Financial Reporting: Preparing for Year End Goes Beyond Recording Transactions

We all know how to close the books. What do you need to know about preparing for year-end beyond that? Before the madness hits, I think it’s the perfect time to reflect on our significant financial reporting and planning activities and processes and see where we can benefit by doing reviews and potentially adjusting now.

‍Revenue

• Consider whether you’ve got the right bank depository account. Are their fees appropriate or behind the times and not reflecting the lower cost of processing transactions?
• Are your credit card transaction costs in line with your current activity volume? Is it time to shop around for other processing options?

People

• Have you performed a permissions audit this year? You want to ensure that any employees who have left or who have changed positions or responsibilities had their roles modified in your software systems so they no longer have access to areas they don’t need.
• Should you update any of your job descriptions to adjust for changes in technology?
• Have you reviewed your accounts payable vendor accounts to make sure you have all the W9’s for the payments you’ve made that you’ll need to report to the IRS?
• Do your annual report records with your state reflect your current board of directors information?
• Are your business budgeting software applications modified to incorporate additional gender selection fields if marriage laws have changed in your state?

Insurance

• Is your insurance coverage adequate and in line with your current hardware and facility usage? If you’ve moved some applications (or several) to the cloud and sold you old servers, recalculate your liability protection values to see if your overall costs could be reduced here in addition to lowering your licensing fees.
• Confirm whether your insurance covers you for replacement cost values. If you choose a lower coverage, that’s fine, just make sure your policies are reflecting the coverage you believe you have. Also, review for any policy addendums in coverage that came through the year. It could be a big deal if your insurer has removed mold coverage for example.

Financial Reporting and Planning Systems and Processes

• Are data and program backups getting done timely and stored offsite or in a cloud?
• If you’ve changed to Windows 10, is your access to all applications and data working as you’d like?
• Verify that your interfaces with applications that you tend to use less often are all in working order. Some tax software, unclaimed property systems, and
• If you’ve had an ERP system update, moved from Quickbooks Desktop or Enterprise to Quickbooks Online, take some time to review access and functionality of all the reports you’ll need to close year-end and prepare your financial statements.

Just as we each do a lot of self-reflection preparing to enter the new year, it’s great to apply the same principles to your business. There are rarely lulls in our work volume so squeeze in the time now to consider whether you can wrap some of these items up and better prepare you to move into the year-end, annual reporting, tax, and audit cycles.What’s other areas can you make a difference in? What’s on your business wish list for next year?