As a business owner, it’s essential to ensure your financial health. A comprehensive business accounting health check can help you identify potential issues and set your business up for success in the new year.

What is a Business Accounting Health Check?

A business accounting health check is a thorough review of your financial records and processes. It involves analysing your income statements, balance sheets, cash flow statements, and tax returns. By examining these key financial documents, we can identify areas where you may be able to improve efficiency, reduce costs, and increase profitability.

Why is a Business Accounting Health Check Important?

A business accounting health check offers numerous benefits, including:

• Identifying Potential Issues:Early detection of financial problems can help you take corrective action before they escalate.
• Improving Financial Performance:By analysing your financial data, we can identify areas where you can improve your bottom line.
• Ensuring Tax Compliance:A health check can help ensure that you’re meeting all your tax obligations and avoiding penalties.
• Making Informed Decisions:Accurate financial information empowers you to make informed business decisions.
• Preparing for Growth:A strong financial foundation is essential for future growth and expansion.

What Does a Business Accounting Health Check Involve?

A typical business accounting health check includes the following:

• Review of Financial Records: We’ll examine your income statements, balance sheets, and cash flow statements to ensure accuracy and completeness.
• Tax Compliance Assessment: We’ll review your tax returns to ensure compliance with all relevant tax laws.
• Financial Performance Analysis: We’ll analyse your financial performance to identify areas for improvement.
• Cash Flow Analysis: We’ll assess your cash flow to identify potential cash shortages or surpluses.
• Debt Management Review: We’ll review your debt levels and repayment strategies.
• Risk Assessment: We’ll assess your business’s financial risks and recommend strategies to mitigate them.

Partner with Plus 1 Group

At Plus 1 Group, we’re committed to helping businesses thrive. Our team of experienced accountants can provide expert advice and support to help you achieve your financial goals. We offer a range of services, including:

Business Accounting:

• • Tax planning and preparation
  • Financial reporting
  • Cash flow management
  • Budgeting and forecasting

Business Advisory:

• • Business structuring advice
  • Succession planning
  • Mergers and acquisitions

Self-Managed Super Funds:

• • Fund establishment and administration
  • Investment strategy advice

Take Control of Your Financial Future

Don’t let financial worries hold you back. Contact Plus 1 Group today to schedule a business accounting health check. We’ll work with you to ensure your business is financially fit for the future.

Email or call our friendly team at Plus 1 Group on (03) 5833 3000 and we’d be happy to answer your questions and arrange a no obligation consultation.

Bulk Reconciling and Cash Coding

Did you know you can bulk reconcile your bank transactions by using the cash coding function?

To access the cash coding select the cash coding tab from the bank reconciliation screen. If you don’t see this option, give us a quick call to update your user settings.

Cash Coding Tips

• Sort statement lines by a specific column to group similar transaction lines together. Do this first to avoid losing any changes.
• To ensure you don’t reconcile a statement line that already has a transaction in Xero, select the Show lines with suggested matches A green tick shows at the end of the statement line if there’s a suggested match.
• Reconcile up to 100 statement lines at a time.
• If you’ve already entered a payee as a contact, start typing the contact’s name in the Payee field, then select them from your contact list. This avoids creating a duplicate contact if the payee on the statement line is different from the contact name in Xero.
• Hover over the note icon to view a comment added to the statement line.
• Create bank rules for regular transactions while cash coding, so you don’t have to code them again next time.

If you would like to learn more, call our office on 03 5833 3000.

Bank Reconciliations

Reconciling your bank accounts is one of the most important bookkeeping tasks. Depending on the business it can be done daily, weekly, monthly or quarterly.

What is bank reconciliation and why is it important?

A bank reconciliation is the process of matching the transactions in your accounting software with the actual transactions in your bank account.

It allows you to check that all bank transactions have been entered into your software, ensuring your financial reports are an accurate reflection of your business. It also helps find data entry/payment errors that need to be corrected and verifies your cash flow.

How do I reconcile my accounts?

Depending on your software and whether you use bank feeds there are different procedures for reconciling your bank accounts. But the end result will always be the same, the Closing balance on your bank statement will match the Calculated balance in your software.

You can find step-by-step instructions for your software in these help articles:

AccountRight | Essentials

What if my account doesn’t reconcile?

If your account doesn’t reconcile you need to find what is causing the out of balance and make the necessary changes.

Some of the common causes for an out of balance amount are:

• the wrong date has been entered
• the wrong balance on your statement has been entered
• not all bank transactions have been recorded in your software
• a transaction is selected that doesn’t appear on the bank statement
• a transaction amount has been recorded incorrectly, eg, $217.50 instead of $271.50
• a previously reconciled transaction has been deleted or changed in your software causing it to become unreconciled

To help you find the cause and correct any errors our help articles have detailed information on reconciling your bank accounts:

AccountRight: Resolving out of balance bank reconciliations

Essentials: Reconciling with a paper bank statement

Merge Similar Accounts

Occasionally in QuickBooks similar or redundant accounts are created in error.

The best option to solving this issue and allowing you to manage your accounts properly up your is to merge accounts.

Merging is also available for employees as outlined below.

Steps to merge accounts

Step 1: Choose two accounts for merging. First, choose one account name and then move to another account for merging.

Step 2: Then right-click and then paste and the name of the account you want all to be merged into.

Step 3: Click Save. After that QuickBooks will ask if you want to merge the accounts. Click on Yes.

Steps to merge employees

1. On the left menu, choose Employees, then Click Edit.
2. Change the First name and Last name field to exactly match the employee you wish to keep.
3. Change the Display Name to match the name you just entered.
4. Click Save.
5. Click Yes to confirm that you want to merger the two employees

Undo a Reconciliation Mistake

It happens to everyone: You’re in a groove, zooming through your bank feed, and before you know it, you’ve incorrectly matched a transaction. Xero’s “Unreconcile” feature lets you fix this mistake quickly. Since unreconcile keeps the account transaction and the bank statement line but removes the connection between them, this Xero tip will save you a ton of time and hassle.

To unreconcile an account transaction:

1. Click on the three little dots to the right of the account name on the Dashboard.
2. Go to Account Transactions under the Find header.
3. Click the transaction you want to change to open it.
4. On the next screen, click Options and then select Unreconcile.
5. Click OK on the pop-up window to unreconcile the transaction.

After you’ve completed this process, you can now re-reconcile the bank statement line.