Is Your Bookkeeping on Track? A Mid-Year Financial Checkup for Business Owners

As a business owner, it’s surprisingly easy to fall behind on bookkeeping.

You start the year with good intentions, but then clients, employees, deadlines, and the day-to-day work of running a business take over. Before you know it, there may be months of transactions waiting to be categorized, accounts that haven’t been reconciled, or financial reports you’re not quite sure you can trust.

And unfortunately, those bookkeeping issues have a way of becoming tax problems later.

At Casler Financial, we work with business owners on tax preparation and tax planning, and one of the most important pieces of good tax planning is having accurate, up-to-date financial information. We can give much better advice when we know what is actually happening in your business.

That’s why I wanted to share this helpful mid-year bookkeeping checklist from one of our trusted referral partners.

A Mid-Year Bookkeeping Checkup

Take a few minutes and ask yourself these questions:

Are your books up to date?

Have all of your business income and expenses been recorded?

If you're several weeks—or several months—behind, now is a much better time to catch up than waiting until tax season.

Do your bank account balances match your bookkeeping records?

Your business bank and credit card accounts should be reconciled regularly.

If they haven't been reconciled recently, there could be missing transactions, duplicates, incorrect entries, or other issues hiding in your books.

Are there transactions you still need to categorize?

Those transactions sitting in "uncategorized" aren't just an annoyance.

Incorrect or missing categories can affect your financial reports and ultimately make tax preparation more difficult. Cleaning them up throughout the year can save a lot of time and questions later.

Can you easily run an accurate Profit & Loss Statement?

Your Profit & Loss Statement should give you a reasonably clear picture of how your business is performing.

If you run a P&L and find yourself thinking, "That doesn't look right," it's worth investigating.

Accurate financial statements aren't only for your tax preparer. They help you understand profitability, control expenses, plan for taxes, and make better business decisions.

Are you missing receipts or supporting documents?

Waiting until tax season to track down a year's worth of receipts is rarely fun.

Take some time now to gather missing invoices, receipts, statements, and other documentation while they're still relatively easy to find.

Do you know where your business stands financially today?

This may be the most important question on the list.

Your bank account balance doesn't necessarily tell you whether your business is profitable.

Good bookkeeping should allow you to understand how much you're earning, where your money is going, how your business is performing compared with prior periods, and whether you need to make adjustments.

Why This Matters for Tax Planning

From our perspective at Casler Financial, clean bookkeeping isn't simply about having organized records.

It's the foundation of proactive tax planning.

When your books are current, we can look at your actual year-to-date income and expenses and make much more meaningful recommendations about estimated tax payments, retirement contributions, business purchases, deductions, entity planning, and other tax-saving opportunities.

If we don't have reliable numbers until after the year has ended, many of those planning opportunities may already be gone.

Need Help Getting Your Books Back on Track?

If you answered "no" to any of the questions above—or you're simply not sure—the good news is that you still have time to get things cleaned up before year-end.

We are fortunate to have trusted bookkeeping professionals in our referral network who can help business owners clean up existing books and establish systems to keep them current going forward.

EVT Consulting is one of the bookkeeping professionals we are happy to recommend to clients who need help getting their financial records organized and up to date.

Whether you need a one-time bookkeeping cleanup or ongoing monthly support, getting your books in order now can make running your business—and preparing for tax season—a whole lot easier.

And once your numbers are accurate, Casler Financial can help you put those numbers to work through proactive tax planning.

If you'd like help determining whether you need bookkeeping cleanup, tax planning, or both, please reach out. We're always happy to point you in the right direction.

Special thanks to Erin Turco with EVT Consulting for providing the Mid-Year Financial Reset Checklist that inspired this article.