End of Financial Year Small Business Checklist

Are you ready for the End of Financial Year?

Are your financials all ready for your accountant?

Or, are they shoved into a shoebox, glove compartment or filed away somewhere?

Regardless of your situation, there are steps that EVERY small business or sole trader needs to organise right now.

Here is a short and easy step by step process to help you start getting everything sorted!

STEP 1:

OLD SCHOOL

Go to your shoebox, glove compartment, emails or filing system. (Ahm, I am hoping you have been keeping all your receipts?)

Organise all your invoices and receipts by their months, and pop them into manilla folders with the month clearly printed on the front

July to June for the financial year/s that you need to have your tax completed.

ONLINE | TECH SAVVY 

Dropbox, Google Drive or Evernote

Create online files into their months

Use your scanner or phone app to scan / save all the receipts into their months.

These records will include:

• Purchase of a new vehicle – Purchase invoice + Lease / Hire Purchase documentation
• Equipment purchase – Invoice + Lease / rent documentation
• Office (domestic premises you rent but run an office out of) Rent / Lease documents
• Vehicle log book, fuel receipts, car repair invoices, etc…
• Utilitiy Expenses :Power, Gas, Water, Internet and telephone reciepts
• Running cost receipts ie: stationary, computer hardware / software, office equiptment, staff amenities
• Sub-contractors, Elance, Odesk or any other outsourced assistance
• Website hosting, SEO, Adwords
• Advertising – Traditional (Yellow pages, Sensis) or Social Media (Facebook)
• Any other business related expense

STEP 2

Find all your bank statements, credit card statements, log into Paypal and print all the statements.

Pop these into their own manilla folders with the bank account details printed on the folder

ONLINE | TECH SAVVY 

Dropbox, Google Drive or Evernote

Create online files into their bank accounts

Use your scanner or phone app to scan / save all the statements into their folders

STEP 3

ACCOUNTANT DOES IT ALL – This is where you take all your collated documentation and hand them over to your accountant. [Worry about the cost afterwards]

DESKTOP / ONLINE ACCOUNTING SOFTWARE USER –  [Should cost a little less than above method]

Ensure that all the information in Step one has already been entered into your accounting software.

It is time to “RECONCILE” these transactions against your bank / credit card and Paypal statements.

If you have never done this before, the best place to start will be online and google “Reconciling the bank account (insert your software)”

Follow their online instructions on how to complete this process.

Start on ONE account and one month at a time, from 1 – 31 July, 1-30 August then all the way to the end of that financial year to the 30th June. Once complete, move onto the next bank or credit card account.

Here are some links to the most common accounting software programmes to find this information

MYOB

MYOB ESSENTIALS

RECKON

FREE MONTHLY EXCEL TEMPLATE – If you do not have accounting software

XERO

SAASU

STEP 4

If you are thinking about using accounting software, click over to my software pages MYOB, XERO, Quickbooks

Those of you already using Accounting Software, I am assuming that you know how to complete your data entry and reconcile your bank accounts.

Go to your report section and check that you have ALL the tax coding correct.

These reports will list all your tax codes that have been applied.

GST registered – ensure that all expenses have the correct tax coding.

Not registered for GST – Ensure no expenses / invoices have GST

STEP 5

Back up your accounting software onto a pendrive or dropbox

(if online your accountant already should be a user – Skip this step)

Set an appointment, post your bank statements via express post, personally deliver your financial records to the accountant or share your link online!

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Want to know about our services and fixed priced bookkeeping to be End of the Financial Year ready?

Call Amanda on 0423463721 or message her via Facebook Page https://www.facebook.com/MyOfficeBooks/

Amanda Hoffmann

Amanda Hoffmann is a registered Tax Practitioner / BAS Agent No.18613005, Associate of Finance, Xero, Myob & Quickbooks Proadvisor / Trainer and a Consultant for the Australian Taxation Office.

She says she is more than just a bookkeeper with experience in real estate investing, social media, podcasting, blogging and recently recording monthly youtube episodes

Amanda loves to teach smart, easy online cloud solutions and fix messy bookkeeping. Follow her on social media and say “Hi”