End of Financial Year Checklist

With the new financial year approaching, you need to check your financial information and gather all documentation we’ll need to complete your accounts and get your tax returns filed. The sooner this is done, the sooner we can notify you of your tax position.

If your business is looking significantly different this financial year, talk to us so we can more accurately estimate provisional tax.

We have put together a checklist for you to run through:

• Accounts Receivable: Ensure all sales for the ending financial year are invoiced. Run your Aged Receivables report to check the information is accurate. Follow up with customers who have overdue balances and decide if any should be written off as bad debts.
• Accounts Payable: Ensure all supplier bills are entered into your accounting system. Confirm balances owed are what you have recorded. Run your Aged Payable report to check the information is correct.
• Bank Reconciliations: Bank Reconciliations need to be up to date to the end of March. Ensure all transactions have been entered and that there aren’t any that are unreconciled. Confirm your bank account balance matches your accounting software. Send us through a PDF of your bank statements.
• Cash on Hand: If you have any petty cash, ensure that all cash expenditure is accurately entered and accounted for.
• Fixed Assets & Depreciation: Check last year’s fixed asset register and let us know if anything has been sold or disposed of. We may need the invoices for fixed asset purchases, so attach them to the transaction in your accounting software or send them to us.
• GST: Ensure your final GST Return has been finalised and filed with Inland Revenue.
• Home Office: You can claim a portion of your household expenses if you use part of your home for business. Total up your household bills for the year and talk to us about how much you can claim.
• Inventory: You need to complete a stock take at the end of every financial year to account for all purchased but not sold stock.
• Loans & Hire Purchases: Loan and hire purchases need to be verified and accurately accounted for. Send us loan documentation that includes the balance at the year end, with the interest accrued and the payments that you’ve made.
• Lock your Accounting System: Once the month and year end results are complete, set your systems lock date for 31 March.
• Other Balance Sheet Items: All items on your balance sheet need to have supporting evidence and be able to be verified.
• Payroll & Wage and Leave Liabilities: If you have staff, the final payroll of the financial year needs to be run and entered into the accounting software. Wages owed to staff and annual leave liabilities need to be accounted for, to accurately reflect your business’s liabilities on the balance sheet. These liability accounts need to be reconciled to confirm their accuracy.
• Profit & Loss Report: The Profit & Loss Report needs to be run to confirm your figures look as expected. It may be helpful to run this by month, to highlight any variations month to month. If things don’t look as expected, check whether transactions were miscoded to the wrong accounts.
• Vehicle Expenses: Let us know if you use your personal vehicle for business use, or vice versa.