In order to ensure that your Actionstep Practice Management Accounting reports correct results throughout the year, Actionstep recommends following this checklist at the end of each month:
- Complete a bank reconciliation at the end of each month for every bank account. (See Completing a Bank Reconciliation.)
- Run your billing to the month end.
- Raise any credits or complete any required write-offs. (See About Billing Adjustments.)
- Print and post account (debtor) statements. (See Generating Account Statements.)
- Print your WIP report for the end of the month. This provides a WIP figure if you require it for any accounting adjustments. (See Aged WIP Report.)
- If your local laws and regulations allow it, apply any trust funds to invoices. (In some jurisdictions, this cannot be done immediately.) (See Paying a Client Invoice Using Trust (or Client) Funds.)
- Set the lockout date on the Trust Accounting. This date can be set prior to the Lockout Date on the accounting but cannot be earlier than the accounting lockout date. (See Setting Your Main Accounting Preferences (Admin).)
- Print and return any trust reports as required in your jurisdiction.
- Enter all the supplier/vendor invoices. (See Creating a Supplier Invoice/Vendor Invoice.)
- Reconcile the supplier statements.
- Process any regular adjustment journals identified by your business. (See Correcting Accounting Errors.)
- Look at your reports. Actionstep recommends printing your Income Statements for the last six months with each month in a separate column. This allows you to see where you may have missed a transaction. For example, in the report you may see that the prior five months have a charge for cleaning but the current month does not, which may indicate you maybe missed an invoice.
- Once you are satisfied with the result, it's recommended you reset the Accounting Lockout date, which you can find by going to Admin > Accounting > Accounting Preferences. This will prevent users from making changes.
Additional Resources:
Updated