Top tips for getting your Xero shipshape

After the year-end, no formal year-end routine is required to “close down” the accounts year but there are procedures that should be followed to get your Xero accounts ready before we start working on your annual accounts.

Check that the statement balances shown on Xero are correct. Occasionally, technical glitches can happen with some bank feeds which may result in missing, or more often, duplicated statement lines. Log in to your online banking and check that the Statement Balance for each account matches those shown on Xero on the year-end date. If not, further investigation will be needed, and your first step should be to narrow down when the deviation occurred by checking the balance at various selected dates in the year.

Your bank accounts need to be fully reconciled up to the accounts year-end before we can start processing your figures. If you have questions about how to reconcile specific transactions then you can discuss this with your accounts manager. Ideally you should try to keep the number of unreconciled items to a minimum throughout the year, so that any transactions requiring additional investigation are dealt with promptly.

If you save any documents in the Files section of Xero that we will need when preparing the accounts, then please ensure that these are complete for the full accounting year.

Check the Reconciliation Report which can be found on various pages in the bank and reconciliation sections. If there are any Outstanding Payments or Outstanding Receipts, these are transactions that have been created without a corresponding bank entry. If the account has a bank feed, then these have been entered in error and need removing.

If you enter Bills to Pay and/or Invoices, then please check through all those that are Awaiting Payment to make sure that these are accurate and up to date. Checking these should be part of your routine throughout the year, and we may query anything older than 3 months.

Take some time to review your transactions so that any obvious errors and mispostings can be rectified. The General Ledger Detail found in Reports can help with this. You can also see if any transactions need to be reallocated or require further detail.

Should you have fallen behind with keeping your Xero up to date and need some help, the RBP Cloud Accounting's bookkeeping team can provide a catch-up service. If you require further details about this option, please contact Emma Pottinger at emma@rbp.co.uk.