0. Year End How To and Checklist

Year-End Tasks

On SortMyBooks it is really easy to close down your accounting year, you can do it in a few clicks. That’s not the hard part. The hard part is making sure that all your numbers are right before you take that step. The tasks on this sheet should be completed BEFORE you hand over to your accountant for doing up your audited accounts. If you try to hand over your accounts without completing these steps you’re going to waste a lot of time - yours and your accountants.

Timing of year end

You will need to wait probably around 2 months after your end date before you can start to think about validating all the closing balances because you will still be waiting on information to come in.  In the meantime you can continue with next year's transactions,  just be careful to use the correct dates so as not to inadvertently log transactions to the previous accounting year.

How long will it take

This all depends on how much reconciling and data validation you’ve been doing throughout the year, the volume of transactions you’ve entered and the complexity of your business. It is best to prepare for it taking a bit of time especially if this is your first one. You should set aside at least a week. Hopefully that won’t be a solid week of work but you will need to spend some time going through the different steps and you may need to go to outside sources to validate some of your data.

Make sure you are starting from the right place

Firstly, watch our Opening Balance video. It is important to watch this all the way through to ensure you have entered all your opening balances correctly. It might sound obvious, but it bears emphasising: your closing balances will never be accurate if you haven’t entered your starting balances correctly. You need the Trial Balance from the last accounting year filed for your business. Your accountant should be able to provide you with that. Once you have that document then click here to watch the ‘How-to’ for Opening Balances.

Documents you will need

• Trial Balance from previous year end – your accountant should be able to provide this.
• Suppliers – statements from your suppliers showing the balance on account at the year end.
• Term Loans, Lease, HP, Vehical Loan Statements – call the bank to get a statement covering the whole of your accounting year.
• Bank Statements – covering the whole of your accounting year.
• Merchant Account Statements - Are you using Paypal, Stripe, Sumup? You must also reconcile these and provide copies of statements to your accountant at year-end. 
• Credit Card statements – covering the whole of your accounting year.
• Payroll details – Payroll reports from your Payroll software showing the Gross, Net and Payroll tax incurred. Report should cover the whole of your Account Year if it is different from the Payroll Tax year.
• VAT details - Log onto your ROS system to get details of the payments you've made/refunds you've received. Make sure these match what's on SortMyBooks. 
• RCT details - If you're in the construction industry and you have RCT (Relevant Contracts Tax) withheld from you or you withhold it from your subcontractors, then you'll need to get details of payments to and from Revenue. These will be available on ROS. Make sure the payments match what's on SortMyBooks. 
• PSWT (Professional Services Withholding Tax) details - If you have tax withheld from your invoices you'll need the information to get the money that is due back to you.
• Fixed Asset details - these may be included with your set of accounts from the previous year. If you purchase any new fixed assets during the year make sure they're entered correctly on SortMyBooks see details here. 

Year End Checklist is attached so you can print it but detailed below here because there's links to how-tos for each item.

Checklist

No.	Task	Y/No
1.	Firstly check have the opening balances been entered correctly.
2.	Go through the VAT checklist - note this is something that needs to be done for each VAT period, but for completeness, I’m including it here as well.
3.	Check the bank/credit card/merchant account/loan reconciliations.
4.	Check Aged Debtors Report V2 for accuracy.
5.	Check Aged Creditors Report V2 for accuracy - article or video.
6.	Check Wages control and PAYE/PRSI/USC/LPT
7.	Check the P&L report
8.	Check the Balance Sheet
9.	Check the Simple Trial Balance report
10.	Close the year
	Signed:___________________________________________ Date: