The short answer to that question is yes. But there are a few things you still need to do as a business owner. We broke it down from what you and your accountant need to do daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annually to ensure a beneficial relationship between you and your accountant.
Daily
- Review your cash status:
Know where you stand regularly. Review what you have against what you expect to happen in the coming week
- Open your mail:
Stay on top of payments received and expenses coming in. If you delay or miss an IRS notice, you risk significant fines
- Organize Receipts:
File your receipts in the appropriate file you’ve created for each. If you use any accounting software like QuickBooks, you can record transactions, and create invoices there, where your accountant can access them. If your business accepts cash, we recommend reconciling it against receipts to discover where the money went and identify any errors (when dealing with cash, it’s normal to make an error, we’re human)
- Record Transactions:
What are you bringing in? Any payments received, they can be cash, card, or check. Be sure to verify deposits and record all forms of income.
What’s going out? Any payments made, whether they’re payroll or vendor expenses.
Weekly
- Pay your bills
When you receive bills, review them for errors and look at the terms. If there are any early payment discounts, schedule the payments to take advantage of them. Otherwise, set payment reminders so you can pay your bills on time and avoid late fees
- Review your cashflow:
Review unpaid bills (Accounts Payable). These are incoming expenses to be aware of
Review unpaid invoices (Accounts Receivable) these are upcoming payments to your business to be aware of
- Review employee timesheets
Even if your payroll is biweekly or semimonthly, realistically speaking, you should review your employees’ timesheets weekly. You should want to check these two days before the end of the week. This is a way to surprise overtime liabilities.
By now, you’re probably wondering if you’re doing all this, then what do you have an accountant for. Don’t worry! We’re getting there.
Monthly
- Balance your checkbook and credit card statements
Double-check and make sure that all entries are posted accurately (something your bookkeeper or accountant can help you with, too), and your balance agrees with the ending balance on your bank statement
- Review overdue items
If anyone is still behind, send out overdue invoices
- Inventory Items
Track the best sellers to make sure there’s enough in stock, look at items low in stock and plan reorders, look at items high in stock, and plan markdowns
- Back up your data
If you’re not using a cloud-based accounting software, we recommend backing up your data monthly. Doing so will give you peace of mind that you won’t lose your data if you have a hardware failure, file corruption, or other issues.
Monthly Deliverables from Your Accountant
Each month you should check in with your accountant for a few things. These usually include:
- Copies of your bank reconciliation
- Profit & Loss reports
- Balance sheets
- cash flow reports
- Review and copy of tax payments for payroll, income, and sales tax
Quarterly
- File estimated tax payments
- Review and file quarterly payroll reports and submit payments
Quarterly Deliverables from Your Accountant
- Assess and file your quarterly income tax payments
- Fill in and pay your sales tax liability so you avoid any penalties (your state will determine your filing frequency)
- Prepare profit & loss statement
- Create and review payroll reports
Annually
- Fill out IRS W-2 and 1099 forms
This is when you’ll report the annual earnings of your contractors and employees
- Take a physical inventory
Keep track of the items you have on hand. Compare counts to what’s recorded in your accounting system and make any adjustments if necessary
- Review past due receivables
Now it’s time to check past due receivables and decide whether you think customers will pay, whether to send past due bills to a collection agency or whether to write them off for a deduction (If applicable by your accountant)
Annual Accountant Deliverables
- Provide and review full-year financial reports
- Categorize any major purchases as fixed assets for depreciation calculation
- Review and submit tax returns
- Provide a list of adjusting journal entries proposed or recorded in the accounting system by the accountant
you can click on the checklist for a PDF copy!
