There’s plenty of things on the small business owners’ plate. From developing strategies to creating a budget to increasing profits, your shoulder carries responsibility after responsibility. On that account, some accounting tasks take a back seat. In the end, attending to your financial chores becomes burdensome.
That’s why we’ve brought a checklist of tasks that you need to perform daily, monthly, quarterly and annually. It includes invoice preparations, bank statement reconciliations, revaluation of assets and tax preparations, to name a few. All you need to do is follow them on a timely basis.
Daily Accounting Tasks:
- Check Cash On Hand: Expenses may surprise you anytime. Therefore, knowing the current situation of your business is significant. For that, check the cash balance. This will guide you in taking up correct decisions for your business. Be aware of your bank balances and credit card balances to determine the financial health of your business.
- Track Incoming And Outgoing Invoices: Incoming and outgoing invoices also play a key role in your cash flow. Therefore, stay up-to-date with your receivables and payables. You’ll get a clear road to success.
Monthly Accounting Tasks:
- Prepare Invoices: After tracking your invoices, it’s essential to prep your invoices and deliver them. Being proactive in this task helps you to lessen your cash flow problems. You can pay off your bills, as well as receive money on time, keeping your cash float.
- Record Financial Transactions: Documenting your transactions (or say bookkeeping) helps you sail through your accounting tasks smoothly. Let’s take the example of recording billing and invoice history. It aids you to stay updated about your financial activities throughout the month.
- Payrolls Process: Based on the company’s policy, the payroll process occurs once or twice a month. Adhering to federal, state and local regulations, you’ve to perform the process every month. The process has several tiny tasks, like collecting time card data, calculating payroll and processing payments.
- Review Monthly Balance Sheet: Anticipating your future while running a business is not a bad idea. It helps you forecast the status of your business for the upcoming months. As well, it gives insights on how to manage the assets and liabilities of your business. In a nutshell, being aware of the financial situation helps to take major decisions that directly impact your business.
Quarterly Accounting Tasks:
- Look At P&L Statements: Are you aware of your sales margins? Analyzing your profit and loss statements can aid you in determining your revenue, expenses and profits. Additionally, it compares the existing number with your forecasted goals. Well, if you figure out that the numbers are pretty low than what you had set, then you can take that opportunity to accomplish them in your next quarter. You can even modify your goals. All in all, this is an ideal approach to monitor your growth.
- Compute Quarterly Tax Payments: Some businesses are obliged to certain tax payments. An accountant can handle these crucial aspects carefully. So hand over this task to your accountant instead of missing paying taxes and incurring costs at the end of the year. For example, state laws regulate sales taxes every quarter, and you need to pay them to avoid serious punishments. Also know about common tax deductions you might be missing.
Annual Accounting Tasks:
- Preparing Yearly Balance Sheet: Now that you’ve taken care of almost everything, it’s time to pay attention to prepare your annual balance sheet. Look back to your goals and determine whether or not they’ve been met. Also, review your shortfalls. Check out ways to improve your accounting strategies and goals for the upcoming year.
- Tax Filing: Preparing for tax filing is another biggest annual accounting task, following the preparation of the final balance sheet. Well, you may get overwhelmed with preparing for taxation; therefore, you can call in professionals. As they are aware of the guidelines, they can aid you to stay ahead with this task and make sure you’ve all the information for tax filing.
- Inventory and Assets Review: Last but not least, you should review your inventory on hand and assets that are in use. Along with getting your tangible asset valuation done, you must determine whether you need any more equipment or the available ones are good to go for the forthcoming year.
Do You Need Help?
Oftentimes small business owners are deprived of accounting knowledge. With New Year, your clients may get increased, and so as your accounting tasks. Therefore, you should take the help of professionals, whenever needed. For example, if you want to revaluate your assets, you can consider taking asset valuation services. Or, if you need any help with tax filing, then you can hire a chartered accountant. But make sure that you stick to the above checklist to keep your business move forward.
