Here at Kashoo, we recently just wrapped up our fiscal year end which meant closing out the books. For many small business owners, this can be one of the most overwhelming tasks on your list. We sat down with our own Siena and Wendy, the Kashoo accounting team, and got the scoop on how they closed our year end in just a few days! Here are our three keys to doing that, and the benefit: a year end that isn’t overwhelming (it’s possible!) Keep Your Bank Recs up to Date Each month, Wendy and Siena input all transactions they’re aware of for our business – invoices, expenses, all that good stuff. Then, at each month end, they do a quick bank reconciliation: for every account on the balance sheet, you have a working paper that explains the balance of each account on balance sheet. Business owners are busy, and typically don’t do that reconciliation until the end of the year. Doing mini-reconciliations every month will save you time and stress come year end. Take Care of Tax Filings as They Come Up This is another important one for us. Keeping on top of tax filings means you’re not behind on payments, and can avoid sending more money than you need (interest for late payments and penalties) to the government. Keep on top of your dates, whether through the IRS or CRA websites (or your government tax authority). Make Sure All Transactions Are Logged Remember in step one, where we talked about the importance of bank recs every month? Well, that’s made a heck of a lot easier when we keep up to date on transactions! Wendy and Siena keep on top of our invoices, expenses, and any other financial transactions that come up for our business. Having automatic bank feeds into our Kashoo account makes this a lot easier (shameless plug here). Kashoo is our billing engine, multiple people can be in the system, from any location and device. Everyone on the accounting team knows what’s up whenever they log in, so they’re always on top of things. Do you have any tips for making year end easier? Share them with us in the comments!
