Year-End Bookkeeping and Accounting Checklist
Confused about year-end procedures?
With all the new IRS rules for this year, we have provided detailed information so that you can ensure that you have made the correct changes to Employees Payroll information.
Please note, Total Office Manager does not have any specific Year-End Requirements. The information listed below is to be considered “recommendations” and should be treated as such. Please speak with appropriate office personnel regarding specific steps or information you should perform as a part of your business “year-end procedures”.
Year-End Checklist
This checklist assumes that you know how to use the features that are referenced. This topic does not include detailed step-by-step instructions for each recommendation.
- Be sure you have been performing your Month-End Bookkeeping Procedures. A link to the help topic may be found below.
- Order Tax Forms: Be sure to do this early so that you have them when you are ready to print. You only need to order W2 (one for each employee) W3 (one for each EIN), 1099 (one for each Vendor), 1096 (one for each Company Tax ID). (http://www.dswebtoprint.com/aptora/)
- Software Updates: Update to the latest version of Total Office Manager to make sure you have all 20?? tax tables. (12/31/20?? or before your first payroll in 20??). Go to Help > Check for Enhancements and Updates.
- Go to Company Information > Other Information tab. Check the settings inside the Report Information frame. Check the EIN and other tax numbers.
- Go to File > Company Information > General tab. Look at your First and Last Transaction date and verify if they seem correct. You are making sure that someone did not enter an invalid date far into the future or far into the past.
- Go to File > Company Information > Database Stats tab. Click the Run Database Maintenance button. Hosted clients do not need to do this.
- If not already entered, add any significant or important assets acquired during the year. Go to Company > Fixed Asset List. You should be selecting these whenever you are entering expenses that are related to them.
- Enter ending vehicle mileage for your company’s vehicles. Go to Company > Fixed Asset List. Note: You may not need to enter this information if that information is being entered automatically or through timesheet entries. Double check and make sure this information is being entered. You should at least enter your vehicles ending mileage for each year. This will allow you to easily see the cost of operating these vehicles.
- Check your balance sheet for a “Rounding Adjustment” account and check your income statement for “Rounding”. If you have more than $100 in rounding adjustments, please contact the Help Desk.
- Be sure that you do not have any Item Receipts that are not valid. This can happen if you enter an item receipt but do not use the Enter Bill for Received Item feature.
- Review your Chart of Accounts and merge accounts if needed.
- Enter any outstanding bills that you wish to be included in the year. Verify vendor balances.
- Check for open Purchase Orders. These are POs that have ordered items and those items have not been received. Fixing these will not directly affect your financials unless you realize that you have not created Item Receipts or entered bills.
- Make certain that you have no work orders that have not been invoiced. The Work Order list has a column called “Invoiced Yes or No”. If you have work orders that indicate that they have not been invoiced but an invoice has been created, you can open the invoice and associate the work order(s) with that invoice. If the work order did not require an invoice, the work order has a checkbox called “No Invoice/Sale Required”.
- Enter any outstanding invoices that you wish to be included in the year. Send statements as needed. Verify customer balances.
- Decide on what invoices will be “written off” to bad debt. Use the Receive Payments form to do this.
- Make certain you have dealt with any undeposited funds. Look at your Balance Sheet for Undeposited Funds. What are Undeposited Funds?
- Fix transactions with missing important information. Click Reports > Custom Data View. Look for CDVs that start with the word “Missing”. These CDVs will generate a list of records that have missing information. An example CDV is “Missing Department Entries”. Here you will see a list of invoices that do not have a department selected on one or more line items. You may wish to fix these. It is best not to wait until the end of the year. Update your Custom Data Views while you are in this form. They do not update with regular Total Office Manager updates.
- Reconcile all Bank and Credit Card accounts ending 12/31/20??. For good bookkeeping and the prevention of fraud, it is vital that a highly trusted person reconcile your bank and credit card accounts. Consider having an outside accounting firm perform this task. Please consider our sister company, RA Tax and Accounting. The president of Aptora (James R. Leichter) is a shareholder at this firm. Print PDF versions of your bank reconciliation reports. If you run them later, they will contain any changes made to related records (if any).
- Set a new Cutoff Date after you reconcile and “close the books” for that period. This will prevent others from changing transactions that were cleared. Go to Preferences > Cutoff Date > Company Preferences.
- Save PDFs for Income Statements and Balance Sheets too, for the same reasons.
- Take a physical inventory count and reconcile with the software, making any adjustments needed. You might consider using the Item Adjustments import option.
- Adjust and inactivate obsolete inventory items (if any).
- Pay all Sales Tax and Payroll Liabilities.
- Be sure that your Pay Payroll Liabilities list does not contain payroll liabilities that have already been paid. This can happen when you write a check without using the Pay Payroll Liabilities form.
- Be sure that your Pay Sales Tax list does not contain sales tax liabilities that have already been paid. This can happen when you write a check without using the Pay Sales Tax form.
- Review, Print and Distribute W2 forms from Total Office Manager (Deadline to Employees 2/1/20??)
- Review, Print and Mail copies of W2 & W3 forms to IRS (Deadline to mail is 3/1/20??)
- Review, Print and Distribute 1099 forms from Total Office Manager (Deadline to Vendors 1/31/20??)
- Review, Print and Mail copies of 1099 & 1096 to IRS (Deadline to mail is 2/28/20??)
- Review and Print form 941 for 4th Quarter (Deadline is 1/31/20??)
- Review and Print form 940 for 2009 (Deadline is 2/1/20??)
- Review user security. Be careful with who has permission to delete transactions and other records.
- For Non-Hosted Users Only: Back up your SQL database for the end of the year for security purposes. Be sure your database has maintenance setup. To set up automatic backup, please see our knowledge base article. Click here
- Set your Cutoff Date. Preferences | Cutoff Date | Company Preferences. (Transactions with a date equal to or prior to this date cannot be added, deleted, or changed.).
- Optional: You may wish to set a “Warn if Transactions are” value. This feature can help prevent entering erroneous dates (such as 2220).
- Call and make an appointment with your Accountant to go over any adjustments, depreciation, etc.
- Optional: Create your budget for the following year.
- Optional: Think about training you might wish to provide to your staff related to Aptora’s software.
FAQ
Q: How do I move my Income and Expenses to the proper accounts to close out the year?
A: Total Office Manager does not require you to manually “close” your accounts at the end of the year. This task is automatically completed for you based on the month set up for your company’s “First Month of Tax Year”. To verify that you have selected the correct month for your fiscal year, select Company > Company Information from the main menu and select the ‘Other Information’ tab. When your computer reaches the first day of your first fiscal month, Total Office Manager knows to take the proper actions for the beginning of a New Year.
Q: How do I make changes to the information entered if it is in the wrong account, or how do I enter my depreciation?
A: To make account modifications or entries for depreciation in Total Office Manager you should make a Journal Entry. (Banking | Make Journal Entry). These Journal Entries should only be made after consulting with your Accountant or Tax Advisor.
Q: Can modifications be made to the program after the end of my fiscal year?
A: Yes, you can make changes to the program for either a past or future date. To ensure no one makes changes to past transactions, you can set a Cutoff Date in the program. To access this feature you must log in as the Administrator, and then from the main menu select Edit | Preferences and choose the ‘Cutoff Date’ tab. This will allow you to set a date, at which point no modifications can be made to accounting transactions that occurred prior to the date without the Administrative Password. (This feature is also handy to use on a monthly basis once you have “closed” your books for the month.)
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Month-End Bookkeeping Procedures
