5 essential tips to streamline your financial year end
The end of financial year can be a daunting period for small to medium-sized businesses, but with the right planning and efficient processes, you can navigate its complexities with ease. Here, we provide eight essential tips to streamline your end of financial year and help you avoid the tax time rush.
1. Get organised early
The key to a stress-free EOFY is early preparation. Ensure that all necessary documents, receipts and financial statements are organised and readily accessible.
One way to avoid the last-minute scramble for receipts and invoices is by having an efficient digital system for all your financial documents that can be updated throughout the year.
With cloud-based financial software, you or your colleagues can easily scan paper receipts and invoices so all your documentation stays up to date in a single, secure platform, ensuring you have everything organised leading up to year-end.
2. Plan ahead with an EOFY schedule
Rather than taking a reactive approach to working out what needs to be done, and when, in the final weeks of the financial year, you can plan ahead by creating a schedule.
This should outline important dates and crucial deadlines for EOFY tasks, as well as assign roles and responsibilities for your finance team.
Break down tasks into manageable pieces and make sure to communicate the importance of meeting deadlines to your team.
3. Prepare staff and review team processes
Well before EOFY comes around, it is a good idea to review your finance team’s processes and tools to ensure they have everything they need for an efficient year-end.
If document sharing and collaboration are issues for your team, this is where cloud accounting software help. Such solutions are accessible from anywhere and provide a centralised hub where your team members can easily share documentation and view who is working on what, upcoming tasks and due dates.
It is also a good idea to invest time in training your team on EOFY processes and expectations, to ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities, helping reduce errors and delays.
4. Stay informed about tax changes
Tax laws and deductions for small to medium-sized businesses can change annually, so it helps to stay up to date about all the new tax benefits and obligations introduced for this financial year.
Make sure to bookmark the ATO’s key changes page, and if you are a small business, you might want to consult your tax professional or subscribe to the ATO’s small business newsroom.
5. Automate manual tasks
Automation could perhaps deliver the greatest time saving for your finance team, allowing you to eliminate many of the time-intensive, often error-prone manual tasks required with EOFY processes.
For instance, cloud accounting software can automate the process of reconciling financial statements, eliminating the need to send and receive invoices, as well as many tasks requiring manual data entry. It can also automate drafting reports and ensure compliance with ATO reporting requirements.
Streamline your EOFY with Access financial management software
Access financial management software can help you ensure a simpler, more efficient EOFY for your team. Built-in ATO compliance and powerful automation capabilities eliminate manual processes and save time, helping you avoid the typical tax time rush.
For businesses with up to 100 employees, Access Attaché offers all the accounting, collaboration, reporting, eInvoicing, invoice capture and document management tools your team needs to simplify year-end processes.
For larger businesses, Access Financials provides all these features and more to automate accounting and financial management processes and provide a true single view of your organisation.
