When you finish off the books for the year in MYOB and hand over your work to the accountant, you want to be confident that you’ve done the best job possible, right? Follow our step-by-step guide and you won’t miss a beat:

1. Complete every transaction up to the last day of the financial year

MYOB software lets you record transactions in the 2011 year without having to finish recording transactions in the old. You’re fine to keep entering sales, purchases, customer payments and other everyday stuff in the new year, and take a few weeks to make sure that all transactions are spot on in the old year.

2. Check your work for the previous 12 months.

• Reconcile all your bank, credit card HP and loan accounts – deal to any ‘stale’ cheques
• Run the GST detail report with a view to finding coding errors. Run the GST reports again for the previous 12 months and check they still agree to that filed. You can still declare unclaimed GST.
• Run the receivables reconciliation report and check the list is correct. Bad debts need to be written off.
• Run the receivables reconciliation report and check you have statements/invoices for each balance.
• Run the inventory reconciliation report. Make inventory adjustments to correct the list.
• Note: The 3 reconciliation reports above must have an out of balance of $0 – check.
• Scrutinize every transaction through your income and expense accounts looking for coding errors.

3. Run your Profit & Loss and Balance Sheet reports for the last 12 months – do they make sense?

4. Make a backup.

5. Supply the accountant with all the information they need.

Different accountants want different stuff and most give you a questionnaire to follow. As an MYOB user, chances are that the company file is all they need which, depending on file size, you can either email or burn onto a CD. Don’t forget to give them a logon ID and password so they can work directly in your file.

If your accountant uses MYOB Accounting Office then you can send the .mye file which allows them to load the full years’ transactions into their program so they can complete your tax return.

6. Protect last year’s data so that you can’t inadvertently make any changes to the year just gone. This is one of the most infuriating things you can do (the punishment is worse than death, that is finding which entries you have added or changed).

7. Wait a few weeks or months for your accountants completed financial reports, then figure out what adjustments you need to make, to your current data. To line up your MYOB to your accountants reports, I would recommend you seek the assistance of an MYOB Certified Consultant.

8. Do a final backup and label it “ABC Ltd 2010.myo”

9. From MYOB, choose [File] Start a New Year. Read each screen carefully before clicking Continue. When MYOB asks about keeping transactions from the previous year, I recommend you say Yes.

10. Whew, all done. Pop the champagne bottle — you’re done!

Final note: If you’re new to MYOB software and some of these points fall into the too-hard-basket, then seek help from your MYOB consultant. If you don’t have one, we can help.

Related posts:

1. End of Financial year checklist
2. What do I need to have ready to set up an MYOB data file?
3. Digging for Dirt in MYOB – Part 1
4. Inventory G/L balance does not equal Inventory reports