Process the year end
Before you start
Make sure you do these things for the financial period being closed:
Fully reconcile all of your bank accounts and ensure they agree with the balances from your bank statements.
Enter and approve all invoices, bills, and expense claims. Bank all payments you’ve received.
Tasks for you
You can do these simple year-end tasks yourself.
1. Reconcile all accounts on your Balance Sheet:
Make sure any unpresented cheques or payments in your bank account are correct. Check your statement balance in Xero against your balance from your bank. Use the Bank Reconciliation report to help with this and fix any problems you find.
Run an Aged Receivables Summary and an Aged Payables Summary. Xero ensures the balances of your aged receivables and payables match your general ledger at all times. Write off any bad debts.
Check your Business Activity Statement and balance for the period.
Ensure you know what makes up the balance of all accounts in your balance sheet, including loans and fixed assets.
2. Run a GST Reconciliation report and review the GST Audit report for each period. Check each GST category for any coding and GST treatment that looks incorrect.
3. When you’re finished, let your accountant or bookkeeper know so they can log in to your Xero organisation to review what you've done and complete the rest of the process.
Tasks for your accountant
You might prefer to have your accountant or bookkeeper do these more complex year-end tasks.
1. Run a Trial Balance report to verify the balances of your general ledger accounts.
2. Your accountant or bookkeeper is likely to verify balance sheet items and add entries for:
Your accountant or bookkeeper can add journals and adjustments directly into Xero. They don't need to re-key this information.
Set a lock date to prevent any further changes being made to the previous year's data.
