CPA San AntonioA month neither person finished

What closed means on this page

A finished month is not a mood. It is a short list you can check with the bank open beside you. The list is the same one we use whether the shop sells plates near the courthouse or sends crews out past the city limit. An open line on that list means we have not finished the month. We do not round that corner.

Write the open lines down before the call. A deposit with no name, a check that has not cleared, and a payroll report that never got posted are the three that most often keep January open. When those three have names, the rest of the list is usually short, and the month can be finished instead of narrated.

Match the bank, including the items that have not cleared

Pull the statement. Tick every amount that appears in both places. What remains on the statement and not in the books is a deposit or a charge you still have to name. What remains in the books and not on the statement is usually a check that has not cleared, or a deposit that went out late.

Those leftovers get a date and a reason and stay in the file. They do not get deleted so the two totals match tonight. A pretty match that hides three open checks will fail the next month, and it will fail a return that needs the year to be real. The next month should be able to see every one of them.

Owner transfers get the same treatment. Money that moved between you and the company is labeled as that, not as a sale and not as a mystery. When the return is prepared, those labels are already there. Nobody has to reconstruct them from a group text in April.

Tax collected is not a sale, and payday reports are not optional

On the day you sell something inside the city, part of the card payment belongs to the state and the local pieces, not to the shop. That part sits in a liability until the return on the 20th. Calling it revenue makes the month look stronger than it is, and it makes the 20th look like a surprise. We move it before we close.

The provider who pays your people sends reports. Those reports have a month on them. We post them into that month, wages and the taxes withheld, even if the cash draft hit the bank a day earlier or a day later. The provider keeps cutting the checks. The books keep the record. A return cannot be prepared from a payroll report that never got posted.

A missing payroll report keeps that month unfinished. We will tell you which one. We will not estimate a payroll from the bank draft and hope the return can live with it.

What you should be able to read when we say the month is done

A statement for the month. A balance sheet that ties. A list of what has not cleared. A sales tax figure that matches the liability, not the sales. Payroll posted. Owner pay visible. That packet is the close. It is also the only honest starting point for the return.

If you already have a person who keeps the books and a different person who prepares the return, this is the page that describes the month between them. Bring both files to the call. We will say whether the hole is one month or a year of them. The longer sketch, with the amounts left off, is on the two vendors page.

The Marianists opened St. Mary's in 1852, and it remains the oldest Catholic university in Texas. We are Texans, and a school with that long a memory is a civic pride. Someone had to carry the records across all those years. A business is not a university, and the lesson still holds. A month that is not written down does not survive the next person who opens the file.

The map under a finished month

Near this city, Natural Bridge Caverns are the largest commercial caverns in Texas, under a limestone bridge a sinkhole left in the Hill Country. We are Texans, and a cave like that is a shared wonder. Visitors see the bridge. The people who run the place have to know what is under it. A statement you can read is the bridge. The uncleared list is what sits underneath. Both belong in the file, or the next person is guessing.

A close also names the accounts that are easy to skip. Customer deposits that are not yet sales. Goods that moved without a count. A loan payment that mixed principal and interest in one bank line. We split those before we call the month finished, because a return treats them as different things even when the bank shows one number. Leaving them mixed is how a tidy month becomes a spring repair.

Pages that go further.