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Year-end Accounting Checklist for Restaurant Businesses

Restaurant365
Restaurant365
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If you’ve kept up to date with daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly accounting tasks, then year-end accounting for your restaurant business is going to be a much smoother and streamlined process. Monthly bank reconciliation and financial report review, as well as quarterly reconciliation of balance sheet accounts are essential to beginning your year-end accounting. Use this checklist as a reminder to ensure you don’t miss any steps along the way in closing your restaurant group’s books.

Ensure Your Bookkeeping is Updated and Accurate

  • Review each financial statement account to make sure amounts are correct and reflects all your transactions for the year.
  • Review each line item on your income statement and balance sheet.

Finalize All Income and Expenses

  • Record all business expenses.
  • Pay all open bills from vendors.
  • Pay contractors for completed jobs.
  • Reconcile bank and/or credit card statements to your accounting records.
  • Reconcile loans, lines of credit, payroll liabilities and asset accounts.

Update Fixed Assets

  • Make sure fixed assets are up to date.
  • Run depreciation.

Take Care of Your 1099s

  • Request completed W-9 forms from your vendors (for example, in-house delivery drivers not on your payroll).

Prepare Year-End Payroll

  • Make sure your payroll taxes match your quarterly payroll returns.
  • Verify that all employee contact information is correct for W-2’s.

Account for Inventory in Your Books

  • Count inventory on the date you close your books.
  • Include packaging and paper products in your inventory counts.
  • Double check the inventory on your balance sheet.

Review Your Accounts Payable and Accounts Receivable

  • Go through your supplier accounts to check that you’ve issued, logged, and stored invoice copies.
  • Check to see if anything looks incorrect in your accounts payable.
  • Ensure that your accounts receivable are correct (including payments from delivery apps).
  • Pay any late bills before your year end.

Run and Verify Reporting

  • Run and verify your profit and loss (P&L) report or income statement.
  • Run and verify your balance sheet.
  • Run your statement of cashflows.

Create a Tax Plan

  • Conduct a year-end tax review with your CPA to get an estimate of your tax liability.
  • Implement your CPA’s year-end recommendations to realize tax advantages.

Close Your Books

  • Close your year-end books.
If you’d like to automate your restaurant group’s accounting, consider advancing to a cloud-based, restaurant-specific accounting solution. Schedule a free demo of Restaurant365 today.