Getting the Books Back on Track at the Year End
You’ve had a great year full of growth and profits, and you’ve hardly had a moment to sit back and enjoy it all. As the year end approaches, you suddenly realize that the shoebox full of receipts is, in fact, just a shoebox full of receipts.
Oops.
If you find yourself in this kind of pickle during the final quarter of the year, first, don’t panic. Panic turns accidents into disasters. There are at least two easy ways to fix the problem and get your finances in order. There’s the DIY way, and the Outside Help way. Let’s take a look at both.
1: Organize the Paperwork
DIY: Of course, the first thing you’ll need to do as year end approaches is actually find all your backlogged papwerwork, wherever it’s hiding. Receipts, invoices, bills of sale, just plain bills, bank statements and checks, everything. Whatever boxes or cabinets they’ve been lurking in all year, bring them out, blow off the dust, and spread them out on the table. Sort them by month and by type, whether they represent income or expenses. That way you’ll be able to build a timeline that makes sense in your ledgers. You’ll also see quickly if something important is missing.
HELP: The task of organization will probably take several hours, and you may even have to spread it across multiple workdays. That will certainly interfere with your other responsibilities and personal interests. What you can do instead is scan every document as you find it, and set it aside. You don’t even have to do that yourself, another staffer can do it, even if they have no experience with financial documents. SyncLedgers receives the documents, and we start digitally sorting them automatically on our end. This cuts your work time down significantly, and the job gets done even faster
2: Input the Figures
DIY: Once you have everything, and in the right order, you then need to start manually typing the information into your bookkeeping software. If you still use handwritten ledgers, there’s another, even bigger chore. Either way, this step is an essential precursor to producing your profit and loss statements.
HELP: If you’ve already scanned in all your documents, SyncLedgers will also do this entire step on your behalf, minus the handwritten books. We do everything using the same software you prefer for your business, and with complete transparency. You’ll be able to verify our work every step of the way. We’ll even be able to start inputting while you’re still uploading. This strategy sharply cuts down the catch-up time.
3: Do the Math
DIY: After the year end catch-up is complete, it’s time to start generating all the reports and summaries you need to compare this years work with that of the past. The most important reasons for this is to see how your income has changed. To the extent that it has, it will affect the quarterly estimated tax payments you’ll be making during the year to come.
HELP: SyncLedgers generates these reports automatically based on the information we help you organize and input. It provides an up-to-the-minute snapshot of your finances that easily lets you see how your money is moving. It’s easy to see how your quarterly tax burden will shift.
4: Check the Law
DIY: Quarterly payments are a different animal from your annual year-end deductions, though. To be sure that you’re minimizing your overall tax burden, you’ll need to familiarize yourself with all the latest laws, rules, and regulations published by the IRS, and the tax code. Knowing where and why you can take certain deductions can save you and your business substantial amounts of money.
HELP: While SyncLedgers doesn’t do this part for you, neither should you! Tax laws are monstrously complicated. We do make it easy for specialists like your CPA or other licensed tax professionals of your choice to review your paperwork, though. According to your authorization, we provide them with everything you provide us, so they can pick through it with a fine-toothed comb and discover the hidden savings possibilities.
Year End Stress End
SyncLedgers makes it possible for you to recover quickly from a potentially crushing burden of backlogged paperwork. We also make it much easier to avoid those kinds of problems going forward. Contact us today to solve your year end problems, and enjoy easier bookkeeping next year!
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