
19 Nov QBO Year-End Practices
Can you believe it? Year end is almost upon us already. In this article, I list some of the best practices to keep your QuickBooks Online file running smoothly.
And as always – if you’re looking for expert guidance to move your business forward with clarity and confidence, reach out anytime!
Best Practices to Keep Your QuickBooks Online File Running Smoothly
- Review Customer and Vendor Balances
- Run Accounts Receivable Aging Summary and Accounts Payable Aging Summary reports under Reports.
- Send statements to customers with outstanding invoices and pay any vendor bills before year-end.
- Consider writing off to Bad Debt Expense any accounts considered to be uncollectible.
- Review Customer and Vendor Lists
- Mark any Customers or Vendors that you do not expect any further activity with as “Inactive”
- Merge any duplicate vendor or customer names
- This keeps lists to a manageable size
- Clear Outstanding Deposits
- Check the Undeposited Funds (sometimes called “Checks to Deposit”) account and move payments to the correct bank register with a Bank Deposit entry.
- This ensures all cash receipts and income are recorded accurately for the year.
- Categorize Transactions Accurately
- Clear any “For review” pending entries from the Bank Transactions page
- This ensures all activity that has cleared your bank and credit card accounts has been posted.
- Bank transactions must be cleared before accounts can be reconciled.
- Reconcile All Accounts
- Use Accounting > Reconcile to match bank and credit card statements with QBO records.
- Ensure the Difference column shows zero before completing the reconciliation.
- Run Year-End Reports
- Essential reports include:
- Profit & Loss
- Balance Sheet
- Statement of Cash Flows
- Use filters for class, location, or account type for detailed review.
- Use the Compare to previous year setting and analyze the $ change and % change columns to understand reasons for variations from prior periods. This comparative review is a good way to catch entries that have been classified inconsistently from prior periods.
- Display Year-to-Date reports with Columns by Month to review for potential missing accrual entries
- Essential reports include:
- Adjust Journal Entries & Inventory
- Work with your accountant to make necessary adjustments for depreciation, accruals, and inventory corrections.
- Use an Inventory Adjustment transaction, NOT a Journal Entry, to adjust inventory balances to physical counts. This ensures that Inventory Valuation reports support balance sheet totals.
- Lock Your Books
- After review, close your books to prevent changes.
- Go to Gear > Account and Settings > Advanced > Close the Books and set a password for added security.
- Backup and Archive
- Export key reports and consider downloading a backup of your QuickBooks data for record-keeping.
- Backup options for QBO, like Rewind software or export tools like SaasAnt, were discussed in last month’s issue of Ed Talks.
As you wrap up your QuickBooks year-end tasks, taking the time to close the books accurately sets the stage for a smoother, more confident start to the new year.
If you’d like expert guidance, Siegel is here to support your future year-end preparation, streamline your processes, and answer any questions along the way. Reach out anytime—we’re always ready to help you move forward with clarity and confidence!





















