That’s a start, but those spreadsheets are often prone to errors and swearing-out-of-frustration. Our easy-to-use software has been known to streamline and automate your way of recording your business transactions as smoothly as that new choreography you’re trying to master. Being organized is key to ensuring that nothing is being missed and you are handling your clients’ accounting efficiently. Running a small business requires wearing many hats, and one of the most important responsibilities is keeping bookkeeping checklist your finances in order.

Free Template – Monthly Bookkeeping Checklist

Make sure you’re staying compliant with both state and federal regulations. It might seem tedious, but reviewing documentation regularly saves you a lot of time, stress, and confusion when you really need those records later on. The CRA requires that all small businesses that earn more than $30,000 make HST/GST payments. But CRA rules state that you must change your HST/GST reporting period if you experience an increase in sales and taxable supplies.

Step 4. Schedule a tax review or consult

Adjust tasks, set deadlines, assign team members, and effortlessly track your progress all in one place. With ReCats, you can automate your categorization workflow right from your Financial Cents dashboard. This feature ensures transactions are consistently recorded in the correct categories, every single time. We do transaction reviews on a weekly basis, whereas some people wait till the end of the month. It helps us spread routine work throughout the week rather than cramming everything into the month-end.” Yet, more often than you’d like to admit, you find yourself stumbling through messy workflows at the end of each month.

Stationery Templates

Protecting your financial data is crucial to avoid losing important records due to technical failures or cyber threats. Join over 1 million businesses scanning & organizing receipts, creating expense reports and more—with Shoeboxed. Turn your receipts into data and deductibles with our expense reports that include IRS-accepted receipt images.

At the end of each month, it’s useful to review your accounts receivable and track how much your customers owe you. However, categorizing your transactions in this way can be incredibly time-consuming and tedious. Your SynkBooks custom bookkeeping team can sort through your income and expenses and categorize them for you. We automatically logs your transactions in useful, IRS-recognized categories for you. The bookkeeping & accounting you do today will be quicker than what you put off until next week, next month, or the end of the year.

Approving Tax Payment Obligations

Creating a monthly accounting checklist template tailored to your specific business needs can further streamline this process. Many of the essential bookkeeping tasks relate to the day-to-day financial transactions of your business. Therefore, many responsibilities have to be met at the end of every workday – or if you don’t have time, at least complete these by the end of every week. Already have a spreadsheet that you’re using to track it all manually?

• If the CRA audits your company and finds any underpayment of taxes, it will come to you, not your accountant, for any additional taxes, penalty, and interest.
• Most invoices are due within 30 days, noted as “Net 30” at the bottom of your invoice.
• All you need is a simple statement showing your current cash position, expected upcoming cash receipts, and expected cash payments for this period.
• Hence, bookkeepers use a bookkeeping checklist to track their bookkeeping tasks.
• We’ll ask you a few short questions about your business and your very own dedicated bookkeeping team will handle all your bookkeeping and tax preparation needs for you!

This regular upkeep prevents small issues from snowballing into a future clean-up project. Think of it as an investment in your financial well-being, ensuring you have easy access to accurate and up-to-date financial information whenever you need it. Now that you have all your financial records in one place, it’s time to ensure your bank’s records match your own bookkeeping.

• Staying ahead of tax obligations prevents last-minute stress and potential penalties.
• To stay on top of your business transactions, connect your business bank account to Wave.
• Monthly tasks include reconciling accounts and categorizing transactions, while quarterly tasks focus on reviewing budgets and preparing for taxes.
• Be sure to include an “aging” column to separate “open invoices” by the number of days a bill is past due.

Review your inventory

Having a system in place ensures that your books are consistent because things are dealt with the same way each and every time. You may find that you’ve received retainer deposits that you’ve not applied to a  client invoice, or you may only have used a part of the deposit. An open client deposit report will point this out so you can calculate your revenue with more accuracy and better manage the client’s funds. Depending on when a check is deposited, it may not reflect in your account till the following day.

Step 3: Categorize and Record Transactions

Task dependencies help maintain the flow of the bookkeeping process and prevent bottlenecks caused by incomplete or out-of-order tasks. Creating an accounting checklist for small business operations might look different than one for larger enterprises, but the fundamental principles remain consistent. The year-end process is where accounting schedules examples and templates become invaluable as you document and support each balance sheet amount. This task gives you real-time visibility into how much money is coming in and going out of the business, especially when combined with your cash reconciliation data. Doing this daily lets you spot any possible issues early and resolve them promptly. Last but not least, take some time each month to review and update your business documentation.

A checklist brings structure and accountability to everyone touching finances in the back office. Before you know it, tax season arrives and you’re stuck scrambling through receipts, spreadsheets, and late-night fixes. That’s why consistent, proactive bookkeeping isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a must-have. And the best way to stay on track is with a trusted, thorough, and repeatable checklist.