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As a bookkeeper, you are likely not preparing the tax returns. Having accurate financial statements and source documentation will save your clients money https://www.bookstime.com/ when they pass over to their CPA at tax-filing time. What do the owner of a mom and pop shop, a corporate tycoon and a celebrity have in common?
- What do the owner of a mom and pop shop, a corporate tycoon and a celebrity have in common?
- For instance, recording receipt and sale of inventory should be daily bookkeeping tasks for businesses working with higher sales volume or perishable goods.
- If you record incoming payments, you should also record outgoing payments.
- Just make sure your tax tables are updated and the software should make the proper withholdings for you.
- Often, small businesses keep a monthly bookkeeping checklist as many bookkeeping tasks need to be completed every month.
Timely deposits are beneficial for maintaining cash on hand and up-to-date records. Though many bills are due on a monthly cycle, others may be due upon receipt. Therefore, it’s important to review bills weekly to check for errors, note the deadline, and schedule payment accordingly. Besides avoiding late fees, paying early allows you to take advantage of early payment discounts (when provided in a vendor’s terms). Recording bills as a weekly bookkeeping task also makes it easier to check that accounts have sufficient funds. If your accounting software is connected to your bank and synced daily, there’s no need to wait for your monthly bank statement.
Make your Quarterly Tax Payments
Besides investing in useful accounting software, you can use a monthly bookkeeping checklist to ensure nothing falls through the cracks. Your team will breeze through their assignments and quickly see what’s completed. Let’s look at some tasks you can add to your monthly bookkeeping checklist that will ensure your firm is more profitable and ready for scalable growth. Depending on the amount of financial reporting that needs to be done on a monthly basis, the creation of accounting reports can reduce the potential for omissions or errors.
Accounting is something small businesses should do on a regular basis. Lindsay is in charge of the Sales and Marketing team at Design Manager and has enjoyed growing the DM company for the past 10 years.
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Use this template to streamline your workflow process & save time. 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.
Depending on your business structure, you may be required to keep a copy of these to meet record-keeping requirements. Again, any modern bookkeeping program should be able to help you complete them. These are the most important bookkeeping tasks that I take care of each month. If you’ve hired an accountant, they should be able to do some of this for you. If you’re a do-it-yourselfer like me, you’ve got to make sure to take care of all of this on your own. These days, the software options are pretty advanced and it’s possible to handle the books on your own, even if you don’t have any formal training.
WAYS A FINANCIAL AUDIT WILL HELP KEEP YOUR BUSINESS ON TRACK
During your monthly close, cross-check your records to make sure you paid all bills and invoices. Your bookkeeper is in charge of managing your books, which is the bottom line in managing your cash flow. Ask your bookkeeper to share your cash flow statement at least once a month. The most important part of running a small business is knowing how much cash you have every day. If you don’t have time, your bookkeeper should be informing you how much you have in your account and any incoming or outgoing money daily. Payroll management software can help tremendously with this, and most of the major options integrate with leading accounting software apps like QuickBooks and Xero. There are even free payroll apps that can help you with basic tasks.
Creating financial reports should be on a small business’s bookkeeping tasks list. Some reports are advantageous to run on a weekly basis, while others can be done monthly. Just as you record any invoices sent to the client, document all customer payments as soon as the payment is received. 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. Updated and accurate financial statements include balance sheets, income statements, and cash flow statements.
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Cash Flow Statement – The last of the “Big 3 Financial Statements” is your Cash Flow Statement. Along with your balance sheet and P&L, this statement helps determine the financial health of your business.
And, if you take payments via credit card, they are documented as business revenue. A bookkeeper should reconcile cash, bank, and credit card statements in order to manage money from all sources. Accurate records will allow you to know where you stand financially and help make decisions in a timely manner. Review the accounts payable aging report to see which bills need to be paid or scheduled to pay. After your analysis, you may want to show the client these reports to verify that every payment has been applied correctly and what is still outstanding. You will then create and send invoices to follow up on the accounts payable balance to get it paid.
Month-End Checklists
It helps you identify areas of your business that are contributing most to your profit margin, and also helps you rectify areas where costs may need to be trimmed. At the end of each month, it’s useful to review your accounts receivable and track how much your customers owe monthly bookkeeping checklist you. Not only does this improve cash flow, but it also makes it more manageable for your team to chase unpaid invoices. Leaving this to the end of the week or the end of the month makes it harder to keep track of what you owe, and risks late payments to your vendors.
- Much of the reason is because it is paper-based and not automated.
- It tracks your actual revenue/sales, gross profit and expenses.
- If you can’t do this task accurately and on time, you should consider working with a professional.
- To help narrow your search, here’s our comprehensive review of the best easy accounting software for small businesses.
- Needless to say, paying your employees is extremely important.
