Pretty soon you will be getting last-minute requests to clean up client accounting files. Be it reconciling, 1099 prep, or trial balance review, things are about to start getting busy again. Did they ever not get unbusy since January 2020? Each year we try to get our small business clients to prepare for the end-of-year work needed to get them ready to file a tax return by March 15th.
Now if you have that dream client that keeps their bank and credit card feeds linked to their accounting app, sent their receipts into their expense management tracker on a consistent basis, requested and received w9 information before sending payments to vendors, and shares all their statements with you in a timely fashion. Fills out their sales tax forms and submits them online with payment, syncs their payroll, or at least enters the payroll totals to the accounting application after each run. Realizes that not just bank and credit card accounts must be reconciled. Has minimal information in their uncategorized income and uncategorized expense accounts. Adjusted their retained earnings from the prior year’s tax return balance as given to them by their tax accountants… awesome. You are going to have a nice easy December and January as a bookkeeper and the Tax preparer can easily schedule their workload to prepare and file a tax return. The dream of a firm of the future is yours and you are living the dream. You can keep working 8 hours a day, maybe take a Friday off, never have to work weekends
If, on the other hand, you are getting last-minute calls and last-minute requests from current clients that have not responded to prior requests from you. Or you have a new client coming in that has done nothing all year and they are just now figuring out they need to do something. Then you may be rather busy trying to get all items organized to get those yearend tasks completed.
There are some easy-to-implement and learn apps out there that may assist your year-end work regardless of the accounting app. They may already be in your bookkeepers’ little black dress of apps. If not, you may want to consider taking the next week or so to familiarize yourself with these ubiquitous tools. All have dedicated teams to support accountants and bookkeepers. All will honestly assist you with time-saving options for you and your clients
Need to fetch old statements and transactions all the way back to the beginning of 2021 along with check images, in some cases? LedgerSync has 8500 US connections for credit card and bank statements. Push the transactions to QBO, QB desktop or Xero
Need receipts then Dext or Expensify are going to sync with any accounting app you work in and will also archive the receipts.
Need to request w9s and get the data filled in by the vendor and not you? With Tax1099 submit both Federal and State 1099s (all forms) easily for your clients and have the option to send amended returns all in one app. Because who has never had to amend a 1099?
Need to know what all the uncategorized expenses are and find you ask the client over and over? Why not let the client see the whole transaction Keeper.app (QBO) or Uncat (QBO QB Desktop and Xero) can make short work of ‘what was that for’ questions.
Find out the client needs to pay sales tax in multiple states but never filed because they never reconciled the accounts? The people at Luma tax are savvy helpful and the app is easy to implement
Payroll? Grab what you can for those that have been DIY put it in your task application now to reach out in May to convert them to your favorite online payroll management tool by end of Q3. Make your life easy and put all your clients on the same payroll system.
Need to quickly teach a remote worker or a client the clicks and steps they need to take to run these apps? Scribe How sends a link to anyone on what steps to take, turn it into a pdf. Save them in your library. Use them over and over. What are the typical items you ask all clients to perform at end of the year? Do a walk-through of the steps as if you were the client, record the clicks from your browser while you are performing the task. Save it as a pdf and print (ugh printing really?) send via email or text the link to a client. Share with a remote worker so they can see how you want the task performed. Start building those procedures now easily and have them at your fingertips to send out so you are not verbally repeating yourself. It is often the same item over and over we ask clients to perform. Make it once and use the link/pdf any time you or one of your colleagues needs it.
These are tools that can help you. There are others out there that do similar functions it just takes looking around. Make this the year you are going to look at the future in a new way. Value what the goal is and how fast you can get there and enjoy some space in your life.
And if it’s still way too much. Contact us at MoneyPenny and we will clean up those year ends for you.
