A Small Business Owner’s Monthly Bookkeeping Checklist

If suppliers offer discounts for early payment, you may want to take advantage. Since cash is the fuel for your business, you never want to be running on or near empty. Knowing how much you expect to receive and how much you expect to pay during the upcoming weeks and months is important, too. The good news is that as a fixed-rate client, if I get these tasks done in a shorter amount of time, I’m making a higher hourly rate. One of the questions I get a lot from other bookkeepers starting out is how much to charge clients. Figure out what the most important reports are for your particular client and ensure he gets them from you each month or quarterly.

Work through your accounting systems to ensure you’re making invoice payments on time. Use this opportunity to search for mistakes, such as duplicate invoices that could lead to overpayments. monthly bookkeeping checklist It’s also worth checking your income statement accounts to ensure you’ve invoiced all of your customers for the month. Accurate monthly data feeds into several other accounting procedures.

Easy Process for Managing Employee Vacation Requests

If you’re fighting for time, aim to catch up with your reconciliation ahead of the month end close process. With account reconciliations, you’ll spot mistakes in your financial data and fraudulent transactions (if any!). Review your accounts receivable to see if your customers are paying within the agreed credit term. Small business owners have their plate full with daily business operations, so it’s normal to dread the month-end admin. Your base checklists are the milestones of workflow steps that need to be done.

Our modern accounting services include bookkeeping, payroll, financial consulting and more. Without a doubt, you need to be accurate and organized with your bookkeeping to comply with the law, analyze your business’ performance, and create insightful financial reports. Our bookkeeping checklist can help you establish a habit of staying organized and ensuring your numbers are accurate. For accounts receivable, ensure your customers pay within their agreed credit limits. For example, you might find that you can alter payment terms for your next accounting period. At the end of the day, what separates a good monthly bookkeeping process from a great one—other than a robust checklist—is how much you’re able to automate your processes.

Check cash position

Most importantly, by reviewing this, you need to accurately record your COGS and provide an accurate net income at the end of the year. That’s why it’s crucial to stay on top of bookkeeping tasks for up-to-date snapshots of the health of your business at any given time. Now you need a checklist that ensures you have all the data you need to complete those steps. This month end checklist helps you gather the information you need before your monthly close date. It’s easy to let transactions made from the petty cash fund go unrecorded. That can lead to discrepancies that show up on year-end reports.

• Some small business owners underestimate the importance of the month end close process.
• It’s important to review any past due accounts and send reminders to those customers who are late on their payments.
• Only public practice CPAs can do perform compilation agreements …
• They are an asset you’ll recognize as expenses in different accounting periods.
• For example, one of them is a line plotting your net income for the year and comparing it to last year, and it can even compare it to other industries in the client’s area.