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EVERYDAY IS MONTH END |YEAR END

With another tax year-end rolling over, every accountant and business owner will be thinking of year-end, and what that means to them.

We thought it would be a good idea, to explain what it means to us.

If things are done correctly, year end should be just another day, and nothing to be feared.

Sure, there is provisional tax to pay, and an RA top up to potentially be done, but if your accounting and finance function is working properly, then year end is just another day.

So, what do we mean by every day is month end?

Well, if you have the correct people, processes, and technology in place, then your financial systems should be working in such a way that when year end rolls over, there is not much that needs to be done to complete your year end. This requires disciplined people and disciplined action.

People

This thought process requires a person handling your daily, weekly, monthly finance and accounting tasks that has the required knowledge and skill to complete the accounting work to the required standard.

It also requires regular (ideally quarterly but at least bi-annually) check-ins with your accountant to review the status of records, to ensure that the finance systems are working to the required standard.

Processes

Probably the most important part of this concept is the daily, weekly, and monthly processing disciplines, in the form of tasks and checklists that are required to ensure that the standard that you set is the right standard.

Technology

The final concept is technology. There are many tools out there that can simplify and automate manual tasks. Crucially, however, automation is very difficult in an unstructured environment. So, the previous concept feeds automation. A structured environment is much easier to automate. Many tools exist, the primary tool being cloud accounting tools like Xero, payroll automation tools like Simplepay, document capturing tools like Hubdoc. There are many.

If you can get the above three concepts together and working smoothly, you have an environment, where every day is month end | year end, and year end is not something to be feared!

Contact us at hello@118accounting.co.za if you would like to understand how we implement the above philosophy with our clients!