Did you think to yourself at EOFY last year, “I’m going to be more organised next year?” Well, with less than three months till the end of financial year, now is the time to declutter your books before the EOFY rush.
As part of the “getting organised” process and before the EOFY comes around again, now is the time to declutter your books. I’m not talking about your year-end tax planning or timing of payments for cashflow in the lead up to 30 June; I’m talking about the step before that.
Decluttering your books now will enable an efficient and streamlined EOFY process that your future self will thank you for! Here’s my top 10 tips to help you do just that.
- Set time aside now for the declutter process. Rome wasn’t built in a day and decluttering your books won’t be achieved in one day either. Before you close this article, put time in your calendar each week to declutter. Separate the below tasks into chunks and schedule them over the coming weeks.
- Ensure your accounting file is in order – a clean and accurate set of books not only guarantees the reliability of your financial reports, but it will also put you in the best possible position for EOFY.
- Upload all outstanding invoices and receipts. Pull out all of the receipts from your glove box, bags and anywhere else you stash them and get them uploaded into the file. Then going forward, use your App to keep your filing up to date and avoid backlog.
- Ensure all paper invoices and receipts are scanned and appropriately filed, attached to transactions or named for ease of retrieval at a later date. You can also use this step to declutter your filing system.
- Allocate all transactions in your accounting file, then reconcile and balance any outstanding bank and credit card accounts. Publish your bank reconciliations and file safely on your hard drive.
- Complete any outstanding end of month reporting. If you are behind in your end of month financial reporting, now is the time to get caught up. If you need assistance with this task, reach out to your Accountant who can provide you with a month end procedure, a checklist, and a bookkeeping resource to assist if necessary.
- If you are keeping paper copies of documents, make a commitment to yourself next year to “go paperless”! We have the tools to achieve this and the process is entirely liberating and empowering. Clean out the filing cabinet or bookshelves. Archive any previous year/s accounts and clear out room for this year’s accounts.
- Review all your monthly subscriptions and cancel or lower any that you have not utilised this financial year. Cancelling any unused subscriptions saves unnecessary cost and reduces workload.
- Review and streamline the number of bank accounts you have. Do you need all of the opened bank accounts you have, can you merge and close any accounts? Excess bank accounts result in transfers and reconciliation overload.
- Review your accounting processes and make a list of your pain points. Review all manual steps and consider tasks that could be automated. Decluttering your accounts is not just about clearing out paperwork, it is also about decluttering your processes.
Remember, decluttering your books is not your EOFY process, this is the step before that. Decluttering your books will streamline the EOFY process and reduce the stress that can come along with it.
Now is the time to open your calendar, browse through the above list and allocate some weekly time blocks for each declutter task that needs to happen.
Leah Oliver, Founder, Minnik Chartered Accountants
