And What Did Your Accountant Say?

Chances are, you came away from your tax preparation meeting with your enrolled agent or CPA with an accounting "to do" list. Some of the items on your list might be:

• Categorize reimbursable and reimbursed expenses.
• Separate meals when you're traveling from client entertainment meals.
• Track loans to and from LLC members.
• Do an inventory count
• Create "classes" to track different kinds of clients

Getting the detail you missed in the previous year is one of the best changes you can make in your accounting system. The thing is though, it's the fourth month into the year already! Unless you've already locked in your first quarter financials, you can still make some changes before you close Q1 2015.

You probably don't need to toss out your entire bookkeeping system, even if it may seem pretty flawed right now. If your accountant gave you journal entries to make, do those right away. That should get your basic balances in order.

Some easy clean-up tasks include making old vendors and customers inactive so you don't have to scroll through them when you're searching. While you're at it, do the same thing for any service items you might not be using or any accounts in your chart of accounts.

Do some Spring cleaning now and run some monthly financial reports to find errors before they become bigger messes. You'll be happy you did when April 2016 rolls around.