Are You Ready for Your Tax Preparer?

Now that we have started a new year, it’s time to get our tax filings prepared for last year. Understandably, it is a stressful time but it’s also a necessary evil. Here are a few tips to make tax season a little less painful.

Make sure that your books are current

It’s nearly impossible to determine your tax liability if you don’t know how much revenue you generated last year or how much you paid out in expenses. First things first, get your books caught up into your accounting software. Being able to produce clean and accurate financial reports will allow for a smoother tax preparation process.

If you have fallen behind for whatever reason, we can help you get your books caught up. Whether it is a full cleanup or a small project such as a bank reconciliation, we have experience in handling both. Sometimes, a client doesn’t need full ongoing bookkeeping services, rather just a little help. Click here for more information.

Once all of your transactions are entered, you also need to make sure that each bank, credit card, or loan account has been reconciled. Doing this ensures that all of the transactions that hit any of your business accounts have been properly recorded and nothing has been missed.

Get your receipts, bills, and invoices organized

In the event that your tax preparer needs proof of a transaction, or requires additional information, you need to have all of your source documents organized. Having to sort through stacks of paperwork is time-consuming and will delay getting your taxes done.

If you are using QuickBooks Online for your bookkeeping, remember that you can attach source documents to your transactions for easy retrieval at a later date. You can also scan receipts and bills from vendors and upload them to QBO for review and categorization. This one step can minimize chaos in your office.

If you strive for a paperless office, you can also store your documents online using a service such as Box, DropBox, Google Drive, or Microsoft OneDrive. You could even select specific folders to share with clients while keeping others locked down.

Learn from any issues experienced

Receiving feedback from your tax preparer can help you make changes to your processes and workflows to ensure that next year will be even easier. If you are constantly having to retrieve documents for your preparer then definitely begin attaching documents to the transaction. Perhaps you need to add more details to the transaction when reviewing it, either in the description or memo sections.

If you have any questions, be sure to ask your tax preparer. Being educated on the front end can help you improve your processes moving forward and make your life easier.

So try not to stress too much. Get your books caught up and presentable. Reach out to experienced bookkeepers if you run into difficulty and remember that soon enough your taxes will be filed and you can breathe a sigh of relief.