Need Help Cleaning up Your Books for Tax Season?
Tax season is right around the corner and cleaning up your books guarantees you – and your accountant – have a problem-free tax filing. If you are a small business, you know everyday tasks can get in the way of your best attempts at keeping your financial information as organized as possible. Tight deadlines, staffing demands, and too many tasks on your list can drain you of the energy needed to keep your books updated and ready for your accountant.
Luckily, there are some things you can do to make sure your books are clean and ready for tax season. In just 3 steps you can clean up your books and be ready for the upcoming tax season without feeling the overwhelm you have faced in past years.
In this post you’ll learn:
- How to categorize your transactions to make sure you’ve captured all your financials for the year.
- How to reconcile your accounts to ensure all your financial figures are accurate.
- Why scheduling a checkup call with your accountant is an important step before you file your taxes this season.
Categorize Your Transactions
There are a few ways you can categorize your transactions to clean up your books for tax season. Our first and favorite method is through QuickBooks Online. A proper system setup means your bank statements are automatically downloaded. QuickBooks then categorizes them into existing categories or creates new categories for new transactions. You can then review these transactions to make sure that they were placed in the correct category.
If you don’t have QuickBooks Online, you will need to manually create categories for your transactions. You’ll then go through each of your statements for the past year and document each transaction in the appropriate category.
We know that as a small business owner you may not have the time to categorize your transactions manually to clean up your books for tax season. Because we recognize how burdensome this can be, we offer one-stop-shop services including ongoing bookkeeping and QuickBooks Online setup.
Check out our services here in more detail to see how we can help make your accounting simple.
Reconcile Your Accounts
Account reconciliation is another important step in cleaning up your books for tax season. Completing this task ensures the transactions you’ve entered manually, or those downloaded into QuickBooks Online, match what you see on your bank statements.
There is a small chance you will find errors with a system like QuickBooks Online, but the margin of error is much larger if you perform the categorization step manually. If you’re ready to make the switch to an online system, we are prepared to set up your QuickBooks Online account to make this process as simple and straightforward as possible.
With over 10 years of experience transitioning small businesses to QuickBooks Online, we can get you up and running in time for tax season.
Schedule a Checkup Call With Us
If you are feeling overwhelmed with the thought of cleaning up your books this tax season or with any of the steps described above, then it’s time to schedule a call with us!
Setting up a call with an experienced accountant prior to cleaning up your books can help make tax season smooth-sailing. We are certified QuickBooks Online ProAdvisors with over 30 years of certified accounting experience. And know how to make accounting simple and efficient so you can get back to business.