As a small business, you probably generate certain key reports. Some are required daily, others monthly, while others are quarterly or yearly – all to provide you with a clear business outlook at any given time.
Here’s a Daily Small Business Bookkeeping Checklist to help you stay on top of your financial records and ensure smooth operations:
Record your transactions every time you make a sale or do business.
Record them all (credits, billing customers, receiving cash from customers, paying suppliers, etc.) in the proper account daily or weekly, depending on volume.
Smart business owners use a POS system with a financial recording feature, such as BizKit, to help record their transactions and produce the financial statements needed for their reporting.
Since cash is the fuel for your business, you never want to run on empty. Start your day by checking how much cash you have on hand and know how much you expect to receive and spend in the upcoming day/week/month. This will help you understand your cash flow and trial balance.
With Bizkit, you can keep track of your daily sales report from anywhere, including items sold, customer details, and order values. Weekly small business bookkeeping checklist.
Regularly check to ensure you keep copies of all invoices sent, all cash receipts (cash, cheque and credit card deposits), and all cash payments (cash, cheque, credit card statements, etc.).
Start a suppliers file and sort them alphabetically (cooking oil under “C,” flours under “F,”etc.) for easy access.
Rather than using the common habit of tossing all paper receipts into a box, it’s better to have separate files for assorted receipts to keep them organized as they come in.
Alternatively, you can use BizKit POS to manage your suppliers, keep all supplier details organized and track supplier payments and history.
Each week, make sure you review your unpaid bills from suppliers. This should include amounts due, billing dates, payment due dates, and payment methods.
At the end of each week, track your accounts payable (use the supplier management feature in BizKit POS) and identify funds to pay your suppliers on time. This will help you avoid late fees and maintain favourable supplier relationships.
Most business invoices are due within 30 days. To ensure you get paid on time, always use an invoice template containing the right details, such as payment terms, itemised charges, your payment details, and preferred payment method(s).
Forecasting how much cash you will need in the coming weeks/months will help you reserve enough money to pay bills, including your suppliers and employees. Plus, it will help you make more informed business decisions about how to spend it.
At the end of the week, all you need is a simple cash flow statement showing your current cash position, expected cash receipts during the next week/month, and expected cash payments during the same period.
At the end of the month, make sure you counter-check the weekly bookkeeping needs of your business, then proceed to carry out the following:
In the same way you balance your checking account, ensure your business’s monthly transactions are accrued monthly. You’ll accurately understand your cash position. By reconciling your cash, you can easily identify and fix any mistakes or oversights made by you or the bank, allowing for timely corrections.
At the end of the month, include an “ageing or past-due” column to separate your “open invoices” with the number of days a bill is past due. This way, you get a quick view of outstanding customer payments.
As a standard practice, the beginning of the month is a good time to send overdue reminder statements to your clients, customers, and anyone else who owes your business money. You will again review your accounts receivable for reconciliations at the end of the year.
Set aside time to reorder products that sell quickly and identify others moving slowly, have been marked down, or even written off. A powerful inventory management system like BizKitPOS can help you do this quickly and effortlessly.
While you may already have an established schedule to pay your employees monthly, you need to meet payroll tax requirements.
Make sure you review the payroll summary before you make the payments to avoid having to make corrections during the next payroll period.
You will also
Measure it against your budget every month (sometimes done by quarter) and highlight where you may be spending too much or not enough so that you can make changes. BizKit POS can easily give you the P&L report as part of the financial statements.
By comparing your balance sheet at one date — say, Dec 31, 2024 —to a balance sheet from an earlier date (Dec 31, 2023), you get a picture of how you manage your assets and liabilities.
But you also need to check this at the end of the month and compare it with the previous month. The key is to look for what is significantly up and/or down and understand why. For instance, if your accounts receivable are up, is it due to increased recent sales or because of slower payments from your customers? This will also help you understand your cash flow.
Performing a bank reconciliation at the end of every month helps you identify any discrepancies between your records and the actual transactions in and out of your accounts.
This means ensuring that the transactions recorded in your records match the actual transactions in your bank account. If you find any differences, immediately resolve and rectify them.
To ensure the accuracy of your financial statements for a specific month, it’s recommended to temporarily halt any new entries in revenue and expense accounts from the previous month. You can check your expenses on your BizKit POS. Halting your revenue and expenses will help you reflect the business’s true performance during that period.
To comprehensively understand your small business’s monthly performance, carefully examine your accruals and deferrals. Review any modifications made and ensure they are properly recorded and calculated.
This helps your business effectively manage your financial health by ensuring that payments are made on time, avoiding late payments, and identifying any clients who consistently delay their payments.
It helps you make sure that your financial records are accurate and stable. You must carefully go through all the bills and invoices and verify that they match up with what’s in your account. This will also help you avoid any late fees and maintain good relationships with your suppliers.
The end of the year is the appropriate time to check significant past-due receivables and decide whether you think customers will eventually pay, whether to send past-due bills to a collection agency, or whether to write them off as bad debt for a deduction. This will help you work your revenue and taxes.
Before you sign your tax return, review it for accuracy based on your full-year financial reports.
If you have an auditor, and they find any underpayment of taxes, it will return to you for any additional taxes, penalties and interest. Ensure all your financial reports are accurate and your taxes are well completed.
These statements include the three key ones – income statement, balance sheet and cash flow statement.
The income statement shows trends in profitability, while the balance sheet assesses financial stability. Your cash flow statement can give you useful information about handling your cash and help you make smart decisions as you set up your future finances and forecasts.
It involves thoroughly examining your existing stock to match your recorded and actual quantities.
You can also conduct physical counts to guarantee that your inventory system is always accurate. Assess the value of your inventory and make necessary adjustments based on your sales revenue and market conditions.
Do this by comparing what you achieved with your initial goals and targets.
Take a deep dive into your sales revenue, expenses, financial metrics, operational milestones, and customer satisfaction to gain valuable insights into your operational effectiveness and financial reporting.
These insights are all available inside BizKit POS and will serve as a solid foundation for planning strategically in the upcoming year.
Always remember to keep your finances in check – hold onto your receipts, bills, and contracts and ensure they’re safe to help you keep track of your expenses.
Use Bizkit POS to help you with financial reporting, financial statements, and inventory management.
Try Bizkit for Free.
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