Xero Top Tips - Year end processes

It is that time of year again! Many accounting year ends will have recently passed or will be fast approaching, therefore please find below a checklist regarding the processes to complete before your accounts are prepared. Although tailored to Xero these will hopefully be applicable to most systems.

1. The bank – firstly please ensure that all transactions are reconciled for the year and that the Bank Reconciliation Report agrees to your physical (or online) bank statements. Please also continue to reconcile post year end transactions as we will look at these too when preparing your accounts.
2. VAT Return – please ensure that you have submitted your VAT return for the period that covers your year end. Points 3 & 4 will only be relevant if you use the bills and invoicing functionality.
3. Debtors (amounts owed to you) – please run and review the Aged Receivables Detail Report. This will list all amounts owed to you at your year end; ie. amounts due from sales invoices dated before the year end but not received until after.
4. Creditors (amounts you owe to suppliers) – please run and review the Aged Payables Detail Report. Please ensure that all bills dated within the relevant accounting year that were not paid until after are included here.
5. Mis-postings and duplicates – by running the Account Transactions Report for the relevant dates you can check all of the postings that have been made in Xero in the accounting year. This will allow you to pick up on any mis-postings and duplicate entries. These can then either be corrected or removed as appropriate.
6. Uploading PDFs / pictures of bills / invoices – uploading PDFs or pictures to accompany transactions on Xero is a great tool that will mean you may not need to drop off a big box of records when we prepare your accounts. It may also save time when trying to find a document several months later. You can use this function with bills, invoices and receive / spend money transactions. Just click on the “Add Details” button on the reconcile screen and then look out for this little button at the top . An alternative to this is to use Hubdoc – which is free with a Standard subscription of Xero!

My last two points are more general and are not specific to Xero:

7. Stock sheets – we aim to get stock sheets out to you as close to your year end as possible but if you have not received one then it would be a good idea to record it all anyway while it is still fresh in your mind. The closer you are to your year end the more accurate it will be.

8. Notes / summaries – please feel free to provide some notes in a letter or email to notify us of any major changes or to point out anything exceptional that has occurred within the year. This does not need to be anything major, but a little extra narrative may save some confusion at our end.

This is not by any means an exhaustive list but hopefully it helps.