The Ultimate To-Do List for Bookkeepers – Experts’ Opinions

Businesses of all sizes execute various processes. From which financial management plays a key role, helping owners to make informed business decisions. However, 99% of businesses are small, and 60% of the owners are not knowledgeable enough about accounting or bookkeeping tasks.

This lack of financial accounting knowledge usually makes it difficult to manage core tasks. Apart from a shortage of staff or capital, this is a big reason many companies hire virtual bookkeepers. It ensures accurate accounting numbers without putting much of effort.

Since inadequate financial management can impede business growth, financial accounting is undoubtedly the core factor for success. Therefore, let’s further read what experts say about bookkeeping tasks that you should perform.

Day-To-Day Bookkeeping Tasks – According to Experts

1. Three Core Responsibilities

• Reconcile cash with receipts: Checking in with your cash flow frequently will prevent large cash shortages. It enables you to keep track right away if there’s any discrepancy. It will ensure accuracy in the supposed cash to the receipt and book tally. This way, too, you can recognize indicators of thefts, especially if it’s done gradually.
• Record all transactions done: Whether it’s a cash, check deposit, or withdrawal, keep an updated business account with your daily transactions. It is crucial for long-term guidance during glitches in the bank system. Also, doing this daily will remind you of your dues and receivables as well.
• Categorize expenses: You should know where you are spending all the money, and doing this is more accessible nowadays that there are a dozen expense tracking apps available for free. Your expenses are part of your daily operating cash flow, and you must know where all those expenses are allocated.

By Sherry Morgan, Founder of Petsolino

2. Maintain a Daily Journal of Transactions

I recommend that each day, you record your income and expenses in your accounting software. Each payment needs to list the five things IRS auditors look for – the date of purchase, where the purchase was made, what was purchased, how much was the purchase, and the business purpose of the purchase. Then file the receipts away. Each month, reconcile your entries against the bank statement; use the reconciliation process in your accounting software for the best reporting/results.

Some cautions – a credit card statement is not a receipt! A bank statement is not a receipt; it verifies the income and expenses you reported. Keep a paper copy of your expense receipts for at least four years.

By Sally Balson, Balson Bookkeeping Company LLC

3. Invoice Customers Daily

A good habit will help increase the transparency of your business. It will also provide detailed insight into your actual cash flow, enabling you to invoice your customers efficiently. Many business owners wait a week or two before invoicing customers, which not only gives you a less complete picture of your financial health but can raise questions for auditors.

By Bryce Welker, CPA, and owner of CPA Exam Guy

4. Increase Transparency to Reduce the Burden

Here are some daily bookkeeping tasks that can help increase transparency and reduce the burden imposed during the tax season.

• Bank accounts management: You should look at your online bank statements regularly and handle anything that looks suspicious immediately.
• Budget management: Every good bookkeeper should keep one eye on the budget at all times. If you notice that you’re worryingly above budget, you should check in with and communicate that to leadership.
• Review logs at the end of the day: Before you leave work, go through your records and make sure you have entered everything correctly.

By Ann Martin, CreditDonkey

5. Three Essential Checkpoints for a Bookkeeper

• Inventory control: The accountant works as a liaison between the various departments and communicates daily with the department heads to discuss their inventory needs. If a department is short of stock, the accountant contacts the supplier and orders new stock. In addition, in small business organizations, it is also the responsibility of the accountants to monitor and maintain inventory records.
• Control and reconciliation of transactions: If your bank transactions are synced with your accounting software daily, then you need not wait for your bank to generate monthly statements. Reconciliations can become simpler by suggesting matches followed by your review and approval. It also allows you to review pending transactions and look into the errors for further investigation.
• Preparing for tax season: It is also the accountant’s responsibility to note all tax data and prepare the books before the tax season begins. They should also be available to provide the right information and support to accountants, auditors, and other tax professionals to meet all tax requirements.

By Patrick Moore, CryptoWhat

6. Reconcile Daily: AP, AR, and Cash

I recommend that all my small business clients reconcile their accounts payable or accounts receivable balances every day. This is one of the crucial bookkeeping tasks that ensures accuracy in the system. If you’re receiving payments for products or services but haven’t delivered them yet – this may have consequences if somebody else has already received it and paid for their order. It’s also possible that your account is mistakenly credited with payments.

Additionally, businesses should perform everyday cash reconciliation – ensuring all checks, credit card charges, and deposits entered in the cash receipts journal agree with those debts on your bank statement.

The accounts receivable system is only as accurate as of the transaction data input to it, so make a point of checking balances against cash management reports each week.

A few minutes of reviewing ledgers is time well-spent because it can avoid angry customers and time-consuming record correction tasks in the future.

By Marsha Kelly, Best4Businesses

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7. Maintain and Check Account Statements Daily

The first thing you should always ensure that you do every day is figure out what financial position you are in. After all, if you have no idea how much money you have, it will be challenging to make informed financial decisions. As such, you can make use of accounting software to make the task easier and also bring all your business accounts to a single hub. From there, you should take a few moments to check for any unusual activity and correct an error when it happens.

You should also make sure that you record all payment information, such as note down the number of cheques received and the total sale invoicing done for the day. Similarly, make sure that you record all bills due the moment you get them to ensure that you maintain correct records of the due balance. In this respect, the frequency of invoicing will depend on the volume of work and how fast your company operates. If your organization is large-scale, then try billing on a day-to-day basis. Apart from the expenses incurred and income earned, the transactions done in banks also need to be tracked down and noted. In case of a mismatch or error in reconciliation, one can adequately investigate to avoid any significant issue with the cash flow. In addition, any client expenses need to be recorded and matched to prevent any difference in the payments.

Eden Cheng, Founder of WeInvoice

8. Reconciliation and Cloud Backup

One task that should be done daily is – invoice reconciliation

While you could leave the task of reconciling invoices to bank statements to the end of the month, it often turns into a grueling process when not done daily. Instead, have a staff member use software to get this done every day, then have them check the results for verification. You’ll be able to respond quicker to issues and generate more revenue by having it done every day.

Also, increasingly important— daily data backups

This used to be unfeasible for businesses, but it’s easy to automate and essential to making sure you’re not caught with delays, thanks to cloud-based accounting. Even losing a day or two of data can have severe repercussions for your business, so back up every day.

By Reuben Yonatan, Founder & CEO of GetVoIP

Conclusion

Considering the experts’ opinions that we have gone through in this article, it is essential to make sure your bookkeeper or partner firm knows what bookkeeping tasks they need to perform every day to help you enhance your business’s financial management and performance.

However, if (like many other business owners) you are also running short of resources or the capital required for adequate bookkeeping, you may seek assistance from Cogneesol – a leading business process management firm providing competent, cost-effective, and customized bookkeeping services to businesses and CPAs worldwide. To learn how we can assist you, call us today at +1 833-313-3143 or email at [email protected]