Cleanup

Month-End Close Checklist for Small Businesses

Month-end close sounds like something only a company with an accounting department does. For a small business it just means wrapping up the month so the records are clean, the reports are right, and next month starts easy.

The month-end close checklist

1. Review bank and credit card activity. Make sure everything you expected to see is in the books, and clear out the obvious duplicates. That one step catches most of the month-end surprises.
2. Reconcile each account to its statement. My bank reconciliation guide covers the workflow if this step is new to you.
3. Confirm the month’s payroll runs are recorded. If your payroll provider ran payroll this month, each run should be in QuickBooks and should match what cleared the bank.
4. Read the Profit and Loss for anything unusual. Oversized expenses, income posted to the wrong place, missing loan payments, and subscriptions coded three different ways all show up here.
5. Read the Balance Sheet too. Bank balances, credit cards, loans, owner transactions, and any receivable or payable accounts you rely on. If a balance looks strange, ask why now.
6. Write notes while the month is fresh. An odd deposit, an unusual owner payment, a vendor charge you want tracked differently next time. It’s easy to write down now and hard to reconstruct in April.
7. Run and save the final reports. A closed month should end with a Profit and Loss and Balance Sheet you’d be comfortable showing your CPA.

Keep it light and keep it monthly

A light close every month beats a giant cleanup once or twice a year. You’re looking for the things that move the numbers. A few small stragglers can wait. Even this much keeps your books tax-ready. Problems get caught while they’re still small.

Or hand the close to me

Entering, categorizing, reconciling, recording payroll runs, reading the reports. That’s what my monthly bookkeeping service covers. Monthly bookkeeping is a flat monthly fee, quoted in writing after a free review of your file. Your Profit and Loss, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow arrive by mid-month, and I work with clients anywhere in the United States over Zoom and phone, from the Springfield, Missouri area.

I’m a bookkeeper, not a tax preparer or attorney. For tax and legal questions, confirm the details with your CPA. I keep the books that make their job easier.