Are you looking for how to create and set up a year-end Guide and Checklist In QuickBooks? You will learn here to create and set up a year-end guide and checklist in a proper manner, we have arranged here 10 tasks to set up a year-end and checklist in QuickBooks, go through each one to learn better. You will get the ‘Note’ of important points and facts. Still having an issue contact our QuickBooks ProAdvisor : +1-855-525-4247
Here you will learn about how to create and set up a year-end guide and checklist in QuickBooks Online. When the accounting year comes to an end, at that moment, you and your accountant need to complete certain tasks in QuickBooks Online to close the current year and prepare yourself for the next upcoming year. Every year business owners plan something new for their business either changing their strategies, launching something, and many more.
Many of the tasks are common tasks that need to be fulfilled every year. In this article, we have come with these tasks so that you can easily create and set up a year-end guide and checklist in QuickBooks Online without any difficulty or with none of the problems. The section defined below will help you and be aware of year-end tasks to make ending the current year and beginning of the upcoming year easy.
Table of Contents
10 Tasks to Set up a Year-End Guide and Checklist in QuickBooks
Here are the tasks that will help you in setting up a year-end guide and checklist in QuickBooks Online. /make sure, these tasks must be completed before the end of the current year. These tasks are listed down:
Task 1: Confirm the First Month of your Fiscal Year
It is important to make sure that you have chosen the correct month for the start of your fiscal year allowing QuickBooks Online to clear up the accounting ledgers behind the scenes at the time of working on other year-end tasks and activities.
How to Confirm or Change the First Month of your Fiscal Year
Here you will get simple and easy steps to confirm and change the first month of your fiscal year.
- First, open Settings ⚙ , and next click on the Account and Settings.
- Next click on the Advanced tab.
- Now, go to the Accounting section, and look for the first month of the financial year field. And click on the pencil icon ✎ to change the month.
- Next, click on the Save and close.
- Click on Done.
Your fiscal year is confirmed, meanwhile, task 1 ends and is successfully completed. Now move to further tasks to complete it.
Task 2: Confirmation of customer account balances, send statements, and clear any outstanding deposits
It is a great idea to check whether your customer has up-to-date account balances along with up-to-date billing and payments or not, at the end of the year.
How to Check Customer Account Balances
To check the customer account balances, you need to go through the steps listed below:
- At first, you have to choose Reports
- Inside the search bar, you have to enter Accounts Receivable Aging Summary or Accounts Receivable Aging Detail and then choose the report you want to review.
Note: These reports are only accessible in QuickBooks Online Advanced, QuickBooks Online Essentials, and Plus only.
- Review the reports appropriately to check out the customers with their outstanding balances
Once you will know about your customer’s outstanding balances, then you will be able to send them statements to clear the outstanding balances timely.
How to Send a Statement
To send a statement, you need to go through the steps listed below:
- To begin, choose Sales and then click on the customers
- Browse and identify the customer that you want to send the statement
- Click on the Create Statement from the Action column drop-down menu
- Inside the Create Statements window, click on the print and preview to print the statement, else click on the Save and Send to create and preview an email with the statement to the customer
At the time of involvement in Task 2, you must be aware of creating statements.
You need to be confirmed that all the deposits must be cleared to the deposit queue. Any funds that are indulging in this queue will not be included in your current year’s income. Refer to the blog to know about a concept to record and make bank deposits.
Here task 2 ends and is successfully completed. Now move to further tasks to complete it.
Task 3: Confirmation of Vendor/Vendor Account Balances and Pay bills or Write Checks
At the end of the year is a very great time to clear any outstanding bills you owe for the year. and also address any outstanding credits, discounts, or products you’re owed from your vendors.
How to Review Outstanding Bills
To review outstanding bills, you need to go through the steps listed below:
- To start, choose Reports
- Inside the search bar, you have to enter Accounts Payable Aging Summary or Accounts Payable Aging Detail and then browse for the report you want to review, when you find it click on it.
Note: These reports are only accessible by QuickBooks Online Advanced, as well as QuickBooks Online Essentials and Plus only.
- Before the end of the year, you must be cleared fewer outstanding bills, these bills will only identify by reviewing the report appropriately.
After you identified your outstanding bills, you must be ready to clear them up before the ending of the current year. Here, task 3 ends and is successfully completed. Now move to further tasks to complete it.
Task 4: Reconcile Bank Accounts, Credit Cards, and Petty Cash
It is good when your QuickBooks Online data is matched with your bank and credit card accounts, just to make sure that all the transactions are recorded appropriately, and also your year-end reports will be displayed relevant information to you.
How to Reconcile your Accounts
To reconcile your accounts successfully, you need to go through the manual steps listed below:
- Firstly open QuickBooks and then go for their Settings⚙
- After that, click on the Reconcile
- You must follow the prompts for matching the transactions on your bank and credit card statements matched with the transactions of the Reconcile page.
Tips for Year-End Reconciliation
Here we have discussed some basic tips that help you in year-end reconciliation. If you are one of them who never reconciled their accounts or don’t reconcile your accounts every day then stress out your mind because Reconciling your accounts will do this for you by checking out the accuracy.
Note: One point you should keep in mind is that either you don’t reconcile your account regularly but you must reconcile your accounts at the end of the year to prepare for your tax season.
If you are new to reconciling or you are having issues then you can start with your reconciliation guide by referring to the article.
- Before you start, you must get all of your bank and credit card statements together. In case you don’t have all of them, then you can easily get it from your bank website. Alternatively, you can contact them directly
- Your bank and credit card statements offer a source to know all the truth. QuickBooks always match them instead of going the other way
- You need to start with your old bank statement, then reconcile each month’s transactions at once. The thing that matters is order, if there is an issue with your earlier transactions it means it definitely affects your all recent transactions and upcoming transactions.
- When you reconcile an account at the same point during the past year, then we advised starting from that location where you left off then be ready to reconcile all your statement according to the months at once
- Suppose you have a lot of transactions to be reconciled in QuickBooks Online, then you are unable to see all the transactions in a single window, you need to scroll up or scroll down to check the transaction either you need to open the same window multiple times on your PC. You can use the search and filter features to minimize or narrow the list of transactions/accounts in QuickBooks Online
Now you are ready to start to reconcile all your accounts in QuickBooks Online. Here, task 4 ends and is successfully completed. Now move to further tasks to complete it.
Task 5: Invite your Accountant: It’s time to Collaborate and Consult
Your accountant has the expertise and will be required to give suggestions on data input. It will help you in performing and managing year-end processes and forecast your company’s financial future.
If you are done already then QuickBooks Online makes it easy for you to invite an accountant to collaborate with you. In Addition, it gives them access to your QuickBooks Online Accountant. After accepting the invitation to access the account by our accountant, they have all the rights to handle the accounts.
Here, task 5 ends and is successfully completed. Now move to further tasks to complete it
Task 6: Run Year and Reports
To review or check the information, it is mandatory to run year-end reports and identify if any error issues or discrepancies inside it.
How to run year-end reports
To run year-end reports successfully, you need to go through the manual steps listed below:
- First of all, you have to open QuickBooks and go to their Reports
- Navigate and review the Profit and Loss report and Balance Sheet. On the other hand, you and your accountant require customized reports as well.
- Ensure that the profit for the year figure must match with the balance on the Profit and Loss report
In these reports, you and your accountant can review the information to identify or interrogate any potential issues to troubleshoot it. Here, task 6 ends and is successfully completed. Now move to further tasks to complete it
Task 7: Reclassify Transactions(Accountant)
Your accountant will be reviewed for a more detailed view of transactions or journals will also affect the Profit and Loss Account on the basis of the type of accounts, and can make changes to any item to display appropriately on reports.
How to Review Detailed Information
To review detailed information, you must require to go through the steps listed down:
- You need to ask your accountant to sign in to their account.
- Under Accountant Tools (the envelope icon), then click on the Reclassify Transactions.
Note: Your accountant can change the account where the transaction presents or the class that is attributed to the transactions.
Here, task 7 ends and is successfully completed. Now move to further tasks to complete it
Task 8: Distribute Profits from the Business(Accountant)
When your Retained Earnings will be divided among owners or partners, at that moment your accountant can assist you.
It has proven to be good practice for you to have previously set up an Owner’s Equity and Draws ledger to proceed with any payments or withdrawals from the company during the year by the key people who founded the company.
How to create Journal Entries
To create journal entries, you must require to go through the manual steps listed down:
- Firstly, click on the +New option
- Then click on the Journal Entry
Note: If you are willing to collect more information about how to edit, create, import, and export a journal entry then we suggest you go through the article and continue your reading. If any confusion occurs while reading or implementing the steps then contact us.
Here, task 8 ends and is successfully completed. Now move to further tasks to complete it.
Task 9: Prepare year-end tax return (with accountant assistance)
Your company’s accountant is responsible for all the taxes that come out and is prepared. When you are ready to invite your accountant by sending an invitation to your QuickBooks Online Account, at that moment once you send an invitation to your accountant then you will provide the accountant access to all your financial information they need to prepare or file taxes on the company’s behalf.
This information is helpful for your company to prepare, to help you to prepare any required year-end tax return.
Here, Task 9 ends and is completed successfully. Now move to further tasks to complete it.
Task 10: Close the Books
It is an optional task, it is up to you if you want to finish this at the end of the current year or the beginning of next upcoming year. If you skip this task there are no issues occurring in your records and accounting. Closing the books will let you control the changes to transactions dated before the last of the accounting financing year.
How to Set up Closing Books?
To set up the closing books, you require to go through the manual steps listed down:
- Firstly, click on the Settings ⚙️
- Now choose the Company Settings by clicking on it
- Click on the Advanced
- Now choose the pencil (edit) icon to open the fields for the purpose of editing inside the Accounting section by clicking on it
- Choose the Close the books checkbox by clicking on it
- Now manually enter a closing date or choose it from the calendar, along with that, choose a warning preference
Note: It is optional that you can enter or confirm a password that if any unauthenticated user will try to make changes if you enable it anytime you login must enter the password service then the unauthorized user is unable to access your account successfully.
- Now click on the Save option
- In the end, hit the Done option
To collect the detailed steps and guide, we suggest referring to how to close the books in QuickBooks Online. Here, Task 10 ends and is completed successfully. Now move to further tasks to complete it.
The End Note
Hopefully, all the details and information described in this article will help you to create and set up a year-end guide and checklist. But still, you are unable to do it, don’t worry, we have its alternative i.e. our QuickBooks Support customer help service, get this service by calling on our 24/7 technical error support helpline number +1-855-525-4247 where Intuit Certified ProAdvisors will always be ready to give a right path to do it manually either fix it remotely it is up to you.
So, if any error issues and queries belong to QuickBooks will degrade your performance and reliability, don’t delay contacting us anytime and from any location throughout the USA. Try to reach us as soon as possible.