Bookkeeping is one of the most important aspects of business management. It is the process through which business owners manage their firm’s finances. Bookkeeping helps to ensure that every transaction incurred in the business is recorded in the business books and the further financial procedures are taken care of. Therefore, it becomes ultimately important to ensure quality bookkeeping. It might be hard to keep up with everything, hence several business owners prefer to use a checklist which helps them to keep up with their bookkeeping. If you are one of the owners who doesn’t has a checklist yet, then worry not. Here is a quick monthly bookkeeping checklist which will help you kickstart your firm’s bookkeeping.
- Revisit the Cash Position
- Updating your Accounting Program
- Record Sales and Expenditures
- Review Customer and Vendor Invoices
- Reconcile Your Records
- Sales Tax Returns
- Review Your Inventory
- Record Credit Cards Transactions
- Review Debt Accounts
- Review WIP Reports
Revisit the Cash Position
Cash is the lifeblood of any business, and having a good understanding of your cash position can help you manage your cash flow effectively. By knowing how much cash you have on hand, you can make informed decisions about how to allocate resources, whether to invest in growth opportunities, and whether to make new purchases or delay them until you have more cash available. Revisiting your cash position regularly allows you to adjust your budget and forecast for the future. By comparing your actual cash flow to your budget and forecast, you can identify any discrepancies and adjust your future projections accordingly.
Updating your Accounting Program
Accounting software is constantly evolving, and new updates often include improvements in functionality and features. By updating your accounting software, you can take advantage of new capabilities that can help you streamline your accounting processes, reduce manual data entry, and increase accuracy and efficiency. Software updates often include important security patches to protect against vulnerabilities that could be exploited by hackers or other malicious actors. By updating your accounting software, you can help ensure that your financial data and sensitive information is protected against cyber threats. In summary, updating your accounting software is important for improved functionality, compliance with tax laws and accounting regulations, security, integration with other software, and customer support.
Record Sales and Expenditures
Recording sales and expenditures can also help you make informed business decisions. By analyzing the data, you can identify areas where you can improve profitability, such as reducing costs or increasing sales. This can help you develop a plan for growing your business and achieving your long-term goals. If you have investors or partners, recording sales and expenditures is essential for maintaining transparency and building trust. Investors and partners may want to see financial statements and reports to gauge the health of the business and make informed decisions about future investments. By tracking your sales and expenditures, you can measure the performance of your business over time. This can help you identify trends and patterns, make adjustments to your business strategy, and set goals for future growth.
Review Customer and Vendor Invoices
Reviewing customer and vendor invoices helps ensure that the information on the invoice is accurate. By checking for errors, you can prevent overcharging, undercharging, or double billing, which can affect your cash flow and damage your business’s reputation. If there is a discrepancy on an invoice, reviewing it allows you to identify the problem and work with the customer or vendor to resolve the issue. This can help prevent disputes and preserve your business relationships. It also helps owners to ensure payment timeliness which is an important factor to manage finances. It also helps with budgeting and forecasting, and fraud prevention. By reviewing invoices regularly, you can prevent errors, maintain good business relationships, and set your business up for long-term success.
Reconcile Your Records
As a business owner, reconciling your records is important for several reasons. Reconciling your records helps ensure the accuracy of your financial data. By comparing your business’s records with those of your bank or credit card company, you can identify discrepancies and correct errors. This can help you avoid overpayments, underpayments, and other inaccuracies that could affect your financial statements and tax returns. Reconciling your records can help you detect and prevent fraud. By reviewing your bank and credit card statements, you can identify unauthorized transactions, unusual activity, and other signs of fraud. This can help you take immediate action to protect your business’s finances and reputation. By reconciling your records regularly, you can ensure that your financial data is accurate and up to date, which can help you make informed decisions and set your business up for long-term success.
Sales Tax Returns
Filing sales tax monthly has several advantages for business owners. By filing sales tax monthly, business owners can avoid the risk of late payment penalties and interest charges. Many state tax authorities impose fines and interest on businesses that fail to file sales tax on time, so filing monthly can help ensure that businesses stay on top of their tax obligations. Filing sales tax monthly can also help businesses manage their cash flow more effectively. By paying sales tax in smaller, more frequent increments, businesses can avoid having to make large lump sum payments at the end of each quarter or year, which can put a strain on their finances.
Review Your Inventory
Reviewing your inventory helps you identify any surplus or shortage of items in stock. This can help you adjust your ordering or production schedules, ensuring you have enough stock on hand to meet customer demand while minimizing overstocking or understocking. Reviewing your inventory can also help you control your costs by identifying any excess or slow-moving inventory. By reducing your inventory levels, you can free up cash that can be invested in other areas of your business. Reviewing your inventory helps you identify any items that are no longer selling or have become obsolete. Removing these items from your inventory can prevent them from taking up valuable space and help you avoid the cost of storing and managing inventory that has little or no demand.
Record Credit Cards Transactions
Recording credit card transactions separately can make reconciling your accounts much easier. It can be difficult to reconcile bank statements if all transactions are lumped together, and separating credit card transactions can help you ensure that all transactions are accounted for and recorded accurately. Separating credit card transactions can help you track your expenses more accurately. By having a separate record of credit card transactions, you can easily track your business expenses and ensure that they are being recorded correctly.
Review Debt Accounts
Keeping an eye on the debt accounts of the business is important for business owners for many reasons. Tracking your debt accounts helps you manage your payments and ensure that you are making all of your payments on time. This can help you avoid late fees, penalties, and other consequences of missed payments. Tracking your debt accounts can also help you develop a plan to reduce your debt over time. By monitoring your debt accounts, you can identify which accounts have the highest interest rates or balances and focus on paying those down first. Tracking your debt accounts can also help you develop a more accurate budget. By knowing exactly how much you owe and how much you are paying each month, you can more effectively plan your expenses and ensure that you have enough money to cover your bills and other obligations.
Review WIP Reports
WIP reports help you track the progress of your projects and ensure that they are on track to be completed on time and within budget. By reviewing WIP reports every month, you can identify any issues or delays and take corrective action before they become major problems. WIP reports can also help you allocate resources more effectively. By understanding the progress of your projects, you can allocate staff, equipment, and other resources more efficiently and ensure that your projects have the resources they need to be successful.
With this, we come to the end of the checklist. We hope that the items on the checklist will help you manage your bookkeeping easily. Good luck.