan accordingly to keep your clients’ finances in order. Complete an inventory count and check the numbers against what you have in your books. If you find discrepancies, this is a trigger telling you that something needs to change with your processes. You can stuff your receipts into one of our Magic Envelopes (prepaid postage within the US). Use our receipt tracker + receipt scanner app (iPhone, iPad and Android) to snap a picture while on the go.
Doing some accounting tasks daily will make your recordkeeping easier, make inventory management more efficient and expose costly mistakes sooner. Many accounting software programs have apps that you can use to report expenses and upload receipts, so it’s easy to take care of them immediately. Rather than sort through a stack of receipts at the end of the month, just snap a picture of the receipt and jot a note about the details. The essential items are used in the bookkeeping so that you too can get the idea of the taxation and its uses in accounting for the whole year.
Processing Payroll: Calculating Employee Salaries and Taxes
Additionally, recording transactions assists in preventing fraud and theft by providing a clear audit trail. Ultimately, this daily task ensures the accuracy and integrity of your clients’ financial records. You can’t know the answer if you’re not tracking your accounts payable balance. Reconcile the 2 to reflect expenses paid and income received for the month. Furthermore, check your prepaid accounts against your expense accounts to prevent duplicate payments. It’s also worth checking your income statement accounts to ensure you’ve invoiced all of your customers for the month.
Download the templates of the bookkeeping checklist that will help in getting the idea of the entire bookkeeping process. Tasks range from categorizing bank feeds to entering checks to reconciling and sending reports to the client. Today I’m going to share with you exactly what I do each month for one of my bookkeeping clients using my own checklist.
Why do you need a bookkeeping checklist?
Reviewing the Work in Process report ensures that you are invoicing your clients for any merchandise you already purchased. This report shows any overlooked additional charges, such as freight, monthly bookkeeping checklist shipping, or reimbursables, that should be invoiced to the client. Without further ado, here are the five things you need to check off monthly to stay on top of your bookkeeping.
By keeping up with a few bookkeeping services tasks, you’ll be prepared to file your business taxes. The term “bookkeeping” and general ledger are practically https://www.bookstime.com/articles/capital-expenditure inseparable. When we talk about maintaining a general ledger, this is among the bookkeeping job duties that encompass a variety of other tasks.
Update Payroll Records
As a result, your business will plan to save the excess earnings from busier months during the height of your business to offset any financial shortcomings of your off-season. Once you calculate and file your sales tax, begin focusing on any open deposit reports. Using this report regularly is a really good way to stay ahead of invoicing, suggests Denise Zollo, owner of Zollo Accounting & Tax Services LLC. After reviewing it, you’ll know what money you need to collect from clients and what needs to be invoiced and closed out for income recognition purposes. You won’t know unless you look at the accounts receivable report.
- Some companies keep both written and local digital records for their books, while others export their data to accounting software.
- Before moving on to anything else, you need to review the accuracy of your business cash and credit transactions in order to work with your exact cash position.
- Part of the struggle is knowing what needs to be done and when.
- Download the business bookkeeping checklist template for use in the business.
- Spending a little time on this task each day is easy and eliminates a grueling month-end chore.
- Besides investing in useful accounting software, you can use a monthly bookkeeping checklist to ensure nothing falls through the cracks.
It’s crucial for helping you make short-term decisions, in addition to helping you work towards long-term goals. Plus, having accurate monthly reports makes your year-end close much simpler. Examine your checking and savings accounts, loan and credit accounts, and digital accounts, such as PayPal. Check your balances, deposits, and withdrawals to find discrepancies. For accounts receivable, ensure your customers pay within their agreed credit limits.
Quarterly Bookkeeping Tasks
Furthermore, review your general ledger to ensure you’ve posted credit and debit entries correctly. Get it out of the way early and return to your regularly scheduled programming. Think of it like putting off the laundry until you have nothing to wear. Stay on top of your tax filings, so they don’t pile up and overwhelm you when deadlines approach. Debits and credits refer to values coming into and out of an account, respectively. Balancing a ledger refers to the act of making sure the total debits and credits equal the same amount or cancel out to zero.
For example, your year end close becomes a lot simpler if you have accurate monthly reports to work from. Make sure that all vendor W-9 records and information are up-to-date. Since contractors and employees come and go, if you keep all of their information updated on a monthly basis, then it will be so much easier when it comes time to submit tax documents. You may be familiar with accounting basics and have a bookkeeping duties list. However, there are circumstances where hiring a professional bookkeeper might be more beneficial to you. If you are a business that is just getting off the ground, you might benefit more from DIY bookkeeping.
Open Vendor Deposit Report
This checklist template is specifically for monthly bookkeeping. We have a separate checklist template for weekly bookkeeping. Next, If you have any past due invoices, there is no better time to send them a reminder.
- By keeping up with a few bookkeeping services tasks, you’ll be prepared to file your business taxes.
- Most banks will automatically be in QuickBooks, but if they aren’t connected, there will be about eight or so steps you’ll need to take to get the necessary information input into QuickBooks.
- Stay on top of your tax filings, so they don’t pile up and overwhelm you when deadlines approach.
- This client has a few hundred transactions each month, and it takes me about 45 minutes to categorize the bank feeds.
- Or forward a receipt to your designated Shoeboxed email address.
After reconciling your bank and credit statements, turn your attention to Age Accounts Reports. These reports split between accounts payable and accounts receivable. Without having this initial step thoroughly checked for accuracy and completion, you risk making mistakes in subsequent monthly bookkeeping tasks. Bookkeeping, at it’s core, is keeping track of the money going in and out of your business. Bookkeepers record your income and expenses so you have the information you need to make informed decisions for your company. Before we jump into the essential bookkeeping checklist for small business owners, let’s quickly touch on why it’s so important to have a bookkeeping checklist in the first place.
Review Work in Process (WIP) Report
A monthly bookkeeping checklist is a simple method for keeping track of what needs to be done. Before moving on to anything else, you need to review the accuracy of your business cash and credit transactions in order to work with your exact cash position. To do so, reconcile your bank accounts and credit cards at the close of each month, helping you easily find and amend any mistakes. This can be done by reviewing your statements to flag any suspicious credits, debits, canceled transactions, or double charges. Once you have thoroughly examined your monthly bank and credit statements and are confident in its accuracy, you can complete the rest of your monthly bookkeeping tasks.
- And the business bookkeeping checklist is to attain in the list of the transaction used in the business organization.
- It’s also better to catch any accounting errors within the current month to prevent a snowball effect of errors from month to month.
- Month end reconciliation is another term for the month end close process.
- Your vendors only trust you as much as you are forthcoming with your payments.