Your Books Need a Fall Cleanup Too
Fall usually brings thoughts of cleaning out closets, getting back into routines, and wondering how the end of the year got so close already.
Your bookkeeping deserves the same kind of reset.
Got unreconciled accounts, a pile of uncategorized transactions, duplicate entries, or balances that make absolutely no sense? September is a great time to deal with them. Schedule a consultation and we can figure out what needs to be cleaned up before year end.
The good news is that messy books in September are usually a lot easier to deal with than messy books in January.
A little mess adds up
Bookkeeping problems don’t always look dramatic.
Maybe one credit card hasn’t been reconciled for a few months. There are 47 transactions sitting in “Ask My Accountant.” A payment processor never quite matches what hit the bank. An old loan is still hanging around on the balance sheet even though you paid it off ages ago.
None of those things necessarily feels urgent on a Tuesday afternoon when you have customers, employees, deadlines, and approximately 900 other things demanding your attention.
But those little problems pile up.
By year end, you may have financial reports you can’t rely on, questions nobody remembers the answer to anymore, and bookkeeping that has to be fixed before your tax return can even get started.
Your reports should actually tell you something
One of the biggest reasons to clean up your books now has nothing to do with taxes.
You still have several months left in the year.
That means you have time to look at your profit and loss, compare revenue and expenses, check your cash flow, and make business decisions based on numbers that are actually accurate.
Clean books can help you answer questions like:
Is the business actually profitable?
Are certain expenses creeping up?
Are customers still owing you money?
Are you setting aside enough for taxes?
Is there something on the balance sheet that shouldn’t be there?
Those are much more useful questions in September than they are after December 31.
What does a bookkeeping cleanup actually involve?
Every cleanup is different, but common issues include unreconciled bank and credit card accounts, duplicate transactions, miscategorized income or expenses, missing payment processor activity, incorrect loan balances, old accounts that were never closed, and transactions that have been sitting uncategorized for months.
Sometimes the problem is a few hours of cleanup.
Sometimes I open the file and discover QuickBooks has been quietly building its own little haunted house for three years.
That’s why I review the records before quoting cleanup work. The goal isn’t just to make the numbers look tidy. The goal is to make sure they’re accurate.
Give yourself a head start on year end
You do not have to wait until tax season to find out there’s a problem.
September gives you enough breathing room to clean up old issues, get caught up, and keep the rest of the year on track.
And when January arrives, you can hand your tax preparer reliable books instead of introducing them to a financial mystery novel.
Need help figuring out what’s going on in your books? Schedule a consultation with Dunham Bookkeeping Services. Cleanup and catch-up accounting is available for small businesses and nonprofits.
