I’m fairly sure no one has as much fun on 31 March as they do 31 December.
However it's not a date people need to worry about, assuming they've kept their accounts up to date.
It's simple math, really:
The more you do = the less your accountant has to do = the less you pay.
With two months to go, it's a good time to tidy up the accounts, so that when April rolls around, you can sit back, relax and let your tax accountant do the work. Hopefully minimal work, if you've done things correctly.
Here's a quick check list of ways you can be prepared:
- Review aged Debtors
- Send reminders now
- Follow up with a phone call later in February
- Hopefully with more reminders early March you'll have less outstanding for year end
- Bad debts – review and consider what you might want to write off prior to 31 March
- Reconcile and code all of your bank account and credit card transactions Missing receipts, un-coded items – try to have them up to date
- If you're running Xero, run a Bank Reconciliation report for each bank account, ensure the Xero balance and the bank statement balance agree
- Ledger Review – run through one ledger at a time over the coming weeks and ensure nothing has been coded incorrectly
- Invoicing – tidy up and authorise all the draft invoices and work in progress you can before the end of March
- Assets register – review your purchases and disposals over the last year Assets check list, ensure everything is as/where it should be
- Stock take – if you carry stock you'll generally have a process for this in place, but if not, the financial year end is a good time to have it done
- Cash on hand / petty cash, if a process for reconciling isn't in place, it's a good time to have this checked and reconciled in late March
- Back ups. If you're running MYOB or other accounting software that isn't fully Cloud based, ensure you're regularly backing up, but also make sure you do one on 31 March
- Check list – see if your tax accountant has a check list and start working on it
If you need help, call us, we'd be happy to assist :-)~ Rachel
