How to make your year-end reconciliation easier on your accountant

Do you feel overwhelmed by your year-end accounting every single tax season? You're not alone, but it doesn't have to be this way.

There are some tactics you can take throughout the year to make your year end accounting bill smaller and your and your accountant's eye twitch at bay. Here are our top recommendations:

1) Take notes as you go.

Adding some context to transactions, especially ones for unusual dollar amounts of from people you wouldn't normally do business with can be extremely valuable. Questions can be easily answered at the end of the year and you can jog your memory much more quickly.

2) If you deposit cheques, make sure you can view them online.

Work with your banking provider to ensure you can get timely visuals of your cheques. This can help you quickly track down a missing or mystery transaction that doesn't have a digital paper trail the way an e-transfer or direct credit payment would.

3) Reconcile each month.

We know this can feel tedious and can add to the pile of your month end tasks, but you'll thank yourself later. Reconciling a monthly batch of transactions, deposits, and payments is a much smaller hill to climb that doing a whole year at once.

4) Use Quickbooks or a similar accounting software.

Tracking your bookkeeping in a manual spreadsheet can be a great addition to Quickbooks, but it shouldn't be your main source of record-keeping. As your business grows, you'll suddenly find that manual invoicing and reconciling becomes unwieldy and you might even miss out on money owed to you without realizing for months...or even until year end.

Need help getting off the ground? Hire us for a custom consultation! We'll get you on the right track to ensure your accountant wants to keep you as a client and your year-end doesn't cost you an arm and a leg (and your sanity).