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Look at each of these reports monthly, if not more frequently, both on your own and in conjunction with your financial team to keep your business on track. Billing your clients on a consistent schedule can reduce late payments. With weekly invoices, the product or service you provide to customers is still fresh in their minds, so there’ll likely be fewer questions or qualms about the bill. If you wait too long to bill your client, you’re more likely to result in a delinquent payment.
- At least once a week, the bookkeeper needs to make sure all the numbers add up and there is enough cash to cover expenses.
- And the business transaction is the outflow and inflow of the various cash like the petty cash used in the business and other areas.
- Reconciling means matching what is in QuickBooks to what is in the bank account.
- Creating budgets for various expenses, activities and projects isn’t hard, but sticking to these budgets can be difficult.
- This includes credit card revenue transactions and individual credit card purchases.
It includes notes for things to talk to my client about and any questions I have about their books. The first one is “bills,” which is any notes for myself about vendors that I don’t know. Sometimes there’s a vendor that has something tricky to remember or I don’t know where it goes, so I put notes in there about that. I also just discovered this place with nice, helpful graphs https://www.bookstime.com/articles/monthly-bookkeeping-checklist for your client. If you are in QuickBooks and go to the left side to “overview” and then go to “business performance,” there are about ten graphs that you and your client may find really helpful. 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.
Review accounts receivable
Alternatively, I could also create a spreadsheet of these items and email it to them, especially if they are remote. QuickBooks will learn your transactions, so every time you get something from Comcast, for example, it knows to put it into a certain category. However, even with all that remembering and automation, it still requires me as a bookkeeper to go through and fine-tune everything. Aside from Form 1120 (or Form 1065 for partnerships), the other IRS forms that’ll need to be filled out depending on your business and its market sector. It’s useful to consult our expert bookkeeping team to figure out what forms need to be filled out and when.
- This will give you peace of mind that you won’t lose your data if you have a hardware failure or file corruption.
- Caryl Ramsey has years of experience assisting in different aspects of bookkeeping, taxes, and customer service.
- I know this for sure – not all businesses update their
customer accounts on time. - Depending on when a check is deposited, it may not reflect in your account till the following day.
- It’s important to create a system or checklist that will suit your own working needs.
- It will also help keep track of payroll expenses so you can make changes to your labor mix and stay within your own budgets.
- However, bookkeeping requires certain data and figures to be accurate.
In this article, we have provided you some essential pointers on making an effective bookkeeping checklist that you can use during your business’ bookkeeping process. Schedule time to review the monthly financial statements with your clients. And don’t assume they know everything in the financial statements as they are a small business owner, not an accountant. Work with them to add value to their business’s financial information by explaining everything to them over time, allowing them to make profitable business decisions moving forward. Now it’s time to reconcile, which simply means that you’re comparing your records against a report or source outside of your accounting software. The most common form of reconciliation is bank reconciliation, or comparing the records from your accounting software with your bank statements.
Communicate your process
This may be done monthly or annually, so this may or may not be part of your monthly tasks. Imagine having a clear checklist of the tasks you need to complete every month for your clients. Each task can be delegated or automated, saving time and money for your firm. This information will be used to generate the profit and loss statement and as supporting documents for your taxes or any audits that may come your way. Payments taken with credit cards count as business revenue, and qualified business expenses are tax deductible.
- It usually takes me about five minutes to get the statement and about fifteen minutes or less to reconcile the account.
- At the end of each month, it’s useful to review your accounts receivable and track how much your customers owe you.
- And the bookkeeping is the essential method through which you keep the journal entries.
- Also, annual, quarterly, and monthly sales tax returns must be filed with the state where your business is conducted.