Accountant Checklist for Small and Medium Enterprises (SMEs)
Whether your business is a startup, mid stage or well established, you will always have the need to consistently ensure that your financial records are in order, notwithstanding if you are an accountant or not. As the end of the financial year or Tax season approaches, most business owners and accountants starts trying to put their books in order. This puts a lot pressure on the business and most often a lot of details are missed out. And thus the business owner gets distracted from his core business running activities.
As part of our work ethics, our Virtual Accountants and Bookkeepers maintain a checklist on behalf of all our clients. The checklist has been carefully prepared and we ensure that we tick the boxes for our clients as at when due.
The elements of the checklist are as follows;
DAILY CHECKLIST
These are tasks that are expected to be carried out relatively on a daily basis. This should be done by you or your accountant.
– Check you daily cash and bank balance to determine available cash for payments.
– Determine incoming funds via POS settlement, and clearing cheques.
– Review payments due for the day and determine actual payments that can be made for the day
– Review all debits and deductions made on the bank statement
WEEKLY CHECKLIST
These are tasks that are expected to be carried out by your or your accountant at least once a week.
– Prepare and send out all invoices due to customers
– Make payments to Vendor’s whose invoices are due for payment
– Record all customer billings into the accounting books
– Record all customer payments made during the week
– Record all payments made to vendors during the week
– File all posted documents
– Carry out weekly reconciliation of bank balances
MONTHLY CHECKLIST
These tasks are expected to help with month end closure of your financial books by your accountant.
– Balance all your accounts by reconciling your postings with bank statements.
– Review Payroll, ensure all necessary and statutory deductions are carried out, and make all necessary payments
– Post all Payroll Journals and file all related documents.
– Run depreciation and amortization of all assets and post the necessary journals.
– Carry out all statutory remittances for states and Federal (Pension, PAYE, VAT, WHT, Consumption Tax etc)
– Review aged receivables and determine next steps. Make necessary adjustments and provisions.
– Carry out Month end stock count and compare with balances in the books to determine if any adjustments are necessary and also determine slow moving items.
– Review Profit & Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cashflow statement to compare performance with previous periods (/Budgets), and determine areas of immediate improvement.
QUARTERLY CHECKLIST
These tasks help with quarterly reporting and analysis.
– Analyze your Profit and Loss account and compare performance with previous quarter and same quarter of previous year.
– Review bugdet for the quarter against performance and determine whether the business is on track.
ANNUAL CHECKLIST
These tasks are to be carried out at the end of each year by either you, your bookkeeper or accountant. They are very key to producing a meaningful annual report for the business and also help ascertain the status of statutory compliance.
– Review aged receivables and determine next steps. Make necessary adjustments and provisions.
– Carry out year end stock count/valuation and make any necessary adjustment to the books
– Review status of all Statutory remmittances to determine the level of compliance and the potential penalties that might be due.
– Review all unpaid liabilities and make necessary accruals and provisions for them in the books.
– Review all prepaid expenses to ensure that the records reflect the unused portion of the prepayments.
– Review your P&L for the year and compare with performance of previous year.
– Run reports (P&L, Balance Sheet, etc) and review reasonableness so as to ensure that it reflects the actual activities and performance of the business over the period covered.
The above detailed checklist serves as a guide to accountants and business owners. Thus actual tasks might vary for each organization. We also insist that our clients must have an accounting system so as to effectively use the checklist.
If your business needs assistance in understanding or implementing a practical accounting checklist, you can contact us and one of our consultants will get in touch with you.
