QuickBooks checklist: Periodic tasks that make your life easier

You know how if you don’t keep up with the housework, things getting out of control and pretty soon you’re spending all weekend doing 500 loads of laundry? You may be thinking, “If I’d just taken a few minutes to do the little things, I wouldn’t be spending all of Saturday doing this.”

Keeping the books for your business is much like this. If you follow some simple checklists of weekly, monthly, and quarterly tasks, it can help you avoid those long weekends of catch-up work. Here’s what I recommend.

Weekly Tasks

• Back up your company file.
• If you have employees, use QuickBooks Payroll for Mac to write your weekly paychecks.
• Pay bills due the following week. (You can set up iCal reminders when you use Enter Bills to help you with this.)
• Print any sales forms or checks that you haven’t printed yet. (Choose File > Print Forms.)
• Create a cash flow forecast report to review your anticipated cash flow for the next few weeks. (Choose Reports > Company & Financial > Cash Flow Forecast)

Monthly Tasks

• Back up your company file and keep a copy of that backup somewhere that’s not on the premises of your business. If disaster strikes such as fire, flood, or theft, you’ll have a backup of your data. If you have a Dropbox account, you can save your backup file there.
• Pay any sales tax you have due. (Choose Vendors > Pay Sales Tax.)
• Use QuickBooks Payroll for Mac to pay payroll taxes due (or however frequently you are required to pay them).
• If you use online banking, download your transactions from your financial institution and reconcile your checking and credit card accounts. If you don’t don’t use online banking, you can do this manually from your paper statements.
  • Note: QuickBooks 2020 offers new online payment options, so you can download and reconcile online transactions. Learn more in this video.
• Print any monthly billing statements to send to your customers.
• Print a report of customers who are past due balances so you can contact.

Quarterly Tasks

• I bet you know what I’m going to say, right? Back up your company file.
• Pay quarterly sales tax due quarterly.
• Use QuickBooks Payroll for Mac to file Form 941, Employer’s Quarterly Tax Return, and state withholding tax forms.
• Create a Profit and Loss Statement and a balance sheet, to review how your business is doing.

So that’s some recommendations to help you keep your house in order. Do you have any recommendations for things to do? Post them below!