Weekly tasks
Small but high-impact. Skipping weekly tasks is how books get behind, because once you're a week behind it's easier to be two weeks behind.
- Review and categorize bank feed transactions. Every imported transaction from your bank and credit card accounts should be reviewed and assigned to the right account. Don't let them pile up — categorization in real time is fast, categorization at month-end is painful.
- Send invoices. Any work completed or product delivered that week should be invoiced. Delayed invoicing means delayed cash.
- Record bill payments and bills received. Don't accumulate paper or PDF bills. Enter them when they arrive.
- Review accounts receivable. Anything past due? Send a quick follow-up. The first reminder always feels awkward; clients almost always pay after it.
- Back up your accounting data (or confirm your cloud software has done so automatically).
This whole list should take 30–60 minutes a week for a typical small business.
Monthly tasks
The monthly close is the most important rhythm in bookkeeping. A clean close in the first two weeks of the following month is what separates businesses that operate on data from businesses that operate on hope.
Bank and credit card reconciliations
- Pull every bank and credit card statement
- Reconcile each account in your accounting software
- Confirm the ending balance matches the statement exactly
- Investigate any discrepancy — never force-balance with a journal entry
Review the month's transactions
- Run a transaction detail report and scan for anything miscategorized
- Confirm large or unusual transactions have backup documentation
- Reclassify anything sitting in "Uncategorized Expense"
Accounts receivable
- Run an A/R Aging report
- Follow up on anything over 30 days past due
- Write off truly uncollectible amounts (don't just delete the invoice — that hides the original revenue)
Accounts payable
- Run an A/P Aging report
- Confirm all bills paid have been marked paid
- Schedule upcoming payments based on due dates and available cash
Payroll
- Confirm payroll runs were recorded correctly
- Reconcile payroll liability accounts against your payroll provider's reports
- Confirm payroll tax payments cleared the bank
Sales tax
- Confirm the sales tax liability account balance matches what's owed for the month
- File the sales tax return if you're on monthly filing
- Remit payment by the 20th of the following month (Florida deadline)
Close the books and run reports
- Set the closing date in your accounting software to prevent edits
- Run Profit & Loss for the month
- Run Balance Sheet as of month-end
- Compare to prior month and year-to-date
- Note anything that looks unusual
Quarterly tasks
Some bookkeeping work doesn't happen monthly but needs to happen on a regular cadence to avoid surprises.
- Estimated tax payments. Due April 15, June 15, September 15, and January 15 for the prior year. Coordinate with your CPA on the calculation.
- Federal payroll tax filings (Form 941). Due at the end of the month following each quarter. Usually handled by your payroll provider but worth confirming.
- State unemployment / reemployment tax filings. In Florida, the Reemployment Tax return is filed quarterly.
- Sales tax filings if you're on quarterly filing rather than monthly.
- Review of profit margins. Pull a quarter-over-quarter and year-over-year P&L. Look for trends — gross margin slipping, expense categories growing, revenue concentration shifting.
- Budget vs. actual review. If you have a budget, compare it to reality and adjust.
- Inventory count for businesses that carry inventory (or monthly, if volume warrants it).
Annual tasks
Year-end is when bookkeeping connects to tax filing. The cleaner your year-end close, the smoother (and cheaper) your tax return.
January
- Issue 1099-NEC forms to all contractors paid $600+ during the year (deadline January 31)
- Issue W-2s to employees (deadline January 31)
- File the W-3 with the SSA and 1096 with the IRS
- Final Q4 payroll tax filings (Form 940 annual, Form 941 quarterly)
- Confirm year-end payroll matches what's reflected on W-2s
February–March
- Inventory adjustment based on the December 31 count
- Fixed asset review — additions, disposals, depreciation calculations
- Accrual adjustments if you're on accrual basis
- Reconcile loan balances against year-end statements from lenders
- Confirm retained earnings rolled forward correctly
- Prepare year-end financial package for your CPA
March–April
- Work with your CPA on the tax return — answer questions promptly, provide additional documentation as requested
- Review the tax return before it's filed; make sure the numbers tie back to your books
- Pay any balance due by the filing deadline
- Adjust estimated tax payments for the new year based on the return
Throughout the year (annual planning)
- Q3 tax planning meeting with your CPA — review YTD performance and plan year-end moves
- Review software subscriptions annually to catch ones you don't use anymore
- Review vendor records — W-9s on file, current addresses, 1099 status correct
- Review customer records — duplicates merged, inactive customers archived
- Insurance review — workers' comp audit, general liability renewal, professional liability
What to do if you're already behind
If you're reading this checklist and realizing you're months behind, don't try to do everything at once. Work in this order:
- Reconcile bank and credit card accounts month by month, starting from the oldest unreconciled month
- Categorize transactions as you go
- Catch up payroll tax filings (these have penalties that grow fast)
- Catch up sales tax filings (same)
- Clean up A/R and A/P aging
- Re-run year-end reports
If you're more than three months behind, this often makes more sense as a cleanup project than as DIY catch-up work. The math usually favors paying to get it done right vs. spending two months of weekends on it yourself.
Tools that make the checklist easier
- Cloud accounting software (QuickBooks Online, Xero, Wave) — bank feeds eliminate manual entry
- Receipt capture apps (Hubdoc, Dext, QuickBooks' built-in receipt capture) — photograph receipts at the moment of purchase
- A dedicated business credit card — keeps personal and business spending separate automatically
- Bank rules — categorize recurring transactions automatically
- Calendar reminders for the recurring deadlines (1099, 941, sales tax, etc.)
Frequently asked questions
For a typical small business, 30–60 minutes a week for the weekly tasks plus 3–6 hours at month-end. Businesses with high transaction volume, payroll, or multiple bank accounts take longer. If yours takes substantially more than that, your processes probably need cleaning up.
Monthly bank reconciliation. Everything else falls apart if the reconciliations aren't current and accurate. If you do nothing else from this checklist, do monthly reconciliations.
You can do it yourself for a long time, especially when the business is small. The question we discuss in When to Hire a Bookkeeper is when the time cost starts to exceed the bookkeeping cost — that's usually the right moment to hand it off.
Trust but verify. Ask for the monthly P&L, Balance Sheet, A/R Aging, and A/P Aging. If you're getting all four every month within two weeks of month-end, things are likely on track. If you can't get clear answers about what's being done, that's worth a closer look.
Need help running the checklist?
This is the rhythm we run for our monthly bookkeeping clients — every week, every month, every quarter, every year. Our bookkeeping service handles the recurring tasks so you only have to make decisions, not do data entry.