Year-End Bookkeeping Tips for Your Business

Hi there!  As another successful year ends, it’s time to hang your business hat up for a short time and put your bookkeeping hat on. Let's look at some of the things to start your bookkeeping journey off right.

Gather your receipts

Bank statements are not enough.  If you were audited, CRA will be looking for receipts.  Organize them by month and then by category (meals, fuel, equipment, supplies, etc.) You can either save the paper receipts in a file folder or save your receipts digitally in a Google drive.

Round up your invoices and outstanding bills

Send invoices for outstanding payments and pay any of your outstanding bills.

Reconcile your receipts 

Track down your bank and credit card statements. Match (reconcile) your bank statement deposits and withdrawals to your receipts, invoices, and bills.  This is a very important step to ensure all transactions have been included in your books. Missing a transaction can cause your reports to show sales being too high or low, expenses too high or low.

Where should you record all this information?  

That depends on your business and how complicated your bookkeeping is.  Sometimes all you need is an organized spreadsheet to record all this information. If your business has a lot of transactions and needs more organizing, then an accounting program will be better. The top two I recommend are Xero and QuickBooks Online.

Once these steps are completed you will have a detailed picture of how your business is doing.  You are now ready to plan for your upcoming year and prepare your taxes, and you are now able to put your business hat back on!

Happy planning!

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