Getting ready for your QuickBooks for 2013, we hope you’ll be ringing out a successful financial year at month’s end. In any case, here’s what you should know about preparing for 2013.

End of the year. QuickBooks has been hard at work for the past 11+ months, recording tracking, and storing all of that financial data that you’ve entered so faithfully.

But when you turn the calendar page and make a new start on January 1, your accounting software could use some closure on the year that’s just passed. Here are some actions you can take to ring out the old and ring in the new. There’s more you can do (we can help you with the advanced activities) but we’ll just hit the highlights here.

• Reconcile, reconcile, reconcile. Yes, we know it’s not one of your favorite chores, but we like to see all bank and credit card accounts reconciled by the end of the year if at all possible. Void all checks necessary and enter missing transactions. 

• You can make yourself crazy looking for a nickel when you’re reconciling, but it’s a critical function.
• Make accrual adjustments. This is complicated, and it only applies if you accrue payroll and liabilities or prepay expenses that are then carried as assets. We’ll need to create journal entries for you.
• Close your books. This is optional. It depends on whether you want to lock 2012 data to everyone except those who have the password and permissions. If you don’t close them, you’ll have easier access to last year’s transaction details. Regardless of what you choose, QuickBooks for 2013 will automatically make some year-end adjustments.
• Do a physical inventory. Then compare this with what QuickBooks says. Reports | Inventory | Physical Inventory Worksheet.

• It’s good to match up your physical inventory count with QuickBooks for 2013 occasionally, and the end of the year is as good a time as any.
• Run income tax reports. As you know, QuickBooks for 2013 lets you assign tax lines to tax-related transactions. Use the Income Tax Preparation Report and the Income Tax Summary Report. Let us know about any errors or omissions.
• Check W-2 and 1099 data. You can’t create these forms, of course, until after your final 2012 payroll, but you can get a head start. Ask employees to verify their names, addresses, and Social Security numbers for accuracy. Also, make sure that your EIN and SEIN are correct, as well as your company address.
• Clean up, back up. We can monitor the health of your QuickBooks data file anytime. But year-end is a good time to scrutinize your software’s performance. Has it slowed down, started crashing, or returned error messages? We can troubleshoot to find the problem and clean it up. We’re sure you’ve been backing up your file faithfully, but archive all of 2012 and store it in a very safe offsite location — or use Intuit Data Protect for online storage.

• Frequent backups are critical, but you should be sure to have a copy of your entire 2012 data file stored somewhere safe.
• Double-check tax liabilities. If you’re handling your payroll, look back to see whether all of your payments and filings have been completed.

Thanks for another year.

 Again, these are suggestions. QuickBooks for 2013 does not require you to do any of them. There’s more you can do, and you will need assistance with some of these. So let’s set up a December or early January meeting to get you started right in 2013.

We want to take this opportunity to thank you for letting us serve your company in 2012. We certainly appreciate your business, and we’re happy to do what we can to help your business prosper.  It’s not too early to think about taxes so let us know if you want to get a jump on planning and preparation in January.