Sage 50 (Simply Accounting)

Backup
BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP – Do regular daily backups and store them offsite (away from the computer). Flash drives and external hard drives are excellent mediums to accommodate your day-to-day backups. Flashdrives are small enough for your purse or pocket and external hard drives have larger storage capacities. You can always purchase a new computer but the data is priceless.

Backup Printout
We recommend saving / printing a PDF copy of the current sessions journal entries for backup. Should the electronic backup file become corrupt this printout will be your guide to re-posting / restoring your data.

Clear Data
When rolling your datafile over to a new fiscal year, you will be prompted to “Clear Data”. Do not clear old data. If you clear old data, you loose the ability to look up invoice data (vendor or customer). The entry is still there but you can no longer drill into it to see the details.

Inventory Reports
You cannot back date inventory reports.  If you want detailed lists of inventory items at specified dates (ie. month end, year end) do not advance your session date until you have printed all your inventory reports.  Back-dating the session date will not allow you to backdate the inventory reports.

New Calendar Year
Make sure you have processed the last payroll cheques / run for December before you roll your calendar year. Rolling the calendar year before you do payroll closes your payroll year and no longer allows the system to auto-calculate the payroll deductions.

CRA Audits – How to minimize the pain and expense

Best practice is to keep current/accurate/detailed records – they will take a quick look and leave

Meet all compliance deadlines and remittances.

Maintain organized files using accrual method accounting.

Accounts Payable / Purchases

  • maintain files all in alphabetical order
  • review / reconcile payables monthly
  • record all purchases through the purchase journal using source documents, not bank or credit card statements

Meal Expenses

  • in addition to date, restaurant name, details of meal expense and taxes, you must also notate the business reason, names of person attending, and what was discussed

Accounts Receivables / Sales

  • file in numerical order and maintain an electronic file for immediate availability
  • review / reconcile receivables monthly

Deposits

  • file deposit supporting documents and information for quick match to bank statements
  • annotate with any additional details necessary
  • documentation is essential for all transfers, deposits and withdrawals

Bank / Credit Card Statements

  • file by period with supporting documents and reconciliation reports
  • maintain files of all merchant account statements to support deposits/fee withdrawals
  • keep all your account reconciliations current

Shareholder Loan Account

  • review/monitor for debit balances and rectify immediately
  • fully document any/all moneys in/out of this account – shareholder must be able to produce personal bank/credit card statements and personally prove/validate all transactions to/from shareholder

Payroll

  • include Shareholder/owners in monthly payroll – annual year end adjustments can result in remittance issues with CRA
  • maintain individual payroll files for each employee including TD1s and any employee contracts or averaging agreements

What to look for in a Good Bookkeeper

A bookkeeper is an important part of your team providing impeccable accounting records and the financial reports that you need to make decisions and grow your business.

A bookkeeper must be detail oriented which means they will focus on the little things so that you can focus on the bigger things

A bookkeeper must have a solid understanding of bookkeeping theory of debits/credits, the five basic account types and the differences between them (assets, liabilities, equity, income and expenses) and how the cash flows in/out of the company

Job Costing

  • a bookkeeper must also have a basic understanding of your industry as well as how to do proper job costing.  All job costs must be tracked correctly so that you can depend on reliability of the information provided by the bookkeeper.

Financial Statements

  • a bookkeeper must understand and provide the three basic financial statements — Balance Sheet, Income Statement and Cash Flows Statement.

Computer Literacy

  • a bookkeeper must be computer literate, be familiar with the bookkeeping software and be experienced with word processing, Excel, Email and the internet.

Continuing Education

  • a bookkeeper should be a lifelong learner who regularly enhances his/her skills and knowledge with classes, webinars, self-study and conferences.  It is very important that your bookkeeper keeps his/her skills up to date for your industry.

Communication Skills

  • a bookkeeper must be able to ask for clarification or assistance with items they don’t understand or to question items that appear to be out of place.