Monthly bookkeeping checklist for small bookkeeping firms

If you keep the books for a dozen or more small businesses, every month runs the same loop: get the documents, categorize, reconcile, review, report, close. The work itself is rarely the hard part. The hard part is that each step waits on the one before it, and the first step waits on your clients.

This checklist is written for the owner of a small bookkeeping firm with monthly-close clients on QuickBooks Online, Xero or QuickBooks Desktop. It covers what to collect, what to reconcile, what to review before you send anything, and how to stop the first week of the month from eating the rest of it. Copy it, cut what does not apply, and keep one copy per client.

Set it up once per client

A monthly checklist only works if each client's version lists their actual accounts. Before the first close, write down for each client:

• Every bank account, with the institution and the last four digits.
• Every credit card, including cards held by owners that carry business charges.
• Loans and lines of credit, with the lender.
• The payroll provider, and which reports you need from it.
• Payment processors and marketplaces that pay out to the bank, if you reconcile their fees and payouts.
• What you need from the client that you cannot pull yourself: statements for accounts with no bank feed, receipts for charges you cannot identify, notes on transfers.

Keep this list where the whole firm can see it. It becomes the client's monthly document request, the list you reconcile against, and the first thing a new staff member reads when they take the client over.

Week one: collect the documents

The month cannot close until every account has a statement to reconcile against. For each client, collect:

• Bank statements for every account, for the full month.
• Credit card statements for every card.
• Loan and line of credit statements, so you can split principal and interest.
• The payroll register and the payroll tax summary for every pay date in the month.
• Processor or marketplace payout reports, if the client sells online.
• Receipts or explanations for transactions you cannot categorize from the bank feed alone.
• Any new bills, loan documents, leases or large purchases the client has not told you about yet.

Some of this you can download yourself if the client has given you access to their bank or payroll portal. The rest has to come from the client, and that is where most months stall. More on that below.

Week one to two: categorize and reconcile

With documents in hand:

• Categorize every transaction in the bank and card feeds. Anything you cannot explain goes on the client's question list, not into a suspense account you will forget.
• Reconcile every bank account to the statement's ending balance.
• Reconcile every credit card account the same way.
• Match loan balances to the lender's statement and book the interest.
• Record payroll from the register: gross wages, employer taxes, withholdings and net pay, so the liability accounts clear when the taxes are paid.
• Clear undeposited funds and any clearing accounts used for processor payouts.
• Record recurring entries such as depreciation, prepaid expenses and accruals if the client keeps accrual-basis books.

Reconciliation is the step that proves the books match reality. If a statement is missing, that account cannot be reconciled, and the month is not finished, however complete the rest looks.

Week two: review before you report

Before anything goes to the client, look at the month as a reader would:

• The uncategorized and "ask my accountant" accounts are at zero, or every item in them is on the client's question list.
• No account has a balance that cannot be right, such as a negative bank balance on a reconciled account or a credit balance in an expense account.
• Revenue and the largest expenses are in line with the prior month, or you know why they are not.
• Owner draws, contributions and transfers between the client's own accounts are recorded as transfers, not income or expense.
• Accounts receivable and accounts payable aging make sense, if the client uses them.
• Sales tax collected matches what the client will file. The filing schedule and rules depend on the state, so check the client's own requirements.

Close and report

• Send the reports the client expects: usually a profit and loss and a balance sheet, with a short note on anything unusual.
• Send the remaining questions in one message, not one at a time.
• Lock the period so nobody edits a closed month by accident. QuickBooks Online calls this the closing date; Xero calls it lock dates.
• Note what was late this month and from whom.

Where the checklist stalls: documents

Almost every step above depends on something the client sends. When a firm says close is running late, the cause is usually one or two clients who have not sent a card statement or the receipts for a handful of charges.

A few habits make that wait shorter:

• Ask for the exact items. "Please send your September documents" gets half of them. "We still need your card statement ending 4417 and receipts for these three charges" gets the rest.
• Ask everyone on the same day. A fixed request day, such as the third of the month, trains clients to expect it.
• Make sending easy. Every login or password you ask a client to remember costs you days. A single link they can open on a phone is easier than a portal account.
• Remind on a schedule, not by memory. A polite reminder every few business days, listing only what is still missing, works better than one stern email in week three.
• Know who is holding up close. Keep one list of which clients are complete and which are still missing items, so you start reconciling the complete ones first.

The request email itself is worth getting right. Our document request templates cover the first request, the reminders and the "please send it again" email.

When the checklist outgrows a spreadsheet

A spreadsheet tracks which documents have arrived, but you still write and send every request and reminder yourself. Once you have more monthly clients than you can chase by hand in an afternoon, look at document collection software that does the chasing.

Month-End Docs handles the first step of this checklist. Each client gets one upload link, with no login, that lists exactly which statements and receipts are still missing for the month. It reminds each client on a schedule until every item arrives, and shows you which clients are holding up close.