CHECKLIST

Year-End Checklist for Online Sellers

Stock count, cut-off, the liabilities people forget, and everything your accountant will ask for. About three hours, and roughly a third of it has to happen before the date rather than after it.

  • Six sections, thirty-five items, about three hours
  • The decisions that expire the moment your year end passes
  • A three-item shortlist if you will not do all of it

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Who this checklist is for

Anyone whose year end is coming up, and particularly anyone whose year end is a month away, because that is the only point at which the first section is still useful.

Sellers with a year end approaching

Sellers with a year end approaching
Read section one now rather than on the day. Capital purchases, pension contributions, an overdrawn loan account and a bad debt all have to be dealt with before the date, not after it.

Anyone whose stock never agrees with their books

It is almost always cut-off rather than theft or arithmetic. Section three lists the six places where the goods and the paperwork move on different days.

People who dread the accountant’s list of questions

Section five is that list, written down in advance. A year end sent complete costs less and takes less time than one sent in pieces.

FACTS

How to value stock properly

Landed cost rather than the supplier invoice, then the lower of cost and net realisable value applied line by line, so a healthy line cannot subsidise a dead one. The write-down reduces your tax in the year the stock went bad.

Professional accountants at a trusted accountancy company reviewing financial reports

35 items

Six sections

Professional accountants at a trusted accountancy company reviewing financial reports

3 hours

A third of it before the date

FACTS

The liabilities that quietly overstate your profit

Gift cards, customer deposits, returns you expect in January on December sales, costs incurred but not yet invoiced, and the VAT sitting in your bank looking exactly like your money.